"As I begin this story ... I am strong and vigorous at the age of 78 and I would really much rather talk about plans and dreams for the future than to delve back into the past."
Ella Reeve Bloor was born July 8, 1862, on Staten Island, N.Y. She was the oldest of 10 children. She herself married at 19 and had six children. She began a long career as a political activist by organizing Philadelphia streetcar workers in the early 1890s.
She had several marriages, and when the last of three failed, after having two more children, she threw herself completely into radical political activities. She was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a tireless worker for women's suffrage but it was labor organizations that interested her the most.
The author Upton Sinclair, Ella's friend and fellow socialist, asked her to investigate the Chicago meat packing industry, which he has exposed in his book "The Jungle." She joined forces with another Socialist Party member, taking his name in order to avoid any scandal of this unmarried investigative team. In 1919, she helped found the U.S. Communist Party. Two years later she took the first of several trips to the Soviet Union. At the age of sixty three, she hitchhiked across the United States recruiting new members for the party.
She traveled frequently back to the Soviet Union where she was an honored speaker. Here in the United States she was often harassed and threatened by the police. She was arrested more than 30 times, including once at the age of 72 for assault and inciting to riot. Her active work continued for several more years and then she retired to an apple farm in Pennsylvania where she died in 1951 at the age of 89.