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Biography of Earl Russell BrowderName: Earl Russell BrowderBirth Date: May 20, 1891 Death Date: June 27, 1973 Place of Birth: Wichita, Kansas, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: political leader Earl Russell Browder Earl Russell Browder (1891-1973) was the head of the Communist party of the United States during its most influential and prosperous period, 1930-1945. He was the best-known native-born Communist in American history.Earl Browder was born on May 20, 1891, in Wichita, Kansas, one of 10 children. His father was a teacher in the local schools who had also been a Methodist minister and farmer and whose political convictions were avidly Populist. Browder's formal education ended with the third grade when, because of his father's poor health, he went to work to help support the family. At the age of 15 Browder followed his father into the Socialist party, but within a few years he moved on to the still more radical Syndicalist League of North America, led by William Z. Foster. After working briefly on a Syndicalist magazine, he took a correspondence course in law and became manager of a cooperative store in Olathe, Kansas.…showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…former Raissa Irene Berkman, whom he had married in Moscow during the 1920s, died in 1955. The Browders had three sons, none of whom followed a political career. The Federal government permitted Browder to live in peace after 1959, when it dropped an indictment returned against him 7 years earlier on the grounds that he had lied on his wife's citizenship application about her membership in the Communist party. Browder died on June 27, 1973, at the home of his son William, in Princeton, New Jersey. Associated Organizations Further Reading There is no adequate biography of Browder. For information on his career--and on the history of the American Communist party, from which his career is inseparable--see Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party: A Critical History, 1919-1957 (1957); Theodore Draper, The Roots of American Communism (1957) and American Communism and Soviet Russia, the Formative Period (1960); and David A. Shannon, The Decline of American Communism (1959). |