Louis Pio

Louis Pio

Louis Pio (1841-1894) was a Danish Social Democrat and one of the founding members and first leader of the Danish Social Democratic Party in 1871. However, after the first public meeting of the party in 1872 was violently broken up by the police (an incident later known as the "Battle of the Commons"), and the party declared illegal later the same year, Pio was sentenced to five years in prison. Having been granted an early release after serving three years, Pio was forced to leave Denmark by the government in 1875 and emigrated to the United States where he settled in Chicago. He lived in considerable poverty and died in 1894.