Baruch Charney Vladeck (1886–1938) was an American Jewish labor leader, manager of the Jewish Daily Forward for twenty years, and a member of the New York City Council.
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Vladeck was born in Dukora, a small village near Minsk, in what is now Belarus in 1886. His parents were Wolf Charney and Brocha Hurwitz. In the early 1900s, Vladeck was drawn to revolutionary movements and was imprisoned in 1904 for conducting classes in liberal politics for young working people. He was an activist in the Jewish Labour Bund party.[1] He would have several more brushes with the Czarist authorities due to his labor organizing and revolutionary activity; ultimately Vladeck sought refuge in the United States.
Vladeck joined the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward in 1912 as manager of its Philadelphia branch while also studying at the Teachers' College of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1918 Vladeck became manager of the paper, and remained in that position until his death. He was also a member of the National Press Club.
In 1917 Vladeck was elected to the New York Board of Aldermen as a Socialist. He was defeated in 1921 but was re-elected in 1937 to the newly formed New York City Council running on the American Labor Party ticket. Vladeck was also at the forefront of establishing public housing for low-income residents and in 1934 was named by Mayor LaGuardia to the New York City Housing Authority.
In 1933 Vladeck laid the groundwork for the Jewish Labor Committee, which was formed by Jewish trade unionists, socialists, and kindred groups and individuals to oppose the rise of Nazism in Germany. The JLC had its founding convention the following February, in New York's Lower East Side; Vladeck was the organization's president from the convention until his death. He, together with Jewish trade union leaders, successfully convinced the American Federation of Labor to support a national boycott of German goods at the labor federation's 1933 convention.
Vladeck died on October 30, 1938, at the age of 52 from a coronary thrombosis. His funeral procession through the Lower East Side and ending outside the Forward building drew 500,000 mourners. Among the speakers at the service were Governor Herbert Lehman, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Senator Robert F. Wagner and Socialist leader Norman Thomas. Vladeck's papers are housed at Tamiment Library at New York University.
Today the Vladeck Houses public housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan bear his name, as does nearby "Vladeck Park."[2] The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Bronx contains a lecture hall named Vladeck Hall.
Vladeck's son was civil rights lawyer Stephen C. Vladeck (1920–1979) and his daughter-in-law was renowned labor lawyer Judith Vladeck.
1. "B.C. Vladeck Dies; City Councilman" New York Times 31 Oct. 1938: p. 1.
2. "Half Million See Vladeck Funeral" New York Times 3 Nov. 1938: p. 28.