We remember him as a man and friend, a companion who brought to us joy by his love of life and its simple pleasures and by his genius for friendship. We remember him as a shrewd and intelligent and courageous fighter against oppression and for freedom. More than any single man in New York or in the United States, Carlo Tresca blocked the rise of blackshirted fascists who terrorized the streets of Italian-American districts. This was a great and too little appreciated service to American democracy.

He was foully murdered by a political assassin just when we needed him most to stand against pressure to distort the struggle for democracy into a struggle against one particular individual, Mussolini, and to include in the forces nominally devoted to democracy men who were its enemies.