Franz Lehman, 1915-2000
by Dave Powell

"The voice of the majority may be that of force triumphant, content with the plaudits of the hour... the dissenter speaks to the future and his voice is pitched to a key that will carry over the years...the prophet and the martyr do not see the hasting throng, their eyes are fixed on the eternities."

--Benjamin Cardozo, Associate Supreme Court Justice, 1932-38

On June 24, 2000, the people of New York City lost a dedicated activist and a great human being: Franz J. Lehman.

Franz was born in Munich, Germany in 1915. In 1937, his family fled the Nazis and settled near Albany. It was there that Franz met his lifelong partner, Rosel, herself a German refugee. In January of 1941, Franz was drafted into the US army and eventually sent back to Europe. He served until the end of the war and was briefly involved with US military efforts to reconstruct the German government. However he became quickly disillusioned at US authorities’ willingness to reinstall former Nazis. He returned to the US in the fall of 1945, and in 1946 married Rosel, who was already living in Manhattan.

In 1948, the couple moved into the recently built Stuyvesant Town, off 14th Street. At the time, Stuy Town had an official policy of barring black families from living at the complex. Franz and Rosel joined with a group of neighbors to form the Committee to End Discrimination in Stuyvesant Town. In defiance of the policy, residents helped a black family move into a vacant apartment. Initially, Franz and other men in the Committee took shifts guarding their door each night.

In response to these efforts, landlords Met Life attempted to evict members of the Committee. The eviction attempts ultimately failed. Met Life changed its policy of official discrimination in 1950. In 1951 the Committee got the Brown-Isaacs Bill passed in the City Council, which barred racial segregation and discrimination in New York City’s publicly assisted housing. This was 13 years before the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 desegregated public housing nationwide.

For most of this period, Franz worked as a freelance photographer. In the early 1950s, he took a job as a railroad leverman. He was active in his union (BRAC, Local 1474) and retired in 1978. In 1976 Franz revived Labor Research Association’s Railroad Notes, a newsletter about labor issues in the railroad industry. For 10 years Franz was that publication’s reporter, editor and voice.

Over the course of his life, Franz was active with many groups, including the Committees of Correspondence, the Lower East Side Call to Justice, Coalition for a District Alternative, the Labor Party, Labor Research Association, the Stuyvesant Town Tenants Association, New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, and, of course, Met Council. At Met Council, he served as a board member, and was also an active volunteer.

In May, while on his way to deliver petitions to the Manhattan office of Governor George Pataki, Franz was hit by a car. The petitions called for the repeal of the Rockefeller drug laws, which impose lengthy mandatory-minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. In the hospital, his first concerns were about the petitions. It was typical of Franz: more concerned about the plight of others even while critically injured. Franz died on June 24, after nearly a month of battling in intensive care.

That’s an incomplete history of what Franz did. What I can’t tell you so easily is who he was as a man and what he meant to us at Met Council. Franz was one of the most compassionate, intelligent, and humble people I’ve ever met. He loved art, music, film and literature. He was an excellent photographer and an astute writer. He was a great person to be around and had a terrific sense of humor. He had a smile that would make you smile back. Franz was the type of guy you learned from just by being around him. He had a simple resolve that informed his every move. Wherever there was work to be done for social justice, that’s where you would find Franz. He did the work. He was much less interested in giving speeches or arguing over which method was best. He simply got things done.

At the same time, his analysis was always sharp. When he wasn’t stuffing envelopes, collecting signatures or walking picket lines, he was reading, writing, discussing, and re-evaluating. When he did offer his opinion, you wanted to listen. Franz saw the interconnectedness of issues. You could talk to him about everything. Tenants’ rights, police brutality, sweatshops, environmental degradation, Mumia Abu-Jamal, labor history, Cuba, the prison-industrial complex, neoliberal economics - you name it. He was never raging or polemical about any of it. He simply had convictions and he lived by them.

His level of dedication transformed us all, and we will never forget him.

A memorial for Franz Lehman will be held on Sunday, Sept. 17 at 2 p.m. at St. Marks Church in the Bowery (East 10th Street and Second Avenue, Manhattan).