Thomas Horton: Unsung Triangle Fire Hero From Harlem?

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Cornell's Kheel Center for Industrial Relations updated its survivor list.
Thomas Horton is listed as a porter. In an article written about the fire he evidently performed heroically under horrific circumstances. I would suggest he was more than just a porter and if my search of the 1910 census is correct he may have had engineering skills necessary to operate and maintain the building's elevators. The Thomas Horton above is the only "colored" Horton I found living in New York. He was an assistant engineer in an office building. Born in North Carolina, he would have logically followed the migratory pattern to the north to find better jobs at the time as well as housing in Harlem.
Below a reference to him in a 1957 American Heritage article

On the Greene Street side of the Asch building, the freight elevators “ran until they wouldn’t run.” “We were putting in the switch cables till they were overrun with water,” Thomas Horton, the Negro porter recalls. “They stuck. The circuit-breakers were blowing out.”
As Horton toiled grimly in the basement to keep the motors going, the elevator operators opened their doors at random in the blinding smoke, making desperate guesses as to floor openings. Fire streamed into the shafts, flame bit at the cables, and the girls jumping in suicidal fright jammed the operation of the cars. Nineteen bodies were found later wedged between the car and shaft in one of the Greene Street freight elevator wells.

h/t to Jane Fazio, Michael Hirsch and Prof Alan Singer

Fanny Breslow

From the film the Free Voice Of Labor:

The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists is a 1980 documentary by Steve Fischler and Joel Sucher of Pacific Street Films. It memorializes the story of the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime, and the Jewish anarchist movement of the early 20th century. The movie contained a short interview with a very young Joe Conason. Paul Avrich was a consultant on the film. As of 2006, AK Press has begun distributing it as part of a double DVD release with Anarchism in America, named after the latter.

This an excerpt from part 2

The ILGWU: August 1, 1938, part 2

Life Ilgwu 1938
Displayed at the Grey Art Gallery in remembrance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire 100th anniversary. I was curious to find out whether Yetta Henner was still alive. I assumed she married Hy Stofsky, her boyfriend in the article. Sadly, a Yetta Stofsky passed away in 1995 in Florida at the same age Yetta Henner would have been. Living where she did on Rivington Street her family may have known the Greenglass family from around the corner. She was around the same age as Ethel.

The ILGWU: August 1, 1938

The cover shows union members Helen Wachtel and Gladys Kamilhair. The photo is by the famed Hansel Mieth

Hansel Mieth (1909–1998) was a German-born photojournalist who worked on the staff of LIFE Magazine. She was best known for her social commentary photography which recorded the lives of working class Americans in the 1930s and 1940s.
She was born Johanna Mieth in Oppelsbohm, Germany, one of three daughters of a strict, religious family. She ran away from home at the age of 15 and did factory work before emigrating to the United States in 1930 to join her lover and fellow photographer Otto Hagel (1909–1973). The couple found themselves in the midst of the Great Depression and worked as migrant farm labourers for several years. During that time they began to photograph the brutal working conditions and suffering they saw around them, after acquiring a second-hand Leica camera. In San Francisco, Sacramento, and in the rural towns they worked in, they photographed the bitter labour strikes and the working homeless. They were involved with the San Francisco Film and Photo League during the early 1930s. They also became acquainted with working photographers and began to sell their own photographs to magazines.
In 1937 Mieth joined the staff of LIFE Magazine (only the second woman photographer to do so), and she and Otto (whom she married in 1940), moved to New York. He was then still a German citizen, so in order to escape internment during the Second World War the couple fled to a remote ranch near Santa Rosa in northern California. Mieth continued to accept photography assignments for LIFE, while Hagel never left the Singing Hills Ranch.
During the War Mieth photographed Japanese Americans who had been taken from their homes and interned by the Roosevelt government. In the early 1950s, the couple's refusal to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (where they would have been required to name names of their friends in the labour movement) led to Mieth's losing her job at LIFE, and to their being unofficially blacklisted. Shunned by their former friends, the couple retired to their ranch in California where they raised livestock and where Mieth took up painting. She died in Santa Rosa California in 1998.
Mieth's life story was told in a one-hour documentary titled Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer,which aired on PBS' Independent Lens series in 2003.
The full archive of Hansel Mieth's work is located at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which also manages the copyright of her work.

Pins and Needles: Sing Me A Song With Social Significance

This is the song "Sing Me a Song With Social Significance", sung by Rose Marie Jun, from the 1962 revival cast of Pins and Needles.
Pins and Needles is a Broadway revue, written originally in 1937s. The revue was written, sponsored, and performed by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, who held their union meetings at the Princess theater in New York City.
The cast members all had full time factory jobs in the garment industry, and thus could only rehearse during the night and on the weekends.
Pins and Needles used its voice to air strong pro-Union opinions, incorporating current events from its time. The show features light hearted and clever use of satire and spoof to poke fun of such things fascist dictators in Europe and snooty American bigots.
The American theatre historian and writer John Kenrick said of the show Pins and Needles "is the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway."

I'm tired of moon songs, of star and of June songs,
They simply make me nap.
And ditties romantic drive me nearly frantic,
I think they're all full of pap.
History's making, nations are quaking,
Why sing of stars above?
For while we are waiting, father time's creating
New things to be singing of...
Sing me a song with social significance,
All other tunes are taboo.
I want a ditty with heat in it,
Appealing with feeling and meat in it.
Sing me a song with social significance,
Or you can sing till you're blue,
Let meaning shine from every line
Or I won't love you.
Sing me of wars, sing me of breadlines,
Tell me of front page news,
Sing me of strikes and last minute headlines,
Dress your observations in syncopation.
Sing me a song with social significance,
There's nothing else that will do.
It must get hot with what is what
Or I won't love you.
Sing me a song with social significance,
All other tunes are taboo,
I want a song that's satirical,
And putting the mere into miracle.
Sing me a song with social significance,
Or you can sing till you're blue,
It must be packed with social fact
Or I won't love you.
Sing me of crime and conferences martial,
Tell me of mills and of mines,
Sing me of courts that aren't impartial,
What's to be done with 'em? Tell me in rhythm.
Sing me a song with social significance,
There's nothing else that will do.
It must be dense with common sense
Or I won't love you.

Pins and Needles: Doing The Reactionary Rag

It's darker than the dark bottom
It rumbles more than the Rumba
If you think that the two-steps got 'em
Just take a look at this number
It's got that certain swing
That makes you wanna sing
Don't go left, but be polite
Move to the right
Doing the reactionary
Close your eyes to where you're bound
And you'll be found
Doing the reactionary
All the best dictators do it
Millionaires keep steppin' to it
The Four Hundred love to sing it
Ford and Morgan swing it
Hands up high and shake your head
You'll soon see red
Doing the reactionary
Don't go left, but be polite
Move to the right
Doing the reactionary
Close your eyes to where you're bound
And you'll be found
Doing the reactionary
All the best dictators do it
Millionaires keep steppin' to it
The Four Hundred love to sing it
Ford and Morgan swing it
Hands up high and shake your head
You'll soon see red
Doing the reac-
Doing the reac-Tionary
So get in it, begin it
It's smart, oh, so very
To do the reactionary!

The song is from the play Pins and Needles. About the production:

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union used the Princess Theatre in New York City as a meeting hall. The union sponsored an inexpensive revue with LGWU workers as the cast and two pianos. Because of their factory jobs, participants could rehearse only at night and on weekends, and initial performances were presented only on Friday and Saturday nights. The original cast was made up of cutters, basters, and sewing machine operators.
Pins and Needles looked at current events from a pro-union standpoint. It was "lighthearted look at young workers in a changing society in the middle of America's most politically engaged city." Skits spoofed everything from Fascist European dictators to bigots in the DAR. Word-of-mouth was so enthusiastically positive that the cast abandoned their day jobs and the production expanded to a full performance schedule of eight shows per week. New songs and skits were introduced every few months to keep the show topical.
According to John Kenrick, Pins and Needles "is the only hit ever produced by a labor union, and the only time when a group of unknown non-professionals brought a successful musical to Broadway."
Originally written for a small theatrical production, the first production of "Pins and Needles" was directed by Samuel Roland. After a two week professional run, it was adapted for performances by members of the then-striking International Garment Workers' Union as an entertainment for its members. Because Roland was associated with left-wing causes, he was asked by ILGWU president David Dubinsky to withdraw. The better-known ILGWU production was directed by Charles Friedman and choreographed by Benjamin Zemach. It opened on November 27, 1937 at the Labor Stage Theatre and then transferred to the Windsor Theatre on January 1, 1939, finally closing on June 22, 1940 after 1108 performances. The cast included Harry Clark, who continued his acting career with roles in The Skin of Our Teeth, One Touch of Venus, Call Me Mister, Kiss Me, Kate, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.
The Roundabout Theatre Company produced a revival Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Stage 1 Theatre in 1978, which ran for 225 performances.
The Jewish Repertory Theatre presented a concert in 2003, to include songs and sketches from all versions of the show.

ILGWU Anthem

This comes from a 1965 performance at the 32nd Convention of the ILGWU.
A reference to this anthem is made in Rose Pesotta's Bread Upon The Waters