Philip S. Foner

Philip Sheldon Foner (December 14, 1910 – December 13, 1994) was an American labor historian and teacher. Foner was a prolific author and editor of more than 100 books. He is considered a pioneer in his extensive works on the role of radicals, Black Americans, and women in American labor and political history, which were generally neglected in mainstream academia at the time. A Marxist thinker, he influenced more than a generation of scholars, inspiring some of the work published by younger academics from the 1970s on. In 1941, Foner became a public figure as one among 26 persons fired from teaching and staff positions at City College of New York for political views, following an investigation of communist influence in education by a state legislative committee, known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee.

Foner is best remembered for his 10-volume History of the Labor Movement in the United States, published between 1947 and 1994. He also edited the five-volume collection The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, and wrote a biography of the abolitionist leader. His works Organized Labor and the Black Worker, (1974 and 1982 editions) and the two-volume Women in the American Labor Movement (1979 and 1980) also broke new ground in history. For his American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century (1975), Foner received the Deems Taylor Award, presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

His scholarship, publications and political affiliations were considered to be on the far left. In 1979, the New York State Board of Higher Education formally apologized to Foner and other persons who lost their jobs as a result of the Rapp-Coudert Committee, saying it had seriously violated academic freedom. The New York Labor History Association had awarded Foner a lifetime achievement award in 1994. It reiterated its support in 2003 that the value of his work exceeded his shortcomings.

Foner was born in 1910 into an Eastern European immigrant family on the Lower East Side of New York City. His parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Foner grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and graduated from Eastern District High School.

Philip Foner had three brothers, who also became important figures in the American Left, coming to adulthood during the Great Depression. His twin brother Jack D. Foner (1910–1999) became a professional historian, and was the father of historian Eric Foner. Two other brothers were leading unionists: Moe Foner was active in 1199 of the United Healthcare Workers and was particularly notable for running the union's cultural programs. Henry Foner led the Furriers' Union.

Foner obtained his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1932, where he and his brother Jack were both students of historian Allan Nevins. He earned his master's degree from Columbia University in 1933. He was then accepted into Columbia's Doctoral program in 1934 with a scholarship. In 1941, he received his Ph.D.

Foner became an instructor of history at City College of New York in 1933, the same year in which he obtained his master's degree. He taught there through 1941, when his first book was published, Business and Slavery: The New York Merchants and the Irrepressible Conflict.

Foner was one of 26 faculty and staff members of City College who were fired from their jobs by the end of 1942 as a result of an investigation of communist influences in higher education by the New York State Legislature's Rapp-Coudert Committee. Established in spring 1940, it was officially known as the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York. Foner and 40 other faculty members at CCNY were subsequently brought under investigation for supposed associations and membership with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) on March 7, 1941. Foner testified at the investigative hearings a month later in April, during which he denied being a member of the CPUSA.