Archives West Finding Aid

Leo Huberman was born in Newark, N.J., on October 17th, 1903, and educated at Newark State Normal School, which trained public school teachers. While being a teacher in New Jersey, teaching grades five through eight, he studied education at New York University. In 1926, he started teaching social studies at the City and Country School, a leading experimental school. He further advanced in his career and started teaching labor and economic history in several colleges and universities, was chairman of the Department of Social Sciences, New College, Columbia University, 1938-1939, labor editor of PM, 1940-1941, director of education and public relations of the National Maritime Union, 1942-1945, and a founder and co-editor of Monthly Review, beginning in 1949. He wrote many books, articles and pamphlets on labor and labor history from a Marxian socialist point of view, most prominently We, the People and Man's Worldly Goods. Huberman, in comparison to his colleagues and friends such as Harry Magdoff, Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran, Sybil Huntington May, and Harry Braverman, is often overlooked. He was married to Gertrude Huberman née Heller. Also, he was very close to Gertrudes older brother, Nathan B. Heller, who introduced him to Marxist literature and thinking. The Heller and Huberman families came from Czarist Russia around 1900 and settled in Newark, NJ., where Leo was born as the tenth child, the second youngest. His father, Joseph Huberman, became a contractor and had a prospering business during Leo's childhood. Of his parents eleven children, five survived to adulthood, including the youngest brother, Edward, called Ed. The two brothers remained very close throughout their lives, which is likely why Ed possessed all the respective collection materials after Leo's death in 1968.