Background
Early in life introduced to left-wing ideas by her father, she joined the Young Communist League at the age of 15, and became a labor organizer for the National Textile Workers Union two-years later.
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Ann Burlak
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After gaining first experiences with labor-management conflicts trying to organize workers across lines of race and ethnicity in the South, she became a central figure in the strikes that shook the Rhode Island textile industry in the early 1930s. Ann Burlak fought for workers" right to collective bargaining, overtime pay, and wage increases. She was arrested multiple times for her activism and faced with at least one (unsuccessful) attempt to deport her.
When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, the legislative initiatives that were part of the New Deal caused many workers to turn away from radical grassroots activism and to support for Democratic candidates for office.
Burlak at that point turned her attention to the organization of the unemployed and she would twice run as a Communist for elected office in Rhode Island. She died July 9, 2002 in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts.
