Lydia Gibson
Lydia Gibson (1891-1964) was an American
Biography
Early years
Lydia Gibson was born in 1891, one of three daughters of English-born architect
In conjunction with her work with The Masses, Gibson met and worked with many other prominent political artists of the day, including
After the
In 1927, while in Moscow with her husband, who was the delegate of the American Communist Party to the Executive Committee of the Communist International, Gibson assisted "Big Bill" Haywood with the preparation of the first part of his memoirs.[5] Gibson had to leave the Soviet Union before the project was completed, however, and another individual who was a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World, as was Haywood, helped complete the work.[5] Haywood's autobiography was published posthumously in 1929.
In 1934, Gibson wrote and illustrated a children's book, The Teacup Whale, a tale which, while not explicitly radical, invited children to dream big dreams and to challenge the contrary opinions of doubters.[4]
Gibson and Minor remained together until the latter's death of a heart attack in 1952.
Later life and death
Lydia Gibson remained loyal to the Communist Party even after the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev in 1956. In 1962 she loaned the party $5,000 in US Treasury Bonds to bail out CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall from jail.[6]
Lydia Gibson died in 1964.
Footnotes
- ^ Julia L. Mickenberg and Philip Nel (eds.), Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature. Foreword by Jack Zipes. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Page 26.
- ^ Dee Garrison, Mary Heaton Vorse: The Life of an American Insurgent. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Page 174.
- ^ Garrison, Mary Heaton Vorse, pg. 183.
- ^ a b Mickenberg and Nel, Tales for Little Rebels, pg. 26.
- ^ a b Benjamin Gitlow, I Confess: The Truth About American Communism. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1940; pg. 466.
- ^ "Hall and Davis Free on $5,000 Bail Each," New York Times, March 17, 1962, pg. 6. Cited in Mickenberg and Nel, Tales for Little Rebels, pg. 26.
Works
- The Teacup Whale. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1934. —Juvenile fiction
External links
- Image of Lydia Gibson, George Eastman House's Still Photographic Archive, www.geh.org/
- Lydia Gibson, Portrait of Robert Minor in Graphite (1936), Library of Congress, popartmachine.com/