Today in America, the overwhelming majority of the people are not ready for socialism, and so socialism is not the issue. We Communists know we can m… - Ella Reeve Bloor

My earliest memory was of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the day of his funeral, when all the shutters of the neighborhood were closed and tied with black streamers.

I felt that our new Party, firmly rooted in American soil, would be capable of leading the workers to final victory because of its faith in the workers themselves. I have never changed my mind about this and never will. My years in the Communist Party have been years of closest association with the workers and farmers of our country, years of great privilege, because I have learned far more from the workers than I have ever taught them. The fullness and richness of my life I owe to them and to my work in the Party. Our new Party was subjected to immediate persecution everywhere. Before long an injunction was issued against the Workers' World, the paper was raided and one of the editors arrested. The raiders literally smashed everything to bits.

I do not minimize what our Party has done toward bringing about true equality, admitting no discrimination of race, color or creed in our ranks. But I have often felt, earlier indeed, more than today, that there has been some hesitancy in giving women full equal responsibility with men. As for myself, I have no complaints. I have been honored with great responsibilities. But the power of all our women must be used to the full-especially today! We women must take our place consciously by the side of men, dropping any sense of inferiority. We must speak up without waiting to be asked, and we must have something to say. We must use every ounce of strength that is in us to build a new world in which there will be no wars. We have a great tradition to uphold, we women of America today, the tradition of those great pioneer women who helped build our country. Our Party is the inheritor of the traditions of all the struggles for women's rights throughout history. The finest type of progressive womanhood, working with devotion and courage for the rights not only of women but of labor, of the Negro people, of all oppressed humanity, is to be found today within our Party. Women like Anita Whitney...Caro Lloyd Strobell, sister of Henry Demarest Lloyd...Rose Wortis..radiant Rose Pastor Stokes...And above all, our working women, our farm women, the Mrs. Jimmie Higgins' who are always ready to take their places on picket lines or lick stamps or distribute leaflets or sweep floors, the thousands of women without whom our Party could not exist. Although I have mentioned in previous chapters the name of my co-worker and dearest friend and comrade, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, I feel that she belongs in this category of pioneers-especially because of her work during the first World War for the political prisoners...Nor can we forget the thousands of women in our movement throughout the world, faced with more difficult conditions than we, carrying on the struggle in the midst of terror and war. And guiding us all with her keen intelligence and great flaming spirit, that beloved leader of the Spanish workers, Dolores Ibarruri-La Pasionaria-who kindled new courage in all of us with her great rallying cry to the people of democratic Spain-"Better die standing than live on bended knees!" (p 308)