┴Stokes, Rose Harriet Pastor1879╨1933political radicalBorn in Augustùw, in then-Russian Poland, on July 18, 1879, Rose Wieslander took the name Pastor from her stepfather. She grew up in London, where the family moved when she was three, and from the age of eleven in Cleveland. She received only two years of schooling; the rest of her childhood from the age of four was devoted to working to help support the family. In Cleveland she worked in a cigar factory and spent her free time educating herself. She submitted several poems to the Jewish Daily News in New York City and in 1900 became a regular contributor. The family moved to the Bronx in 1903, and Rose Pastor joined the staff of the paper. As a result of an interview for the paper she married James G. Phelps Stokes, member of a wealthy banking family and a nephew of Olivia and Caroline Stokes, in July 1905. James Stokes already harbored socialist inclinations, and together they undertook organizing work for the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and the Socialist party. Rose Stokes was an effective lecturer and labor organizer, and she contributed articles, reviews, and poems to such periodicals as the Century, Everybody╒s, and the Independent. In 1914, with Helen Frank, she published an English translation of Morris Rosenfeld╒s Yiddish Songs of Labor and Other Poems. In July 1917 she and her husband withdrew from the Socialist party because of its resolution condemning the entry of the United States into World War I. After the Russian Revolution later that year, however, she changed her mind, and in February 1918 she rejoined the party. In March she was indicted under the Espionage Act. Her offense was a letter to the Kansas City Star containing the sentence ╥I am for the people, while the Government is for the profiteers.╙ She was found guilty of interfering with military recruitment and sentenced to ten years in prison. Her conviction was overturned in the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1920, but her case remained a cause cÄlÅbre and a symbol of antiradical hysteria. In 1919 Rose Stokes joined the Communist party. She was a delegate to the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1922 and contributed frequently to Pravda and the Worker (later the Daily Worker). She was arrested several times while picketing or demonstrating. James Stokes could not reconcile himself to her increasing radicalism and in October 1925 obtained a divorce; she refused alimony. In 1930 she was found to have cancer. Communist friends, publicly attributing her illness to a police clubbing during a demonstration the year before, raised funds for medical treatment in Europe. She died in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on June 20, 1933. >styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ & 5¬ 9 !I # !I 5 !I T !I ▐ c !I u 5¬ v !I ú !I ¬ !I ¼ !I ╖ !I ┴ !I ╠ !I % !I K !I ╖ !I ╟ !I 5¬ !I ╔ !I ╨ !I ╪ !I ▐ !I Ω !I ÷ !I link ` HYPR T c
