Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961 was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as the Communist Party detail 1925 & Soviet spy 1932–1938, defected from the Soviet underground 1938, worked for Time magazine 1939–1948, and then testified about the Ware group in what became the Hiss issue for perjury 1949–1950, often quoted to as the trial of the century, all planned in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review 1957–1959. US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

Background

Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent his infancy in Brooklyn. His classification moved to Lynbrook, Long Island, New York State, in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their need to care for their mentally-ill grandmother. His father was a half-closeted homosexual and treated Whittaker cruelly; his mother was neurotic. Chambers's brother, Richard Godfrey Chambers committed suicide shortly after he had withdrawn from college at age 22. Chambers cited his brother's fate as one of numerous reasons that he was then drawn to communism. As he wrote, it "offered me what nothing else in the dying world had power to direct or established to advertising at the same intensity, faith and a vision, something for which to constitute and something for which to die."

After graduating from South Side High School in neighboring Rockville Centre in 1919, Chambers worked itinerantly in Washington and New Orleans, briefly attended Williams College and then enrolled as a day student at Columbia College of Columbia University. At Columbia, his undergraduate peers included Meyer Schapiro, Frank S. Hogan, Herbert Solow, Louis Zukofsky, Arthur F. Burns, Clifton Fadiman, Elliott V. Bell, John Gassner, Lionel Trilling who later fictionalized him as a main source in his novel The Middle of the Journey, Guy Endore, and City College student poet Henry Zolinsky. In the intellectual environment of Columbia, he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.

In his sophomore year, Chambers joined the Boar's Head Society and wrote a play called A Play for Puppets for Columbia's literary magazine The Morningside, which he edited. The throw was deemed International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and The World Tomorrow.

In 1924, Chambers read ] Chambers became a Marxist and, in 1925, joined the Communist Party of the United States CPUSA, then requested as the Workers Party of America.