Hillquit, Morris (01 August 1869–07 October 1933), attorney and socialist leader, was born Morris Hillkowitz in Riga, Latvia, then a part of the Russian Empire, the son of Benjamin Hillkowitz, a schoolteacher, and Rebecca Levene. His father sent Morris to elementary and secondary schools in Riga, where he learned Russian and German. The family immigrated to the United States in 1886 and soon after changed its name to Hillquit. In New York City, Morris resumed his education and learned English, a language that he always spoke with a foreign accent. As was the case with most Jewish immigrant families, the Hillquits required contributions from all members to survive. Hence Morris found work in a shirt factory, where he met other young immigrant workers and became acquainted with the infant Jewish-American labor movement. He began to learn Yiddish in order to communicate with fellow immigrant Jews for whom it was the language of choice. He also read socialist literature in its original German. As a result of his reading and personal experiences in the United States, Hillquit joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) in 1887. That year he became a staff member of the first Yiddish-language socialist newspaper in the United States, ...
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Hillquit, Morris (1869-1933), attorney and socialist leader
Melvyn Dubofsky
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London, Meyer (1871-1926), socialist leader and labor lawyer
Arthur A. Goren
London, Meyer (29 December 1871–06 June 1926), socialist leader and labor lawyer, was born in Kalvarie, province of Suvalki, Poland, the son of Ephraim London, a printer, and Rebecca Berson. His father received a traditional Orthodox Jewish education but turned to radicalism under the influence of the enlightenment movement. His mother was born into a rabbinical family and retained her Orthodox views. London’s father arrived in the United States in 1888 and set up a printing shop on the Lower East Side of New York City that published a Yiddish anarchist journal. In 1891 he sent for the rest of his family. Meyer entered New York University’s law school in 1896 and was admitted to the bar two years later. In 1899 he married Anna Rosenson, a dentist; they had one child....
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McGrady, Thomas (1863-1907), Catholic socialist priest and lawyer
Patrick W. Carey
McGrady, Thomas (16 June 1863–26 November 1907), Catholic socialist priest and lawyer, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Hugh McGrady, a tenant farmer and day laborer, and Alicia (maiden name unknown). McGrady’s parents were refugees from the Irish famine who had emigrated to Kentucky in the late 1840s. In 1907 McGrady acknowledged the seething effect that stories of the famine had had on him: “Coming from a race that had been oppressed for generations in the old world, I have learned to hate injustice and oppression with a deathless hatred.” McGrady received his early education in St. Paul’s parish school in Lexington. Where he received his seminary education remains in doubt, but more than likely he went to St. Aloysius Seminary near Columbus, Ohio, where Nicholas Aloysius Gallagher (1846–1918) had been rector from 1871 to 1876. In 1887, after his seminary education, he was ordained a priest by Gallagher, who had become a bishop and the administrator of Galveston, Texas, in 1882. From 1887 to 1891 McGrady served parishes in Galveston, Houston, and Dallas. In 1891, because of poor health, he requested a transfer to his native diocese of Covington, Kentucky, where he became pastor of St. Paul’s in Lexington (1891), St. Edward’s in Cynthiana (1891–1895), and St. Anthony’s in Bellevue (1895–1902)....
