Ella Reeve Bloor
Ella Reeve Bloor (born July 8, 1862), born Ella Reeve and also known as Mother Bloor was radical labor organizer, socialist and communist. She was married first to Lucien Ware, then Louis Cohen, and finally Andrew Omholt. Bloor was born on Staten Island and grew up in New Jersey. After marrying Lucian Ware when she was nineteen, she was a mother of four by 1892. Her son, Harold Ware, founded the Washington D.C. based Ware group[1] of United States federal government employees who spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 40's.
Bloor became involved in several social movements including the prohibitionist Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and women's suffrage and wrote two books, Three Little Lovers of Nature (1895) and Talks About Authors and Their Work (1899).
In 1897 she joined with Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The following year she moved to the more radical Socialist Labor Party that was led by Daniel De Leon. However, in 1902 she became a member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA).
Bloor worked as a trade union organizer and helped during industrial disputes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio and New York. In 1905 she helped a fellow member of the Socialist Party of America, the author, Upton Sinclair, to gather information on the Chicago stockyards. This material eventually appeared in Sinclair's best-selling book, The Jungle.
A leading figure in the Socialist Party of America, she ran several times unsuccessfully for political office, including secretary of state for Connecticut and lieutenant governor of New York.
Bloor, a member of the left-wing faction of the Socialist Party of America, was expelled from the party in 1919. Bloor joined with others ousted from the SPA to form the American Communist Party. In 1921 and 1922 attended the Second International conventions in Moscow and was a member of the party's central committee (1932–48).
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Bloor became an advocate of American participation in the World War II. Later she argued for an early invasion of Europe to create a Second Front.
Ella Reeve Bloor, whose autobiography, We Are Many, was published in 1940, died in Richlandtown on 10 August 1951.
References
- ↑ The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, 30 December 1951, 15-16, p. 54-55.
