Frank Tannenbaum - Biography

Biography

He was born in Austria in 1893. Tannenbaum migrated to the United States in 1905. His involvement in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led to a year of imprisonment in 1914 on Blackwell's Island in New York City for partaking in a demonstration by "200 unemployed and hungry men on the Lower West Side of Manhattan." He was also a leader of the Bayonne refinery strikes of 1915–1916, in Bayonne, New Jersey, and arrested there in July 1915 for his role as "agitator".

Emma Goldman described his arrest and imprisonment in her memoirs, Living My Life (1931):

We all had loved Frank for his wide-awakeness and his unassuming ways. He had spent much of his free time in our office, reading and helping in the work connected with Mother Earth. His fine qualities held out the hope that Frank would some day play an important part in the labour struggle. None of us had expected however that our studious, quiet friend would so quickly respond to the call of the hour.

Upon release, Tannenbaum attended Columbia University, where classmates included Samuel Roth. In 1921, Tannenbaum received his bachelor's degree from Columbia. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Brookings Institution (undated). He then served in the U.S. Army, stationed in the south.

He then moved to Mexico, where he conducted research on rural education and served as an adviser to President Lázaro Cárdenas.

In 1931, he reported to the Wickersham Commission study on Penal Institutions, Probation and Parole (Volume 9).

In 1932, he returned to the United States to teach criminology at Cornell University.

In 1935 he joined the faculty at Columbia, where he became professor of Latin American history. A notable student at Columbia was Robert J. Alexander, who went on to become professor of history at Rutgers University, specializing in the trade union movement in Latin America and dissident communist political parties.

He retired from Columbia University in 1965. He died in New York City in 1969.