Howard Rushmore

Howard Rushmore was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, the only child to Clifford Glen Rushmore (1877–1947) and Rosa Lee Rushmore (née Palmer; 1882–1955).

He was a tenth-generation American whose father's New England ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

His mother's ancestors "came to the dark and bloody ground" of the Great Plains "with Daniel Boone from the East."

Ancestors of both parents were among the first American settlers of Missouri Territory.

One of Rushmore's grandfathers fought for the Confederate Army.

Rushmore described his own inauspicious beginnings: "When I was eight, my father lost his job in the railroad yards of Sheridan, Wyoming and took advantage of the government homestead offers to 'prove up' a 320-acre claim. We had no irrigation, no modern machinery; a flat-bed wagon was our only means of transportation."

He worked from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, while his mother milked the cows and slopped the hogs and tended a large garden.

His father, now "a fifteen-hour-a-day farmer pitted two hundred pounds of muscle and bone against the black gumbo (local soil) and finally lost."

Rushmore's parents worked hard for very little in return.

"They grew old before my eyes," he would write.

Howard Clifford Rushmore (July 2, 1913 – January 3, 1958) was an American journalist, nationally known for investigative reporting.

As a communist, he reported for The Daily Worker; later, he became anti-communist and wrote for publications including the New York Journal-American and Confidential magazine.

Rushmore and his parents returned to his mother's hometown of Mexico, Missouri, sometime during the mid-1920s, where they settled temporarily at her nearby family's house.

Rushmore's father found work as a brickyard worker but the family was hit hard economically by the Great Depression, which started Rushmore's lifelong interest in politics.

He grew up in poverty in Mexico, and his family moved constantly from house to house.

A defeated man, Rushmore's father was apolitical, but his wife was an optimistic Democrat and strong supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt, which influenced her son's early political outlook.

In appearance, Rushmore was usually described as an gangly, 6'5" teenager. Political columnist and friend George Sokolsky would later describe Rushmore as "at heart a hillbilly, proud of his colonial ancestry ... he himself was an enormous disappointment to himself ... a sad mountain boy, morose, looking for something he could never find." As a result of his appearance and manner, he was held in ridicule by his peers in high school.

Rushmore wanted to make his mark as a progressive journalist and at the age of 16 wrote for two newspapers—the Mexico High School Yellow Yap and The Mexico Ledger.

During his junior year of high school, he was expelled for publishing several exposés in the Ledger that the school administration regarded as defamatory about themselves and the teaching staff.

Rushmore's parents then enrolled him in St. Brendan's Catholic School, despite the family being Methodists.

There Rushmore was even further ostracized, resulting in his quitting school altogether.

Rushmore continued as a reporter for the Mexico Intelligencer.

On January 12, 1931, he witnessed the lynching of Raymond Gunn, in which the African-American suspect was seized from the local sheriff, doused with gasoline atop a roof and set aflame while several thousands watched.

The event made an indelible mark on the 17-year-old Rushmore, who, even at the height of his anti-communist career, would maintain Gunn's complete innocence.

By April 1935 Rushmore had become an associate editor of the magazine.

Later that year, Rushmore joined the Young Communist League USA (YCLUSA) in St. Louis despite having neither a technical knowledge of Marxist philosophy nor its history.

This lifelong ignorance would hamper his authority as a professional communist and anti-communist as critics would question his qualifications on the subject.

As a member of the YCLUSA, Rushmore organized farmers in the Dakotas and Iowa.

Conroy then sent Rushmore to New York City in May 1935, where he attended the American Writers Congress.

There he was asked to join the editorial staff of the Young Worker, the organ of the YCLUSA.

Taking advantage of his perceived all-American background, the CPUSA rapidly promoted Rushmore.

All staff members of the Young Worker were assigned to a political unit of the YCLUSA; Rushmore belonged to the Harlem unit, where he met Ruby Bates, a recent recruit to the youth league.

Bates was one of the two women who had accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape, only to later recant her original testimony during the Patterson trial.

Rushmore graduated to The Daily Worker as "a $25-a-week writer."

After a series of girlfriends, he began dating Ruth Garvin, who wrote the women's column for the Sunday Worker Progressive Weekly.

They married on October 12, 1936, when Rushmore was aged 23.

In the 1940s, when the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in Kansas City organized an anti-lynching committee led by Harlem-based party organizer Abner Berry, Rushmore was impressed by the bravery and anti-racist stance of the communists.

Through the committee, Rushmore met Jack Conroy, editor of The Anvil, a communist literary magazine.

Conroy encouraged Rushmore's literary ambitions by suggesting he submit short stories.

Rushmore killed himself and his wife in a murder-suicide in 1958.