The 1939 Trial of Raymond Tessmer: Exemplar of UAW Factionalism

THE MICHIGAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 38:2 (Fall 2012): 107-121©2012 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. The 1939 Trial of Raymond Tessmer: Exemplar of UAW Factionalism by Robert P. Davidow On June 23, 1939, automobile worker Raymond Tessmer went on trial in the Detroit Recorder’s Court charged with criminal libel.1 The charge was based on his having distributed an old leaflet, ostensibly from the Communist Party, urging the election of Maurice Sugar, a well-known labor lawyer, to the Common Council of the City of Detroit in 1935. Among other things, the leaflet described Sugar as a member of the party, attacked religion, and said that Sugar would fight for the right of African Americans to marry white women. Under the common-law rule of criminal libel then followed in Michigan, once a libel was proved, the defendant had the burden of proving that the libel was true and that it was published for good motives and with proper justification. Although Ralph Garber served as the prosecutor and Tessmer was nominally the defendant, defense attorney Larry Davidow in effect assumed the role of prosecutor, trying to prove that Sugar was a Communist. Sugar, who had brought a criminal complaint against Tessmer, then became the de facto defendant. After a weeklong trial, the jury acquitted Tessmer. The more than 300-page transcript of the Tessmer trial provides researchers with an excellent window into 1930’s Detroit. It illuminates the struggle for control of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the views of the Communist Party. Following hearings held by the Dies Committee (the House Committee on Un-American Activities), the trial offers a case study of the two lawyers engaged in this political, legal, personal, and (for them) moral contest. Larry Davidow used the case to attack his former friend Maurice Sugar, relying on the widespread beliefs in that era about Communists and their connection to the UAW. 1 People v. Raymond Tessmer (hereafter Tessmer), no. 8890 (Recorder’s Court, City of Detroit, 1939). Because Tessmer was acquitted there was no appeal, and the case is not officially reported anywhere. For a brief description of the trial, see Christopher H. Johnson, Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left in Detroit, 1912-1950 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), 241-42. 108 The Michigan Historical Review Davidow and Sugar had much in common, but differed in important respects. Both had Jewish parents, although Davidow, unlike Sugar, denied his Jewish background. Both were Socialists and idolized Eugene V. Debs. Davidow registered for the draft during World War I but was declared unfit because of bad eyesight. Sugar refused to register, was convicted, and served time in prison. As a result, he was disbarred, but was later reinstated in the courts of Michigan. Both men had been active in the labor movement prior to the trial; indeed, they did some of the legal work connected with the Great Flint Sit-down Strike in 1936-1937. In the split within the UAW, Davidow sided with Homer Martin and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), whereas Sugar supported the faction backing the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Both men ran unsuccessfully for political office, including Davidow’s failure to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. They knew each other well and had once been close friends. According to Sugar’s biographer, Sugar had “recruited [Davidow] for the Socialist party.”2 Davidow’s sister and law partner was married to Victor Sugar, Maurice’s brother. Perhaps the most significant difference between the attorneys in the years prior to the trial was their divergence on Communism. Maurice Sugar undoubtedly leaned leftward politically and had represented some Communists in court. On occasion he had been threatened by the Black Legion, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, which took its name from the color of its robes. The Black Legion opposed, among other groups, what it perceived to be left-wing organizations and people; indeed, nine members of the legion had been given life sentences for the murder of a worker employed by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency.3 Also, the legion...