Louis C. Fraina

Louis C. Fraina (October 7, 1892 – September 15, 1953) was a founding member of the American Communist Party in 1919. After running afoul of the Communist International in 1921 over the alleged misappropriation of funds, Fraina left the organized radical movement, emerging in 1926 as a left wing public intellectual by the name of Lewis Corey. During the McCarthy period, deportation proceedings were initiated against Fraina-Corey. After a protracted legal battle, Corey died of a cerebral hemorrhage before the action against him was formally abandoned.

Louis C. Fraina was born as Luigi Carlo Fraina on October 7, 1892, in the Galdo frazione of the town of Campagna, in the Province of Salerno of southern Italy. His father was a radical Republican and left Italy for America in 1897, to be joined by his wife and son a year later. Luigi's name was Americanized to "Louis" upon his arrival.

Fraina grew up in the slums of New York City in the Bowery and working part-time as a newsboy from the age of 6. He later helped his mother in the making of cigars and plied his trade on the streets as a shoe shine boy.

Fraina graduated from primary school in 1905 but his father died just five weeks later, forcing Louis to abandon school in order to get a full-time job. He was never able to attend high school or college — despite a lifetime career path that saw Fraina working as the education director of major unions, assuming a place as an author and public intellectual, and teaching economics at the university level for a decade.

The precocious and brilliant Fraina pursued the path of self-education, reading broadly. From an early age, Fraina was engrossed with the ideas of political radicalism and freethought, publishing his first essay, "Shelley, the Atheist Poet," in the agnostic journal The Truth Seeker in 1909. Other articles in The Truth Seeker followed, catching the attention of newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane, who offered Fraina a job as a cub reporter at the New York Evening Journal, flagship newspaper of the newspaper chain owned by William Randolph Hearst.

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