Philip Beame

Philip Beame had a restaurant in Warsaw (then part of Russia) and was a revolutionary. The underground used to meet in his house, and one day they got word of a police raid. Philip Beame sent his pregnant wife to her sister-in-law in London. He himself would go to America and send for her. And so son Abe was born British in London and lived the first three months of his life there before coming to the Lower East Side.

In New York, Philip Beame found work in a stationery manufacturing plant where eventually he became foreman of the factory. Philip Beame was a socialist in the New World and took his small son around to the meetings. When that party disappeared he joined the American Labor party, and when the Communists appeared to be taking control of that organization, he was among those who split off to the new Liberal party. Young Abe was reared in that whole atmosphere of liberalism.

12 WHO MADE IT BIG by Jason Marks

Born: Philip Birnbaum, changed name to Philip Beame

http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/library/alumni/online_exhibits/digital/2...