Edwin Rolfe

Edwin Rolfe was the son of Russian immigrants, was born in Philadelphia in 1909. His father, a shoemaker, was an active trade unionist and a member of the Socialist Party of America. His mother was an advocate of women's rights.

As a teenager Rolfe joined the American Communist Party and was soon contributing cartoons, poems and book reviews to the party newspaper. He also published his first book of poems, To My Contemporaries.

In 1937 Rolfe joined the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit that volunteered to fight for the Spanish government during the Spanish Civil War. Despite his protests, Rolfe was removed from combat assignments and became editor of the brigade newspaper Volunteer for Liberty. Rolfe arrived back in the United States in January 1939. Later that year he published a history of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion: The Lincoln Battalion in 1939.

After World War II, the Cold War began with the Soviet Union and the red scare began. A blacklist was drawn up of writers, directors and performers who had been members of the American Communist Party, including Edwin Rolfe.

Rolfe became active in the struggle against McCarthyism and wrote a series of anti-McCarthy poems. Edwin Rolfe died of a heart attack on May 25, 1954. He was 45.