CITY COLLEGE CAULDRON
Wilfred entered C.C.N.Y. in the fall of 1931. Japan entered Manchuria in the fall of 1931. Both events were to merge, for Mendy was of the generation that was no more of the post-war world but rather of the pre-war world. All the lightning that shattered the decorum of Convent Avenue in the years that followed were repercussions of the increasing tramp of aggressors' feet over one continent and one sea, then two and eventually all the lands and all the seas. The fight to prevent this war, the fight to salvage a future out of the chaos of the early twenties, the vision of a better world ; these were the courses Wilfred took and taught on St. Nicholas Hill.
In December 1931 there appeared Vol. I, No. 1 of the Student Review published by the New York Student League. Its lead editorial was on "Unemployment Relief and the Students"; within it there were greetings on its birth, and a report of a discussion on "War and The Manchurian Front."
Joseph Starobin, now a New Masses editor, then one of the leaders in the college battles remembers Mendy as:
"... an utterly serious fellow, who had a way of saying yes or no with a nod of the head, who was never hesitant to take on those little assignments, the distribution of a leaflet, the posting of a placard, the visiting of some individual, that all go to make up the work of a movement. In C.C.N.Y. back in 1932 and 1933, in the days of the first big upheaval in student life, he was among the lower classmen. But that fact didn't stand in the way, as it did in the case of many of his classmates. He plunged right into the heart of things. Right from the start he took a prominent part in the movement on the campus, and this gave him a range of experience which proved valuable later on. Another thing about Mendy was that he didn't confine his activities to the college alone. There weren't many who were both active on their own campus and active in the work of the student movement, in New York and nationally. But Mendy was one of these. In the same modest, almost shy fashion, and with the same utterly painstaking way he had, he applied himself to the work of the student movement as a whole. He was a Jimmy Higgins but his grasp was deep and his horizon was large."
Nineteen thirty-one through 1935 were years of great tumult at City College. At the helm sat Frederick B. Robinson, a reactionary and incompetent college president who finally left after public pressure grew so great that the body which oft moves last, the Alumni Association, went on record against him. The students nicknamed him Robbie.
Expulsion, suspension, probation—these were the citations given to students who were active in the National Student League born from the New York Student League in April 1932. What were the issues? The National Student League, the Student League for Industrial Democracy and other undergraduate bodies were on record against fees for courses, for a free college in every city, for academic freedom for students and teachers, against the coming of war and fascism. For these causes, rallies at the flagpole were held. Old established student societies debated resolutions and new clubs like The Student Forum, The Social Problems Club and The Society for Student Liberties were formed. Publications arose to express the growing ferment. There was the official paper, "The Campus," and when it failed to reflect the needs of the students a rival was born, "The Student." Small journals were circulated with names like "Frontiers," defunct literary magazines like "The Clionian" were revived, and numberless unnamed mimeograph appeals and leaflets passed from hand to hand in the alcoves and halls. Editors were expelled and suspended but the message of opposition to the dropping of Instructor Oakley Johnson of the English Department, to participation in the Olympics planned for Nazi Germany, to the spread of fascist propaganda went on in an upward spiralling intensity.
In the midst of this seething cauldron was Mendy. We who remember see him with the morning papers (always the New York Times and the Daily Worker) under his arm plus a book, his eyes looking straight at you, his hair with a wavy marcelled look. His gestures were aggressive, a pinch of the cheek, a slap on the back, or often a flying leap over a fire hydrant. Energy personified, yet sober and serious in moments of stress.
October 30, 1932, Mendy was a witness in the "mock trial" at the Central Opera House which brought in a verdict against President Robinson and Evening Session Director Linehan calling for their removal from their offices for arbitrary suspension of student clubs and publications which objected to the dismissal of Oakley Johnson. This effective demonstration brought quick retaliation. The Board of Higher Education held lengthy hearings and on January 17, 1933, Wilfred Mendelson and eighteen others were suspended for four weeks commencing with the spring semester.
That February a strike was called and picket lines marched on the campus with signs shouting: "Reinstate the 19."
One campus songwriter wrote a parody on a famed Virginia reel:
"We're all fed up with Robinson's rule, we're sick of high-priced knowledge, to get the 19 back in the school, STRIKE City College."
Then it continued in protest against the presence of police, whose constant patrolling was a reminder of Robinson's tyranny:
"The school is not an officers beat, we demand a place to meet."
Mendy began to miss a lot of normal class work. This did not help his academic record. His activity in the National Student League did not diminish his work in the college Young Communist League. In a larger sense he was a real student at City College—one who constantly applied his knowledge to action, and learned from his action. This characteristic remains in the memory of many. Edwin Alexander, a fellow student leader, writes from Seattle:
"For if I can recall Mendy two characteristics stick—persistence and study. Many of us were quite young in years and in the progressive movement. There were better public speakers in City College than Mendy, and more colorful popular leaders, but Mendy's steadiness and persistence accounts for a big portion of whatever fruits our work at City College finally bore. And then—studying. We were all pretty busy, and liked to feel perhaps we were too busy at the moment to study Marxism-Leninism. But Mendy was a gadfly to all of us. At the oddest moments he would prompt us into a discussion of some passage that he was working over. I don't think that I will ever forget how Mendy walked around pretty nearly always with a book under his arm, and how he chewed over books, pamphlets, resolutions, always making us dig out a bit more profundity than we had seen in them before. Of course Mendy's was not the bookishness of a scholar even then— he certainly was in the very thick of things in school."
The constant battle to awaken others to participate in the anti-fascist struggle did not end when Mendy sat in his class seat. A fellow student recalls a class in the fall of 1933:
"I first met Wilfred in Dr. J.'s Modern History course, then a brilliant one to us. Mendy was outstanding in presenting a correct analysis of Japanese aggression, arguing it against the instructor's vacillations. Despite the professor's great cleverness, Wilfred was able to win the majority of the class to his side. Alphabetically I sat next to Wilfred and he used to tell me and others the NSL Student Review.
"Wilfred never allowed J. to get away with the theory that Trotsky would be welcomed back as a general in case of the invasion of the Soviet Union.
"He was an able student up to that term. From then on he neglected classwork for writing long leaflets. J., who liked him, pleaded with him in the spring of 1934, on the ground that he would be more effective if he did his academic work. Wilfred winced, but paid no heed in practice."
About another class a fellow student writes:
"Mendy and I were in the same philosophy class, and I saw how difficult it was to maintain his ideas and present them in the classroom of an extremely hostile, redhaiting teacher. This man used Mendy as a target. He directed some of his most taunting, sneering questions and remarks at Mendy. Mendy was tired in class—there was no denying that, Occasionally he slipped behind in a reading assignment (who didn't?), but his justification, his indefatigable industry, was greater than anyone else's. He didn't seem to get enough sleep. Sure there was so much work to be done, and he was always ready to do it. Perhaps he could not be the most alert student in class, yet he did his best to talk against the anti-democratic views of the teacher as long as the somewhat undemocratic operation of the class permitted. He broke down once during the term and I went to see him at his home. He was sick all right, and he was in bed, but he wasn't resting. He was busy reading a book on Soviet literature. What a guy!"
We have a very defined recollection of Mendy in another classmate's note:
"My impressions of Mendy, though few, are ineradicable. I first saw him in 1931, as he entered the room of the meeting of our Social Problems Club in City College. Tall, wiry-thin, dark, oval, bony face and flowing black hair, he gave one the impression of a Moor. However, the really striking things about him were his quiet reserve, and selfless, utterly impersonal manner of his carrying on the work of the club, the inspiration that rested on his face, the warmth that came deep from his eyes."
Letter after letter tell us the same thing, that Mendy was an explosive personality—one whom you met and he became part of you. Some who knew him only slightly still carry fragments deep within them. He had a lucid and striking way about him, he knew the pungent phrase and the telling explanation. His ability to coin pointed humorous phrases is recalled by many. You will find them in the Spain letters. When Premier Caballero proved himself a barrier and insufficient to Spain's battle, Mendy trotted into YCL headquarters, the papers with the news under his arm, and in a sarcastic verve said, "They called him Lenin of Spain!—Why they wouldn't even make him a literature agent now !"
Says another City College man:
"Strange, but he is a person about whom one has vivid reminiscences. I would say that he was the most striking personality I met among the student body. He impressed me tremendously and I have always looked upon his influence on my development with great pride. For I received a good part of my political education from Mendy. He first had me join the National Student League. He was a clear-thinking, extremely energetic leader and speaker. One incident that remains very clearly in my mind is the picture of Mendy addressing the entire League membership in the basement of a church on St. Nicholas Ave. I still see him, hand raised, finger pointing, body moving forward in his intense way, making point after point with such conviction, sincerity and persuasion that it was a totally new experience for me. Here was a logic which was not devoted to the easy cynicism of the college student, here was a conviction that became a burning intense flame, and together with everyone else, I was moved to think, as well as to be stirred emotionally. Someone was explaining everything that we should have known. We had all shared the experiences of the early years of the depression, but most of us were still thinking in pre-1929 terms. We had to see what had happened ; we had lived through the sickening, discouraging mess ourselves. At that very moment, many of us had bitter struggles to remain in college. Here was someone who understood much more than we did. He was giving us not only his understanding, but actually stirring us to do something about things. I would say that in this respect he was the greatest single personal influence in my political thinking."
Mendy was at his height in the C.C.N.Y. student movement in the fall of 1934. The campus was still seething over the expulsion of 21 students from May 29, 1933 demonstration vs. "Jingo Day" (the day when President Robinson became immortal by swinging at students with an umbrella) ; and the February '34 days in Austria and France, the stirring stand of Dimitroff in the Reichstag Fire Trial, sent a new spirit into the students. (C.C.N.Y. still recalled Felix Cohen's fight of the 1920's, Max Weiss' ouster, and Oakley Johnson's case.) The N.S.L. was growing.
In March of 1934 there was a student anti-war conference at C.C.N.Y. Mendy worked hard, with other NSL'ers, to get ideological clarity before it met, and was prominent in its organization.
He wrote a signed article on it in the April 1934 Student Review, ironically titled " ... NSL Seizes Control ... " The article criticized the faculty of narrowing the conference by not allowing full student participation. April '34 City had an anti-war strike, with some faculty disciplinary action ; campus continued stormy.
In October '34 President Robinson invited a delegation of Italian fascist students, on propaganda tour, to C.C.N.Y. They had been received with protests on every campus. To C.C.N.Y. this was the worst affront—they were to be received in the sacrosanct Great Hall at an assembly.
We quote one who remembers well:
"On the day before the assembly I spoke to Mendy and Eddie Alexander, who were under pressure to let the delegation go unnoticed or to boycott the assembly. Both spoke with determination—the fascist propaganda was to be countered by anti-fascist demonstration right in the Great Hall, come hell or high water, i.e., expulsions to come notwithstanding.
"Next day is history. Alexander, speaking from the platform for the Student Council, began to say 'I bring anti-fascist greetings to the tricked and enslaved students of Italy ... " when he was physically interrupted by Robinson and his professional henchmen, Robinson shouting to the protesting assembly of students 'I think your conduct is worse than that of guttersnipes.' 'Guttersnipes' and 'umbrella' (Freddie Robinson's, not Chamberlain's) were hot words then. The assembly broke up in an uproar. In the 'Oust Robinson' campaign that followed Mendy played a leading role. Twenty-one more students were arrested and expelled for picketing Robinson's official residence. The faculty put Wilfred Mendelson on probation.
"Mendy was chairman of the huge open air strike rally on November 20, 1934, when over 4,000 students joined in a demonstration from 11 to 2 P.M., climaxing weeks of picketing, mass meetings, leaflets, etc. That morning the students coming to school saw a huge banner 'STRIKE' flying from the central flagpole, which was greased by whoever hung the flag. Hence it was 10:30 before the strike flag could be got down, with the aid of the police emergency squad. So everyone knew there would be a strike—if only by the administration's effort to conceal it. At 7 minutes to XI when I came out, the cops (as ever, there) were all over the campus, breaking up every little group that congregated. We began our slogan 'Cops off the Campus' and about 20 to 30 of us at the main entrance, near the bust of Lincoln, began to shove the cops hack. More cops ran over and our nucleus, the only substantial one, was in danger of being broken up before it could get started. At this juncture Mendy leaped up on a stone parapet and locked his arms around the lamp-post projecting from it, calling us to rally round. We rushed over, driving the cops back. They tried to tear him down, but every minute dozens more came over and soon hundreds of students were milling around and the cops were hopelessly outnumbered. Then Mendy moved and all of us with him to the central flagpole where he acted as chairman."
" ... Mendy leaped up on a stone parapet and locked his arms around the lamp-post, calling us to rally round."
The actions around the arrival of the Fascist delegation were city wide. Mendy and Herb Witt, later the head of the American Student Union, put out a one-page issue of Student News, Monday, November 19, 1934, price one cent—with a screamer STRIKE TOMORROW. On the bottom was a pledge box for C.C.N.Y. men saying:
I PLEDGE TO
STRIKE TUESDAY, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
for
- Reinstatement of disciplined students.
- Ousting of Robbie.
- Reinstatement of dissolved Student Council.
Signed.............
Across the top of the paper all New York students were called to the "City-wide Parade on C.C.N.Y. Campus Tonight." The last and second page had a large section of Dean Gottschall's generally understanding report to the Faculty. Mendy's editorial made common ground with the report by stating that:
"The all-important point in Dean Gottschall's report is his ready admission that disciplining action will never quench the anti-fees, anti-war and anti-Fascist fights in the schools ...
"The majority of the Faculty, following the President's lead, has ignored the Dean's warning and lashed out 'valiantly to purge' the school's roster of the best and most courageous fighters of the student body.
"But at least let us not entertain the illusions that we are solving our problems thereby or preventing a recurrence of future difficulties. The gently chiding Dean is here quite correct ...
"The Faculty action must serve as a boomerang in the creation of ever larger chapters of the National Student League, the only student organization which has consistently fought in the fore ranks on the well marked battle lines of City College and every other school for the immediate and larger social needs of the students."
Join the NSL!
A best seller on every campus in the city was the famed I AM A GUTTERSNIPE button!
Mendy worked on the Student News for many months, later becoming editor-in-chief under the pen name of William Mendy. This paper first born as College News, then renamed Student News, was spread throughout the high schools and colleges of New York ; normally a weekly it sometimes came out in one sheet issues as often as two or three times a week. Mendy loved the work at the printers, soon learning how to run the proof press and seeing his work in print before press time. In exuberance he would wait for the paper to come off the press and literally dance with glee, circling around the print shop with the paper in his hand, push it into your face, re-read aloud some gem and laugh at it. Then Ile would subside, look at the paper seriously, check off the new things he would have in the next issue and admit that on the whole it wasn't a bad job. By-standers who worked on the paper would usually have their buttocks slapped, cheeks pinched or hair mussed.
Mendy was a member of the New York District Committee of the National Student League. There were hours at meetings, plans to organize chapters in new high schools and colleges, hours at the mimeograph machine, a campaign to aid the Cuban students, efforts to raise money to get Walter Relis back from Cuba where he was a delegate of the student movement, and of course financial worries. ("I got the NSL Financial Blues"—ran a famed song.) Later the NSL moved by horse and wagon to 257 Seventh Avenue. There Mendy worked with the pleasant odor of the oil stoves or froze with the rest of us in the two-story loft.
In the spring of 1935 Mendy attended Evening Session at City College. Most of his days were spent doing the citywide work of the NSL. There were the April strikes, mass picketing in support of the Ohrbach Strike, the fight against school retrenchment moves in Albany, suspensions at Hunter College. In the March 18, 1935 issue of Student News, Editor-in-chief William Mendy opened a series of discussions on the slogans of the April 12th strikes, with an article on the first slogan "Fight Imperialist War."
In the autumn of 1935 Wilfred Mendelson attended what was his last full term at the college. He became president of the Society for Student Liberties. In that capacity his name was on the City College Mobilization for Peace appeal which called for a gigantic turnout on November 8th in the Great Hall. When Mussolini attacked Ethiopia i,000 students turned out to a protest rally in the Lewisohn Stadium. Wilfred, in the name of the Society for Student Liberties, introduced the resolution condemning the invasion. Later he argued for such action in a letter to The Campus. Answering students who could not see why one should take sides in favor of Ethiopia, the letter states in part:
" ... collective action which will prevent the aggressor country, Italy, from succeeding in her 'little colonial expedition' will serve as a very potent example in warning other adventurist powers from embarking on similar 'expeditions'. The United States can best serve the cause of peace by cooperating in such collective action. It is not enough to maintain a passive attitude in the present war crisis, declaiming from on high, 'Shame on both your houses,' condemning both nations equally. This is virtual condonement and aid to Italian Fascism, since it will contravene the peace desires of the peoples who have forced the League to take this step. Allowing the transgressor to go his way unfettered gives encouragement to Nazi-Germany and semi-Fascist Japan, who are eager to launch their own wars ...
"If we students want peace, we must struggle for it, and must take an active stand opposed to Fascist war aims, urging our government to reflect our position ... "
Read it again and remember it was published on October 15, 1935.
November, 1935, finds him on the Associate Board of the Clionian, a short-lived magazine which was incorporated into The Lavender. In this issue the lead article is his—Ethiopia and World Politics. We reprint it below for its vision and accuracy.
December—all student eyes are on the coming amalgamation of the National Student League and the Student League for Industrial Democracy with groupings of liberals to form the American Student Union. Wilfred attended the sessions at Columbus, Ohio as an NSL delegate from C.C.N.Y. Back at City College he helped arrange the huge rally in the Great Hall which launched the ASU.
The years of activity took their toll—in February of 1936 Wilfred Mendelson was dropped from the college rolls. (A year later he came back to take French without credit in a vain attempt to re-enter.) Thus ended a college career which was riddled with the fire of constant attack and counterattack.
His attention and work was next centered in the National Student Committee of the Young Communist League. Here he helped prepare mimeographed discussion guides for young Communist students all over the nation. One very excellent one was called "The Road to Peace." In 1936, April 21 and 22, he and Celeste Strack had two articles in the Daily Worker discussing problems of the ASU. He had the post of Administrative Secretary of the Committee during 1937. That summer he helped organize the first National Student Training School. An organizational bulletin of the Committee which was called The Student Communist was edited by Mendy.
One gets a very real picture of this period from a letter Mendy wrote:
I've just completed a fairly good outline on May Day using my library research, that is, I wrote it Sunday and now it is being mimeographed and readied for mailing to all the branches of the YCL throughout the country. The research I did is being used by Louis F. Budenz in his pamphlet to be put out in some scores of thousands of copies by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The student outline is also done and pretty good, too. It is to be sent to all the school branches of the YCL to prepare them for the April 22 strike ... "
"Yesterday I had one lousy cold, but in spite of that I delivered a lecture to the Bronx High School Training School of the YCL. The chairman in raising a vote of thanks for me pulled a catsy boner. He thanked Comrade Beethoven for his swell talk. Mendelssohn, Beethoven, all one. Anyway much as I enjoyed playing Chapayev and acting out several parts like Germany, the U. S., France, etc., in the course of my discourse on the menace of neutrality, my cold did not improve ...
"By the way, Larry and I went to a meeting at Brooklyn Evening last night, where he spoke and I ate the Trotskyites alive in the rebuttal—don't tell me I didn't enjoy it ... "
There is more but that gives you the picture of Mendy). in the immediate months after City College. Work for a living? He had a porter's job during the period; tried other things, went to movies ; but in the main applied his days at the typewriter, mimeograph machine and in giving leadership to student groups and classes.
There was much about Mendy many of us understood because it was true of us too. There were the long periods of unemployment—the periods when a fellow, or a girl, would go out looking for work with neither place to go, skill to offer, or job to be found. We'd get up, without much reason, in the morning, look through the meager "Help Wanted" columns, ask another unemployed friend if he knew anyone who could recommend you to a job. There were no jobs —not really jobs. We kicked around from punk, monotonous, poor paying job to poor paying job. Did we object to work? We think not. When there were a few quarters to make Mendy was willing to wipe floors and clean toilets.
Our generation has a debt to pay. We who began to pull ourselves out of the chaos and muck will owe it forever to the party of our class—the Communist Party and the league of youth—the Young Communist League. For it was they who helped us, showed us why, rekindled the sparks where darkness was beginning to grip. They kept our morale high—our step alert. There were depths of discouragements, long periods when we sat in the movies (what movies? did it matter as long as we could forget pressures for the while?). There were slips and they harmed our activity. But we kept on learning, slowly to be sure—but steadily. It took a long time but gradually the grandeur of Marxism burst upon us—the knowledge that is science—the explanation that only dialectical materialism could piece together. Then did the world lose its craziness, then did Spain, your unemployment, the new American Labor Party, a difficult leaflet to write, all take meaning. This was our process of learning, hard, real, flowing from our lives.
We were young, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen—at the age that today must begin to take leadership in our Young Communist League. We worked hard with no rest, no relief. We spoke, we wrote, we painted placards, planned meetings, scrubbed floors at the NSL headquarters, then we froze a little in unheated lofts.
Problems did not end there. A generation without money in its jeans has trouble getting a girl friend. A generation that couldn't find work found little solace at home and often less understanding.
There were the eddies that Mendy had to come through. Times there were when they caught him. He was not always a sure one—full of confidence in himself. He had doubts and hesitations—life gave them to all. Yet he tried hard—he always aimed to steel himself, to harden himself. Once picketing the Nazi consulate a policeman said only the four with placards would be allowed, any of the others remaining would be arrested. Mendy had a placard. He gave it to another comrade. He wanted to be arrested, to be tested. He was.
Mendy was very shy with women. In a letter from Spain (one of a personal nature that we omit from the others) he says, "I guessed I've lived a good many days in a dream world of unreality, attributable to a persistent bookishness and a one time equally persistent shyness." He tried to overcome this by decisive and bold action. He took the decisive steps. In a letter to a girl written a year before he left he says:
"Once upon a time I was the very incarnation of effervesence, but several defeats in the past two years have seemed to affect my physical and psychical responses with a sad spirit of lethargy ... this business of the future can't seem to be evaded any longer, keeps starting and finally kicking me in the face at every turn, makes all work now seem futile unless tied up in an understandable way with the next steps ahead.
"I've been sitting home the past two days completely buried in books and papers, reading, reading—evading things that must be done. I have this typewriting machine now and mean to use it as a battering ram against my 'problems.' I was thinking of writing a short story analysis of some of the discussions we've had, but laughed myself out of it on recalling my attitude of a couple of years ago on guys, who besieged themselves with these `dilemmas'; the solution I would have been quick to point out was a vigorous immersion in the class struggle. While every bit of that still holds true, I seem to have overlooked the key question of where precisely to grasp the cudgels for the working class. What formerly was a minor problem suddenly looms now as decisively major.
"I am quite sure you will make little sense out of the foregoing, first because of the lack of unity, and then because there seems to be no answers. But pass on: it's done me good to set it out, and then I do see some rays of light ahead ... "
There were such periods of internal struggle within him, groping, seeking, trying, testing—the process of the forging of a will, the process of becoming not only a man but a Communist. No one goes through it easily, no one achieves it without constant and growing problems that the process of becoming itself finally solves.