Daniel B. Schirmer papers (MS.2013.007)

Biographical/Historical note

Daniel Boone Schirmer was an activist author, scholar and historian who devoted his life to human rights, social justice, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and Philippine solidarity work. He was born in 1915. He attended Harvard University during the 1930s and was a key figure in the radical student movement. Boone was elected executive secretary for the Boston district of the American Student Union during its national convention in December 1938. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, primarily fighting in Italy. After the war he was a prominent leader of the Communist Party USA. In 1949 and 1951, he represented the CPUSA in legal challenges to "loyalty oath" laws in Massachusetts that barred Communists from holding state, county or municipal office, or practicing law in the state. He soon gained national notoriety as newspapers across the country published accounts of the "Red Trials" of the McCarthy era. He spent four years living underground, finally turning himself in voluntarily in October 1955 to face "sedition" charges under the Smith Act. The trials of he and other "Bay State Reds" continued through 1957.

Learning of Stalin's horrific abuses in Russia, Boone became disillusioned with the CPUSA, but not with socialism, and returned to graduate school in the 1960s to become a New Left historian. He received a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1972. His thesis was called “Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War." It was published as a book in 1972.

After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in September 1972, Boone and 60 other concerned Americans founded Friends of the Filipino People, to campaign for the end of U.S. support for the Marcos regime, release of political prisoners and removal of U.S. military bases.

Daniel Boone Schirmer died on April 21, 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 91.