Ella Reeve Bloor 1862-1951 Ella Reeve Bloor was born July 8, 1862, in Staten Island, NY.  During her childhood in Camden, she became acquainted with Walt Whitman.  A founder of the American Communist Party, she was also a women's rights activist and worked to organize farmers in the Midwest.  Woody Guthrie's "1913 Massacre" was inspired by a chapter in "Mother" Bloor's autobiography.  She died on August 10, 1951 and is buried at Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, NJ.

Ella Reeve Bloor (Spartacus Educational)

Loup City group relives 1934 riot with new play (The Independent)

1934 Nebraska labor riot shares common threads with current labor battles (NETRADIO)

Mother Bloor lauds Howard Fast's "Clarkton" (Daily Worker, October 29, 1947)

Howard Fast, Mother Bloor Head Whitman Peace Festival (Daily Worker, May 26, 1950)

Mother Bloor remembers Walt Whitman in Camden(from We Are Many by Ella Reeve ("Mother") Bloor)

Read more about Mother Bloor in ...

Bloor, Ella Reeve. We Are Many: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 1940. 

Brown, Kathleen A. Ella Reeve Bloor, Suffragist, Trade-Unionist, Socialist, and Revolutionary in the Making,
1862-1919. MA thesis, San Francisco State University, 1987.

Scholten, P.L.C. Militant Women for Economic Justice: The Persuasion of Mary Harris Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Rose Pastor Stokes, Rose Schneiderman, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Ph.D. Thesis, Indiana university, 1979.

Tombstone photograph copyright © 1999-2004 by BJ Swartz. Permission is granted to use the photo as long as it is not for profit and not for reproduction in a publication or web page without credit. If you do use a photo, I'd just like to know and would appreciate it if you would send a donation to St. Paul's Food Basket. Thanks! 

BJ Swartz
twin-prime@hotmail.com
Created 1999, updated September 5, 2011