User:CWH/Frank Glass (Trotskyist)

Frank Glass, C. Frank Glass, or Cecil Frank Glass (b. 1901 Birmingham, Warwickshire, England d. 1988 Los Angeles) was a South African journalist, editor, and international revolutionary activist known for supporting Leon Trotsky. He was a founding member of the South African Communist Party and helped organized the the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU), the first black trade union there.

In 1930 Glass left South Africa for Shanghai, where he co-founded the Communist League of China a Trotskyist organization that opposed Stalin and the Chinese Communist Party. His correspondence with Leon Trotsky led to a visit with him in Mexico in 1938. Glass then settled in the United States, where he edited the Trotskyist newspaper, The Militant and published widely on topics of revolutionary interest and social progress.

Early life and radical activities in South Africa
Glass's parents, Ernest Edward and Gertrude Emily Glass, moved the family to New Zealand in 1911, including his older brother, Norman, Frank himself, and his sister Madge. He served briefly in the British Army toward the end of World War One, but the social agitation around the 1917 Russian Revolution drew his attention to the unjust treatment of New Zealand's black majority population.

China
In Shanghai he befriended the American journalist Harold Isaacs and worked with him on his account of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, the first edition of which was published in 1938 with a preface by Trotsky. Among his other colleagues were Alex Buchman, an American Trotskyist, aeronautical engineer, and amateur photographer who recorded many of the personalities in the movement. There he met and married Grace Simons (1901-1985), whose older sister was Rayna Simons Prohme (1894-1927), a radical journalist and organizer.

In the United States
Glass relocated permanently to the United States on the eve of World War II. There, he was a prominent member of the Socialist Workers Party, but did not follow the

Writings
For a more extensive list, see
 * Reproduced from Glass's report found in the Trotsky Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Reprinted, Marxists Encyclopedia of Trotskyism Online