Brentano, Lorenz (04 November 1813–17 September 1891), German political leader, journalist, and congressman, was born in Mannheim, in the German state of Baden, the son of Peter Paul Bartholomaeus Brentano, a wholesale merchant, and Helene Haeger. He studied law at universities in Heidelberg, Freiburg, and Giessen and afterward practiced in Rastatt and Bruchsal before returning to Mannheim. In 1837 Brentano married Caroline Lentz; the fate of this union is unclear, but Brentano married a second time in later life. Elected to Baden’s chamber of deputies in 1845, Brentano fell in with a liberal faction clustered around ...
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Brentano, Lorenz (1813-1891), German political leader, journalist, and congressman
Patrick G. Williams
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Burnham, Louis Everett (1915-1960), journalist, activist, and radical
Erik S. McDuffie
Burnham, Louis Everett (29 September 1915–12 February 1960), journalist, activist, and radical, was born in Harlem, New York, the son of Charles Breechford Burnham, a building superintendent, and Louise St. Clair Williams Burnham, a hairdresser. His parents had emigrated from Barbados to the United States in search of a better livelihood, and they bought their own property in Harlem and began providing rooms for new Caribbean immigrants. Burnham attended New York City public schools and graduated from Townsend High School in 1932. In the fall of 1932 he enrolled in City College. He became actively involved in student political activities, serving as president of the Frederick Douglass Society and vice president of the student council. Affable, charismatic, and a powerful orator, he often spoke on campus about racial injustice, the threat of fascism to world peace, unemployment, and the plight of American youth. He graduated from City College in 1936....
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Chambers, Whittaker (1901-1961)
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Whittaker Chambers Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-114739).
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Chambers, Whittaker (1901-1961), magazine editor and anti-Communist
Robert C. Cottrell
Chambers, Whittaker (01 April 1901–09 July 1961), magazine editor and anti-Communist, was born Jay Vivian Chambers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Jay Chambers, a staff artist on the New York World, and Laha Whittaker, an actress. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, then settled in Lynbrook on Long Island’s south shore. The family home was spartan and contentious, and his parents separated around 1908. It was at this time that he took the name David Whittaker. After graduating from high school, Chambers, now calling himself Charles Adams, and a friend obtained work for four months as day laborers in Washington, D.C. They then unsuccessfully sought employment in New Orleans. Late in 1919 Chambers returned to Lynbrook, agreeing to work at his father’s advertising firm in New York City. Now known as Whittaker Chambers, he also enrolled at Columbia University. Discarding the conservative Republicanism of his parents and influenced by a cadre of young intellectuals, he was attracted to Marxism. As editor in chief of the ...
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Ciancabilla, Giuseppe (1871-1904), anarchist and journalist
Rudolph J. Vecoli
Ciancabilla, Giuseppe (21 August 1871–16 September 1904), anarchist and journalist, was born in Rome, Italy, the son of Alessandro Ciancabilla, a lumber merchant, and Appollonia Corinaldini. Raised in modest circumstances, but studious and intelligent, Ciancabilla pursued classical studies in secondary school, and in his late teens he began to write poems and articles for various publications....
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Dennis, Peggy (1909-1993), communist Party activist and journalist
Amanda Khiterman and Michal R. Belknap
Dennis, Peggy (01 January 1909–25 September 1993), communist Party activist and journalist, was born Regina Karasick in New York City to Meyer and Berta Karasick, Jewish-Russian revolutionaries who in 1904 had traded the confines of czarist oppression for the capitalist society they despised. Determined never to assimilate once they settled in America, the Karasick family remained active in the socialist movement, even after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, which dashed their hopes of returning home....
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Eisler, Gerhart (1897-1968), Communist journalist and politician
Jochen Cerný
Eisler, Gerhart (20 February 1897–21 March 1968), Communist journalist and politician, was born in Leipzig, Germany, the son of Rudolf Eisler, a philosopher, and Marie Ida Fischer. Eisler grew up in Vienna, Austria, where his father was an assistant professor without tenure (Privatdozent) at the university. The socialist sympathies of his parents, his own studies in anarchist and Marxist literature, writing for his school journal, and eventually his experiences as a young officer during World War I were all factors that influenced Eisler’s future. He was active in the revolution in November 1918 and joined the Communist party of German-Austria....
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Garza, Catarino Erasmo (25 November 1859–08 March 1895), Texas newspaper editor and Latin American revolutionary leader, nicknamed "Cato"
Gilbert M. Cuthbertson
Garza, Catarino Erasmo (25 November 1859–08 March 1895), Texas newspaper editor and Latin American revolutionary leader, nicknamed "Cato", Texas newspaper editor and Latin American revolutionary leader, nicknamed “Cato,” was born near Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, the son of Don Encarnacíon and Doña Maria Jesús Rodriquez de la Garza. Catarino was educated at Galahuises, Nuevo Leon, and became a student at San Juan College. He served in the Mexican National Guard. Partly because of his disillusionment with Porfirio Díaz’s seizure of the Mexican presidency, Garza emigrated to Brownsville, Texas, in the 1880s. There he edited ...
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Gold, Michael (1893-1967), radical intellectual and writer
Gerald Sorin
Gold, Michael (12 April 1893–14 May 1967), radical intellectual and writer, was born Itzok Isaac Granich on the Lower East Side of New York City, son of Chaim Granich and Gittel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father was a storefront manufacturer of suspenders and a peddler but remained destitute all his life. Forced by economic stringency to leave school at age twelve, Mike Gold (at this point calling himself Irwin Granich) held a variety of jobs including night porter and clerk. He said he “had no politics … except hunger,” until he was nineteen. But Gold was radicalized in 1914 when he witnessed and experienced police beatings at a demonstration by the unemployed at Union Square in New York City....
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Jackson, James Edward Jr. (29 Nov. 1914–1 Sept. 2007), communist, black freedom activist, and editor
Sara E. Rzeszutek
Jackson, James Edward Jr., (29 Nov. 1914–1 Sept. 2007), communist, black freedom activist, and editor, was born to Clara Kersey Jackson and James E. Jackson, Sr., in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, one of the first women to graduate from Howard University, and father, Richmond’s only black pharmacist, raised Jackson and his sisters to be politically aware. Jackson, Sr. was well-regarded as a local leader, both for fighting segregation in the community and for his business success. Following his father’s influence, Jackson organized the first black troop in Virginia to be admitted to the Boy Scouts of America in ...
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Jones, Claudia (1915-1964), Communist, journalist, and feminist
Erik S. McDuffie
Jones, Claudia (21 February 1915–25 December 1964), Communist, journalist, and feminist, was born Claudia Vera Cumberbatch in Trinidad, the daughter of Sybil Cumberbatch and Charles Bertram Cumberbatch. Jones's mother came from a family of landowners, while her father's family owned hotels. Claudia spent her first eight years in Trinidad while the colony experienced major political, social, and economic upheavals. In 1922 Claudia's parents migrated to New York, and she and her sisters arrived in February 1924. They came, Claudia explained three decades later in a letter to American Communist Party head ...
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Ramírez, Sara Estela (1881-1910), poet, radical journalist, and political organizer
Susie Lan Cassel
Ramírez, Sara Estela (1881–21 August 1910), poet, radical journalist, and political organizer, was born in Villa Progreso, Coahuila, Mexico. Little is known about her parents except that her mother died when Ramírez was two years old, and her father eventually immigrated to Laredo, Texas, to live with her. Ramírez attended public school in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and at seventeen years of age graduated from the teachers’ college, Ateneo Fuentes, in her home state of Coahuila. Upon receiving her teaching certificate, she immediately immigrated to Laredo to teach Spanish to Tex-Mex schoolchildren at the Seminario de Laredo. Although Ramírez studied English while in Laredo, she wrote in Spanish, and it was the Mexican proletariat to whom she remained devoted....
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Rapp, Wilhelm (1827-1907), German-American leader and journalist
James M. Bergquist
Rapp, Wilhelm (14 July 1827–01 March 1907), German-American leader and journalist, was born in Leonberg, Württemberg, Germany, the son of Georg Rapp, a Protestant minister, and Augusta (maiden name unknown). He studied theology, first in a seminary at Blaubeuren, then with the theological faculty at Tübingen. While a student at Tübingen, he was swept up in the revolutionary movements of 1848 in the German states. In May 1849 he was elected by the Democratic Society of Tübingen as a delegate to the revolutionary Peoples Assembly at Reutlingen. He also joined a group of students in the uprising in Baden. After this failed he fled to Switzerland, where he taught for a time in a private school in Ilanz in the canton of Graubünden. In the summer of 1850 Rapp secretly visited his family in Württemberg, whereupon he was apprehended and held for a year in the prison of Hohenasperg, near Ludwigsburg. In 1852 he followed other refugees of the 1848 revolutions to the United States....
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Reed, John (1887-1920)
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John Reed. Gelatin silver print, c. 1916, by Pirie MacDonald. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
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Reed, John (1887-1920), journalist and revolutionary
Stacey Hamilton
Reed, John (22 October 1887–17 October 1920), journalist and revolutionary, was born John Silas Reed in Portland, Oregon, the son of Charles Jerome Reed, a supervisor in the sale of farm equipment and later a U.S. marshal, and Margaret Green, the daughter of a wealthy capitalist. Sickened by kidney troubles, young Reed was sheltered by his mother. Having only his brother Harry as a playmate, Reed read fantasy and history books and developed an active imagination. He was healthy enough by age twelve to attend the prestigious Portland Academy, where he was a shy, mediocre student. In 1904 he enrolled in Morristown, a college preparatory school in New Jersey. There, through his pranks and charm, he became a popular rebel, writing short stories, poems, and essays for the school literary magazine....
