Biography
Frank Tannenbaum was a 21-year-old Austrian-born IWW unemployed-workers' organizer in New York City during the brutal winter of 1913-14. In March 1914 he led a band of homeless men into St. Alphonsus Catholic Church on West Broadway demanding food and shelter, in the most famous of his 'army of the unemployed' church occupations. Convicted of unlawful assembly, he served one year on Blackwell's Island and went on to become a distinguished Columbia historian of Latin America and U.S. labor.
The dictionary records his arrival in the United States in 1905, an undergraduate degree at Columbia, study at the New School, and a doctorate at the Robert Brookings Graduate School for Politics and Economics. It describes his work as a penologist and economist, Columbia faculty member and correspondent in Mexico, including surveys of prisons and the Mexican economy. This biographical source does not establish additional custody dates or duration.
Jacob Rader Marcus, editor, and Judith M. Daniels, associate editor, The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography, printed page 644 (PDF page 639).
