of America; founder of the CIO (steel, rubber, and auto workers union); and on the executive board of the CIO-PAC, as well as being Polonia's leading labor leader. When it was founded in 1937, 40 percent of the CIO were Slavic Americans, and the union represents one of the major Polish American contributions to American history. Krzycki joined the Socialist Party (SP) in 1919, was a Member of the Executive Board, and was elected National Chairman in 1934. In 1936, he left the SP to support Roosevelt.
In 1875, Felix Lemke became the first Polish American labor official in Detroit, and the first labor man elected to public office in America (Polish, 2004). In the 1880s, Anton Paryski established forty lodges of the old Knights of Labor in communities with large Polish populations, and in 1889 began publishing the first "workingman's newspaper," the Ameryka. The socialist organization Rownosc (Equality) was founded in New York in 1866. The American Socialist Labor Party was established in 1874, and a Polish section was established later. This was known as the Zwiazek Oddzialow Polskich (ZOP) Socyalistycznej Partyi Robotniczej w Stanach Zjednoczonych Amerika Poln, Komitet Wykonanwczy - the Alliance of Polish Branches, Socialist Labor Party of the United States of America. The most infamous member of ZOP was Detroit born Polish American Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President William McKinley. The most famous Polish American was Dr. Anna Reinstein (1866-1948), who set up her medical practice in Buffalo while waiting for her husband to be freed from prison.
With the disintegration of the ZOP, an independent Polish Socialist Alliance, independent of any American party, was established in Buffalo in 1900 (Polish, 2004). The Union of Polish Detachments formed an independent group called the Polish Socialist Alliance known as ZSP. The Socialist Party split from the SLP in 1901, emphasizing its American roots. The ZSP ...