In December 1929, The Forward excitedly reported on the upcoming conference, headed up by Norman Thomas and other leaders, focussed on youth. "What is youth doing? What is Youth thinking Where is Youth going? " they asked. Seen here surrounded by energetic young socialist activists greeting the popular pol at the city's Grand Central Terminal, the energy is palpable as hats and hands raised in joyous tribute.

The Rand School, nearby Union Square seen in this image above would host the conference titled: Problems of Youth. Prior to this conference, it was decided that a survey must be created in order to accurately assess the ability to form a strong youth movement. A dance followed sessions of the conference.

As The Forward described him, Thomas was descended from a line of Midwestern Presbyterian ministers, and was about to become one one himself. In 1910, The Forward reported, when Thomas was the assistant to East Harlem Presbyterian Church's leader, Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke news broke about some of his specific religious beliefs around the virgin birth. As part of his ordination process, he was asked to answer to New York's Presbytery, currently located nearby the image above on the city's Riverside Drive. Per The Forward's 1930 story on Thomas, he was "too much of a realist, and a married man too" and despite not recanting his own beliefs, he was, to much delight, ordained as a minister. He was also, they delighted in noting, a former newsie, having worked in his youth for, (eventual US President) Warren Harding's newspaper "The Marion Star" in Marion, Ohio.

"He should have become a bishop" the paper gasped, admitting his natural career path would have likely have placed him in the Brick Church pictured here.

Having committed himself to the immigrants of the city, Thomas then headed uptown to lead a church at 116th and 2nd avenue, nearby this settlement house of Harlem. The Forward reported his six years of service there with the unemployed and the poor.

With the outbreak of the first world war, Thomas was decidedly a pacifist, whose views were at odds with his church's. After much discomfort with preachers who were, The Forward cited, calling it "god's war", Thomas left his church calling. Throwing his support behind socialist Morris Hillquit's mayoral campaign he faced much public denunciation. Hillquit's residence at that time of fore into city mayoral politics, was nearby this Harlem building seen in the image above.

Thomas next career move was editor of The World Tomorrow Magazine, a progressive Christian public affairs journal, located nearby the building in the image above. Having started out as a newsboy in his Ohio hometown of Marion, the power of the press was not unfamilliar to the former minister deeply concerned with the poverty he witnessed unfolding around him in the city.

Thomas then went on to edit progressive journal The Nation, then located on Nassau Street, near this building depicted above. It's likely Thomas's reputation as "the nation's conscience" began with his editorials criticizing the war and publicizing reports on the torturous treatment of the country's conscientious objectors, held in federal prisons, noted The Forward. It worked too. President Wilson became involved, though he called Thomas's revelatory report "indecent," according to The Forward.

By the 1920's Thomas had married and with two children, moved downtown to Gramercy, seen in this image. His editorial voice grew and as earlier during his pacifist activism related to the war, Thomas faced ongoing wiretapping and constant secret service observers of his every move reporting back to notorious raider of individuals suspected of seditious activities, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

By the time he co-founds the ACLU now located at the tip of Manhattan's Financial District, nearby this older image above of that site, Norman Thomas's columns on socialism are found in hundreds of labor publications. The Forward recognizes him as "New York's chief asset."

By the time of his death in 1968 at the age of 84, Thomas was noted by then President Johnson as, among other things, one of America's "most creative thinkers." Much of Thomas's campaigning was for a more perfect union. He fought for social supports considered the right of every American and are the law, but are also still extremely difficult for the country to agree on such as: social security, unemployment insurance, minimum wage and health insurance. Then Vice-President Humphrey say of Thomas that "we are a better people because this gentleman lived." He was survived by colleagues and friends as well as his family, including a son who was editor in chief of W.W.Norton, an independent publishing house, located nearby the midtown image seen above. Maintaining a highly controversial position within the socialist movement, against Roosevelt's New Deal and against US involvement in WWII, Thomas met and spoke to non-interventionists and the controversial America First movement, causing a split between his supporters, included The Forward and its readership, who supported both items. He died after a full activist life maintaining a principled dissent. In his NYT's obituary he talked about one's loyalties and values as the "secret to a good life." And that "the value of dissent and dissenters is is to make us reappraise those values with supreme concern for truth." In The Forward's front page obituary, Thomas is recalled as having been socialism's "fiery tribune" for over half a century. They noted how beloved he was as leader of the American Socialist Party, and that he'd maintained his reading and writing schedule to his last day on earth, with a \[last book ]\(http://archives.nypl.org/mscheduled for release that year.