The Communist Party Convention

Someone, clearly not a press photographer, snapped my picture as I entered the Chateau Gardens on Houston Street and Second Avenue in New York’s lower East Side. If I shuddered that Saturday morning, it was not entirely due to the inclement weather. I was scared— and felt rather shabby about being scared. For I had walked into a tawdry caterer’s establishment to observe the sixteenth national convention of the American Communist Party. The party’s request for space had been turned down by more than sixty proprietors of other New York meeting places, thereby demonstrating that in this city principle counts for more than a fast buck. The Chateau Gardens appeared to be an incongruous place for Communists to gather till o...