Charles S. Zimmerman

Charles S. "Sasha" Zimmerman (1896–1983) was an American socialist activist and trade union leader, who was an associate of Jay Lovestone. Zimmerman had a career spanning five decades as an official of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. During the early 1970s, Zimmerman and Bayard Rustin were national Co-Chairmen the Socialist Party of America and the Social Democrats USA.

Charles S. Zimmerman was born of ethnic Jewish parents as Alexander Ubsushone in 1896. Alexander, known to family and friends as "Sasha," was born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Talna, then part of the Russian empire. Sasha's father died when he was 7 and his widowed mother opened up a small grocery store and candy shop to support Sasha, his two siblings, and her mother. Sasha was raised in large measure by his grandmother, a very orthodox observer of the Judaic religion.

Sasha attended Talmud Torah for three years and had two years of Russian schooling, gaining admission to the Russian gymnasium, which already had its quota of Jewish students, only after a battle made with the assistance of a local doctor.

At the age of 12, Sasha began transcribing communiques to help a young man he knew who was connected with the revolutionary movement in Odessa and Kiev.

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