American Youth Congress
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American Youth Congress was an organization composed of youth from all across the country to discuss the problems facing youth as a whole in the 1930's. It met several years in a row - one year it notably met on the lawn of the White House. The delagates are known to have caused a disturbance when they attempted to access the United States Congress. They focused on the draft, which was taking youths at age 18 off to war. At the time in the United States one was not legally an adult in any way until one was 21. They also focused on the economic exploitation of youth.
On July 4, 1936, they issued a Declaration of the Rights of American Youth, which addressed the issues, mainly the inalienable rights issues that affected youth and the economic issues. The American Youth Congress came under the patronage of Eleanor Roosevelt; however most people dismissed it as being part of the Communist Party, which was an powerful organization in those days.
In 1939 the Dies Committee subpeaned leaders of the America Youth Congress, a subversive outfit dominated by a crew of radicals from the Young Communist League. Eleanor Roosevelt herself attended the hearings, and afterwards entertained members at the White House.
Joseph P. Lash, who in 1937 had described his defection from the Socialist party in the Communist weekly, New Masses, was one of the subpeaned witnesses who was boarded at the White House during the hearings. Another officer was Abbott Simon, staff member of the CPUSA publication, Champion, slept for two weeks slept in Lincoln's bed during the hearings.
In the spring of 1941, the young radicals of the congress, as guests of Mrs. Roosevelt, attended a picnic on the White House lawn where they were addressed by the President Roosevelt from the South Portico. The Presidnet admonished them to condemn not merely the Nazi regime but all dictatorships, he was booed by the group. Soon afterwards, many of the same youth picketed the White House as representatives of the American Peace Mobilization. Among them was Joseph Cadden, one of the overnite guests.
In 1940, despite Eleanor Roosevelt's publication of reasons called "Why I still believe in the Youth Congress," the American Youth Congress was disbanded.
Sources
- California Legislature, Joint Fact Finding Committee, Fourth Report, Un-American Activities in California, 1948: Communist Front Organizations; (Sacramento, CA, 1948) p. 180.
- John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, (New York: Devin-Adair, 1948)