Fannia Cohn

Fannia Mary Cohn (1885–1962) was a leading figure in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) during the first half of the 20th Century. She is remembered as one of the pioneers of the workers' education movement in the United States and as a prolific author on the theme of trade union education.

Fannia Mary Cohn was born on April 5, 1885 to an ethnic Jewish family in Kletsk, Belarus, then part of the Russian empire. She was the fourth of five children of a successful owner of a flour mill and his wife. Fannia received an education in private schools, with her parents encouraging their daughter to read extensively.

Cohn was radicalized during her teenaged years in the Tsarist empire. At the age of 16 she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), the intellectual successor of the Narodnik movement of the 1870s. She was active in the Minsk section of the PSR, a secret revolutionary political party, for the next three years.

In 1904 her brother was nearly killed in an anti-Jewish pogrom, spurring Fannia to emigrate to the United States. Arriving in New York City, Cohn soon joined the Socialist Party of America. Cohn decided against further formal education in 1905, instead taking a job as a garment worker in order to participate directly in the Yiddish-language labor movement of New York City.

In 1906 Cohn began her efforts to organize needle trade workers. During a 1908 strike of household linen makers, Cohn met Rose Schneiderman, with whom she became closely associated. Both Cohn and Schneiderman believed in the efficacy of recruiting female strike leaders from the union rather than relying upon a male-dominated centralized union bureaucracy for the settlement of labor disputes.

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