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Built in 1851, 37 Howe Street was purchased 60 years ago by a group of mainly Jewish immigrant workers who fervently believed that their new homeland should be a model of peace and social and economic justice. The tradesmen and artisans who had grown up speaking Polish, Yiddish, ad Russian, envisioned for their families a center of social and cultural life.

Among the highlights of its history:

• 1930s: housed the Unity Players, the first Black/White integrated drama organization in New Haven; provided space during the Great Depression for the unemployed to organize for jobs; housed the nascent Connecticut CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations)
• 1940s: organized rallies against lynching and against segregation; initiated New Haven’s first evening college “to fulfill the need of workers to advance their education” (it became the evening division of the New Haven State Teachers College, now Southern Connecticut State University
• 1950s and 1960s: participated in the civil rights struggle locally; struggled against the impact of McCarthyism on labor and other progressive leaders and activists
• 1970s-1990s: “the Peoples Center provided affordable (often free) space to working men and women organizing for better wages, for health care, for weekends off, for paid vacations: machinists at Winchester (now U.S. Repeating Arms); hospital; workers at Yale-New Haven; health care providers at the Jewish Home; New Haven teachers; and Yale, Harco, and Circuitwise workers.

Currently, the Peoples Center, recently designated by the Connecticut Historical Commission as a site on the Connecticut African-American Freedom Trail, serves as a “meeting place of labor, community, peace and social justice groups.” Its “regular events include the First Friday Café, featuring multi-cultural music, art, and spoken word on the first Friday of every month; and the Basics Forum, highlighting a deeper look into current issues, held quarterly on the fourth Friday of the month.

The Peoples Center is home to the Ettie and Robert C. Ekins Art Gallery and the Milada and John Marsalka Library. The latter is a non-circulating library of books and national and international pamphlets, many dealing with the Communist Party and other organizations (date range 1900-1989). It also includes six boxes of material from the Marsalkas, including some original papers and correspondence.

To use the library, call Joelle Fishman at 203-624-8664.