Bea Glickman
1918-1998
Bea Glickman stayed an active member of Workers
World Party and an inspiration to her comrades for almost 30
years, until her heart suddenly gave out July 5 following a
bypass operation.
When Glickman first came to Workers World Party meetings in
the late 1960s, it was a happy surprise. WWP was noted for its
street militancy, and most of the recruits from the 1968
political explosion were very young.
So it was unusual to meet people a generation older who were
ready to follow their children into the maelstrom of political
activity that marked that upsurge.
Her membership was no accident. It followed decades of
class-conscious political activity.
Born as 1918 ended, Glickman came of age in the midst of the
Great Depression. In 1939 she graduated from Brooklyn College,
where she had become active with the Young Communists.
Her children grew up hearing Paul Robeson records playing at
their home in Queens, N.Y., during the 1940s and 1950s. At a
memorial this July 8, Glickman's friends told of her attendance
at Robeson's beseiged concerts in Peekskill, N.Y., and her
activity to defend Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the worst days
of U.S. anti-communism.
In 1963 Glickman began teaching in the public schools in the
mostly African American community of South Jamaica in Queens. A
devoted unionist, she nevertheless opposed the 1968 local
teachers' strike because the reactionary union leader Al
Shanker took the action in opposition to community control.
She opposed the Shanker leadership for the 20 years she
remained in the public school system, as she fought for her
students.
And she actively fought war, racism and injustice. When she
retired from teaching in 1983, she left a house in Queens for
an apartment in Manhattan where she could more easily take
responsibility for some of the Workers World Party
bookkeeping.
Glickman was true to the image of a New Yorker. She was
always on the move. As one of her children said, "She took care
of us, but she didn't like to fuss."
She loved traveling. One year a U.S. airline ran a special
for retired people that she and her life partner comrade Harry
Glickman exploited to the fullest. They visited children on
both coasts and other relatives and friends in-between.
Harry Glickman was for many years a concert violinist with
conductor Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic.
They had life-long friends in the working-class movement in
England and France whom they visited. Bea Glickman brought her
party's politics to these friends, as well as her
contemporaries in the states.
One acquaintance, a French communist journalist of the 1968
generation, would often ask his contact on the Workers World
editorial staff, "How is Bea? Is she all right?" He would look
a bit amazed to find out she was as active as ever.
Glickman's idea of adjusting to aging was to move closer to
the hub of politics and culture, so she wouldn't have so far to
travel. Recently widowed, she was in the process of moving to a
smaller apartment further downtown in Manhattan when she had
the bypass operation.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes didn't have
class-conscious workers like Bea Glickman in mind when he wrote
that a person should "take part in the actions and passions of
their times, or run the risk of being judged not to have
lived."
Bea Glickman combined revolutionary politics with the
actions and passions of her times. She lived.
-John Catalinotto
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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