Sigismund Danielewicz

Sigismund Danielewicz
Photographic portrait of Sigismund Danielewicz
Cabinet card portrait of Danielewicz, dated December 15, 1884
Born1847 (1847)
Died1927 (aged 79–80)
Burial placeMount Zion Cemetery, Los Angeles, California
OccupationLabor organizer
Signature

Sigismund Danielewicz (1847–1927) was a Polish-born labor organizer in the United States and Hawaii, known for his advocacy against anti-Chinese sentiment in the American labor movement. He also worked as an anarchist writer and publisher.

In the late 1870s, Danielewicz traveled to San Francisco from Congress Poland, where he began working odd jobs. By 1879 he was working as a barber in San Francisco, and in 1881 he attended a trades' assembly convention, kicking off his central involvement in trade unionist organizing in the region. He also spent time organizing workers in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Danielewicz's role in the San Francisco labor movement ended in 1885 when he opposed an anti-Chinese resolution at a West Coast Knights of Labor convention, delivering a prepared speech arguing that all men were equal and drawing on his own Jewish background. He was laughed off the stage and ostracized from the movement as a result.

Danielewicz then began publishing The Beacon, the first anarchist newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area. He traveled around the United States and managed or wrote for various anarchist publications. In 1909 he patented a device intended to protect the wearer from polluted air, and by 1910 he was unemployed. A 1921 city directory of Los Angeles suggests that he may have been working as a polisher. He was buried on October 23, 1927, in Mount Zion Cemetery.