Joseph Lash manuscript

Joseph Lash was born on December 9, 1909 in New York City's Upper East Side. He attended City College of New York where he wrote left-wing opinion pieces for the campus newspaper and chaired the college's socialist organization. He became a leader in the Student League for International Democracy, founded the Association of Unemployed College Alumni, and served as an officer in the American Student Union. Lash was also responsible for organizing various anti-war demonstrations on college campuses from 1934 to 1941.

In the late 1930's he briefly served with the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, and then later decided that he could aid the cause better as a student leader. In 1939, due to his anti-communist stance in the student movement, Lash was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer questions about communist infiltration of the American Youth Congress. It was at this time that Lash and Eleanor Roosevelt first met and a friendship developed that would last until Eleanor's death in 1962. Mrs. Roosevelt helped Lash get involved with FDR's 1940 presidential campaign as the director of the Democratic National Committee's Youth Committee. In time Lash became one of Mrs. Roosevelt's most trusted advisers, even though they were criticized for their unusual friendship.

In 1946 Lash helped Mrs. Roosevelt co-found Americans for Democratic Action before he went to work for the New York Post from 1950-1966. In 1966, Elliott Roosevelt asked Lash if he would resign his job at the New York Post so that he could serve as his mother's official biographer and in 1971 Lash published, "Eleanor and Franklin." He later received the Pulitzer Prize for the aforementioned book and spent the next sixteen years writing and editing books about the New Deal and the Roosevelts. Through the years he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Frances Parkman Prize. His last book "Dreamers and Dealers" was published a year after his death on August 22, 1987 in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.