Louis C. Fraina was a founding member of the Communist Party USA 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 era, 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 as he appeared in a grainy Bureau of Investigation identification photo.
Depiction of New York's Bowery district, circa 1910, where Louis Fraina spent his boyhood.
Fraina was the editor of the newspaper of the Socialist Propaganda League, The New International.
Cover of the Fraina "Party Trial" pamphlet published by the Communist Party of America in 1920
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.
Election poster for Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party of America candidate for President, 1904
Debs was the founding member of the Socialist Party of America.
Executive Secretary Adolph Germer was one of top five Socialist of America leaders prosecuted by the Department of Justice in 1919.
Alfred Wagenknecht, top leader of the 1919 Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
