Joseph R. Brodsky
[5][6] Brodsky was general counsel of the International Labor Defense (ILD), an affiliate (or "arm") of the Communist Party of the United States.
The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s.
In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA.
In mid-April 1931, the International Labor Defense (ILD) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) stepped in to help.
[9] On March 27, 1933, Leibowitz opened his defense of Haywood Patterson, the first defendant retried, by challenging Alabama's exclusion of blacks from the jury rolls and tough cross-examination of whites.
On April 12, 1933, Leibowitz and Brodsky joined John Haynes Holmes, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Roger Baldwin at a "Labor Defense Meeting" in Union Square, New York City.
[8] In May 1933, Brodsky joined the ACLU's Arthur Garfield Hays and NAACP's Alexander Miller to meet faculty and students at Brooklyn College to discuss the case.
[15] In November 1933, third trials start for Patterson and Clarence Norris, represented by Liebowitz, Brodsky, and Chamlee; both boys receive third convictions by mid-December.
[25] In 1938, Brodsky served as attorney for the American Federation of Musicians by filing as amicus curiae (along with Boudin, Cohn & Glickstein) for several AFL-affiliated unions, Harold Dublirer for Window Trimmers & Displaymen's Union Local 144, Carol Weiss King for the IJA, Edward Kuntz for the ILD, Abraham Unger for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 820 AFL, etc.
Other members and affiliates included: George R. Andersen, Harry Elmer Barnes, Paul F. Brissenden, Richard A. Dowling, Arthur Fisher, Osmond Fraenkel, Leo Gallagher, Aubrey Grossman, Pearl M. Hart, Robert L. Hale, Isaac S. Heller, Abraham J. Isserman, Isadore Katz, Robert W. Kenny, Paul J. Kern, Carol Weiss King, Joseph Kovner, Max Lowenthal, Jerome Michael, Louis F. McCabe, Carey McWilliams, Shad Polier, Lee Pressman, Colston E. Warne, Abrahm Lincoln Wirin, Nathan Witt, David Ziskind, Isaac E. Ferguson, Yetta Land, Maurice Sugar, David J. Bentall, John P. Davis, Charles H. Houston, Henry T. Hunt, R. W. Henderson, Austin Lewis, and Clara G. Binswanger.
Beyond Brodsky, IJA members also to the ILD included: George R. Andersen, David J. Bentall, Joseph R. Brodsky, John P. Davis, Leo Gallagher, Irvin Goodman, Carol Weiss King, Edward Lamb, Yetta Land, Louis F. McCabe, Herbert T. Wechsler, Ruth Weyand, Samuel L. Rothbard, and Abraham Lincoln Wirin.
[27] The House Un-American Activities Committee considered the IJA "an official offshoot" of the ILD, itself the "legal arm" of the Communist Party.
Those associations include: Brodsky died age 58 on July 30, 1947, as reported by the Daily Worker, which listed him as a charter member of the Communist Party.
