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Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes (née Wieslander; July 18, 1879 – June 20, 1933) was an American socialist activist, writer, birth control advocate, and feminist. She was a figure of some public notoriety after her 1905 marriage to Episcopalian millionaire J. G. Phelps Stokes, a member of elite New York society, who supported the settlements in New York. Together they joined the Socialist Party. Pastor Stokes continued to be active in labor politics and women's issues, including promoting access to birth control, which was highly controversial at the time.

In 1919, Pastor Stokes was a founding member of the Communist Party of America and helped develop it into the 1930s. In addition to her writing on politics, she wrote poetry and plays; one was produced in 1916 by the Washington Square Players. She started her autobiography in 1924 but had not completed it at her death; it was published in 1992.

Early life

Rose Harriet Wieslander was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Augustów,[1] in the Russian Empire (present-day Poland) on July 18, 1879, the daughter of Jacob and Hindl (later known as Anna) Wieslander.[2] Her mother had loved a Catholic man, but her father refused to allow her to marry him.[2] Rose's parents separated after she was born, and her father emigrated to the United States. In 1882 when Rose was three, her mother emigrated with her parents and child to London. There Anna married Israel Pastor, who gave his surname to his stepdaughter Rose, and had six more children with Anna. The family lived in the East End, a neighborhood of poor immigrants. Rose Pastor attended classes for a time at the Bell Lane Free School (Israel Zangwill was once a pupil there and later an instructor).

In 1891, when Pastor was twelve, her family emigrated to Cleveland, Ohio in the United States. In 1892, she took a job in a Cleveland cigar factory, where she worked as a cigar maker for the next eleven years. According to a 1910 New York Times article, her stepfather was reported as having died a few years after the family arrived in Cleveland. Pastor helped support her six siblings and mother.

Death and legacy

Pastor Stokes was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1930. In 1933, she went to Germany for radiation therapy. In April 1933, friends collected funds for hospital expenses. Pastor Stokes entered Municipal Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, on April 15, where she was operated on for cancer by Professor Vito Schmiden. While under treatment, she died in the hospital on June 20, 1933, aged 53. Her body was cremated and her ashes sent to New York, where a memorial service was held at Webster Hall.[7]

At the time of death, Pastor Stokes was working on her autobiography, which she had started in 1924. Before her death, she had sent numerous documents related to her writing to her agents in the United States. She asked her friend Samuel Ornitz, also a communist and a writer, to complete it, sharing her views with him.

He finally abandoned the work in 1937.[2] During the 1950s, he was among the Hollywood Ten, blacklisted after their refusal to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during the Joseph McCarthy era of a Red scare.

Her unfinished autobiography was published posthumously in 1992. Pastor Stokes' papers are held by New York University, where they are held at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, and at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Much of this material is also available on microfilm.[citation needed]

In 2020, author Adam Hochschild published a biography of Stokes: Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes.

Courtesy – Wikipedia
- Rose Harriet Pastor Stokes

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