Dave Schechter (MSJ78)

The Story of a Jewish Woman Who Made Communism Her Way to Repair the World

An FBI informant called Amy Schechter “a regular ten–minute egg.” In other words, hard–boiled. The New York Times said that Amy became “one of the most ardent among the New York radicals.” A Jewish columnist called her “one of the few genuinely idealistic Communists; she lives up to her ideals in her private life, sharing what she has with others less fortunate.”

What propelled the daughter of a renowned Jewish scholar to join a movement on the fringe of American society that rejected religion, capitalism, and other mainstream ideals?

Amy Schechter, born in England and educated in the United States, devoted two–thirds of her life, more than four decades, to the Communist Party in a quest to improve the lives of working men and women. Party work took her across the United States, from textile mills and coal fields to shipyards and docks. During one of the most famed strikes of its time, her name frequented newspaper front pages as a defendant in a celebrated murder trial. In Russia, she lived in a little–known American colony in Siberia and attended the Party’s finishing school in Moscow.

A Life of the Party blends the historical record with narrative fiction fitting Amy’s life and times.