Rubinstein, Annette T

RUBINSTEIN, ANNETTE T (1910-2007). Influential in circles of the literary left from the 1930s almost until the time of her death, Rubinstein was also a stalwart of efforts to bring together generations of radicals in common cause.

Born in 1910 in Manhattan to ardently socialist parents, Annette Teta Rubinstein graduated from Columbia University with a doctorate in Philosophy in 1934. Unable to secure a regular academic appointment, at the time rare for women and more so for Jewish women, she became principal of Robert Lewis Stevenson High School, purchased at a foreclosure by her father, with the remnant of family savings. She ran the school for decades while her mother taught Math and three of her siblings served in administrative capacities. The family lived above the school in Upper West Side, her neighborhood for life.

Following her parents, who had helped bring about the famed Madison Square Garden rally for the Paterson, New Jersey, workers in 1913, she was drawn to the Left. Rubinstein began writing for Science & Society in its first years and served for decades on its editorial board. Meanwhile, she and her mother joined the Communist Party and worked with unemployed movements, as she began to teach in Communist-linked educational institutions in New York. She also drew close to Vito Marcantonio, becoming one of his key mobilizers in the Jewish, middle class Upper West Side. She ran unsuccessfully for office several times on the American Labor Party (ALP) ticket. In 1958, she ran for Lieutenant Governor of New York for the Independent Socialist Party, which had vainly hoped to replace the now defunct ALP.

Highly successful in the years shortly after the World War II, the Stevenson School was then attacked as Communist-infiltrated and allowed to continue only if Annette, her mother and other teachers identified as Communists would resign. Meanwhile, stung by Communist refusal to support the continuation of the ALP, she and her mother left the Party, and threw themselves into the campaign to save the Rosenbergs.

Blacklisted and pursued by Congressional committees, Annette Rubinstein scripted stories for Classics Illustrated comics, among other jobs. She also completed her massive study, The Great Tradition in English Literature: from Shakespeare to Shaw (1953). A companion volume, American Literature, Root and Flower, 1775-1955, was published in China in 1988.

She wrote steadily, during the following decades, for Science & Society, Jewish Currents and Monthly Review. She worked closely with editor Charles Humboldt of Mainstream, the prestige left literary journal succeeding the New Masses, until its closure in 1962. Responding to the campus left revivals at the end of the 1950s, Rubinstein embarked on extensive cross country lecture tours, notable for drawing generations of the Left together. She also lectured widely abroad, especially within the East Bloc. Back in New York, from 1963 to 1973 she guided the Charter Group for a Pledge of Conscience, which brought together a relatively small group of leftists to combat racism, especially active in court cases defending black victims.

From the 1950s until almost her last days, Rubinstein conducted at her home what could be described as the most enduring Left salon in New York City. In the same spirit, she played important roles in the New York Marxist School and Brecht Forum from their inception.

Meyer, Gerald. “Annette Rubinstein.” Science and Society (April, 2008), pp. 137-42.

Annette T. Rubinstein Papers. Guide. Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. New York University. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_167/bioghist.html