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...