Background
He was born on July 1, 1906 in New York City, New York, United States, the son of Harry Pressman, a millinery manufacturer, and Clara Rich, both Russian immigrants.
He was born on July 1, 1906 in New York City, New York, United States, the son of Harry Pressman, a millinery manufacturer, and Clara Rich, both Russian immigrants.
After graduating at sixteen from Stuyvesant High School, he enrolled at New York University and then Cornell. Aided by scholarships, he earned election to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated from Cornell in 1926. He then attended Harvard Law School and served on the law review.
After graduation in 1929, he joined the New York law firm of Chadbourne, Stanchfield, and Levy; he specialized in cases involving corporate reorganization and pursued an interest in labor law by participating in the International Juridical Association.
Soon after Franklin Roosevelt became president in 1933, Pressman was recruited by Jerome Frank, a member of his law firm, to serve as an assistant general counsel for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Clashing with the leaders of the AAA, he was fired in the "purge" of February 1935 and then became general counsel for relief programs and the Resettlement Administration.
In 1936, John L. Lewis hired Pressman as general counsel for the Steelworkers Organizing Committee and later for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Pressman became one of Lewis' most important lieutenants and greatest admirers during a period of rapid growth in the American labor movement. Pressman met frequently with American Communists in the CIO and tried to promote cooperation between them and non-Communists. He did not tell Lewis that he had belonged to the party, and Lewis did not ask, even though some people accused Pressman of being a Communist. Pressman saw Lewis, who had confidence that he could use Communists for his own purposes, as the dominant person in the labor organization. From 1939 to 1941 the Communist presence was a hot issue in the CIO. At the organization's 1940 convention, Pressman, as secretary of its resolutions committee, dutifully moved adoption of a resolution denouncing both Communism and fascism.
At the same time, his most important ally, Lewis, stepped down as president and was succeeded by Philip Murray, a devout Catholic with a negative attitude toward Communists. Murray, eager to avoid a split in the organization and convinced that Pressman was an able and reliable man, retained him as general counsel and relied heavily on him.
After World War II and with the onset of the cold war, Pressman's involvement with Communism again became an issue. Murray continued to admire him and to fear a weakening of the CIO, but the pressures on him to fire Pressman grew. Pressman, meanwhile, focused on the battle against the antiunion sentiment that culminated in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and on drafting resolutions designed to hold rival CIO factions together.
He also became interested in the third-party movement that centered around Henry A. Wallace, an outspoken critic of the Truman administration, especially its anti-Soviet foreign policy. Following Truman's veto of Taft-Hartley and the introduction of the Marshall Plan, the CIO executive board denounced Wallace's candidacy, and Murray felt compelled to force Pressman to resign in February 1948.
Convinced that Wallace would attract millions of votes, Pressman became a leader of the Progressive party and ran for Congress from Brooklyn's Fourteenth District. Some of Wallace's foes used Pressman's participation as evidence of Communist control of the party. In November the Progressive party - and Pressman - suffered a crushing defeat.
He publicly broke with Communism, discussed his past with HUAC on August 28 and with the FBI. Perhaps he hoped confession would revive his career, but he never reestablished himself in the labor movement or regained stature as a public figure.
He died in Mount Vernon, New York.
Lee Pressman was well-known as the influencial representative the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U. S. Steel. Pressman made some contributions to the New Deal and especially to the labor movement, but his opportunities to do more had been destroyed by his involvement with Communists and Communism in the 1930's and 1940's and the rise of a "red scare" in the United States after World War II. He was publicly exposed in 1948 as a spy for Soviet intelligence. Pressman left one posthumously published memoir: The Reminiscences of Lee Pressman.
While serving the New Deal, Pressman joined the Communist party. Drawn in by Harold Ware, he was influenced apparently by concern about Hitler, the Great Depression, and what he perceived to be the defects of capitalism and the inadequacy of the New Deal. Although he left the party when he returned to private law practice in the winter of 1935-1936, he did not reject its ideology.
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Pressman became an active supporter of American participation in the war and strengthened his position. He pressed for labor policies designed to maximize the contributions of industrial workers to the war effort.
Later, Pressman publicly broke with Communism, citing its support of "aggressive war" by the North Koreans and his desire to support the United Nations and his country.
He impressed associates with his intellectual ability, his coolness and smoothness, his hard work, eloquence, and persuasiveness, and his athletic and well-dressed appearance. He also often seemed ambitious, hard, arrogant, eager for (and impressed by) power, cynical, and concerned more with means than ends. He saw himself as a creative, aggressive lawyer capable of representing labor effectively and in essential ways and as a man of strong convictions.
Quotes from others about the person
According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big. "
"Showing men in power how to get things done legally" was Pressman's special skill, asserts historian Gilbert J. Gall in a biography of Pressman.
On June 28, 1931, he married Sophia Platnik; they had three children.
