Background
Meridel Le Sueur was born on February 22, 1900 in Murray, Iowa, United States. Daughter of Winston William Wharton and Marion Le Sueur.
journalist stuntwoman author actress
Meridel Le Sueur was born on February 22, 1900 in Murray, Iowa, United States. Daughter of Winston William Wharton and Marion Le Sueur.
After a year studying dance and physical fitness at the American College of Physical Education in Chicago, Illinois, Meridel moved to New York City. In the 1920s, Le Sueur attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Meridel's acting career primarily took place in California, where she worked in Hollywood as an extra in The Perils of Pauline and Last of the Mohicans, as a stuntwoman in silent movies, and as a writer and journalist. Starting in her late teens, she wrote for liberal newspapers about unemployment, migrant workers, and the Native American fight for autonomy. Her best known books are "North Star Country" (1945), "Salute to Spring", and the novel "The Girl". In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she taught writing classes in her mother's home on Dupont Avenue near Douglas Avenue in Minneapolis. During the 1960s, she traveled around the country, attending campus protests and conducting interviews.
By 1925, Meridel had become a member of the Communist Party. Because of her political leanings and her association with the Wobblies and Marxists, Le Sueur was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Congressional investigation on Un-American activities. In the 1950s, Le Sueur was blacklisted as a communist, but her reputation was revived in the 1970s, when she was hailed as a proto-feminist for her writings in support of women’s rights.
Quotations:
"When the workers send for you, then you know you're really good. Sometimes they would send money to pay the bus fare".
"I tell the young writers who visit: 'Carry a notebook. That is the secret of a radical writer. Write it down as it is happening".
Meridel was marriedto Harry Rice. They had two children: Rachel and Deborah.