James Ferdinand Morton Jr.
American anarchist (1870–1941)
James Ferdinand Morton Jr. (October 18, 1870 – October 7, 1941) was an anarchist writer and political activist of the 1900s through the 1920s especially on the topics of the single tax system, racism, and advocacy for women. After about 1920 he was more known as a member of the Baháʼí Faith, a notable museum curator, an Esperantist, and a close friend of H. P. Lovecraft.
Biography
Early years
Morton was born in Littleton, Massachusetts, lived in Andover, New Hampshire. His family reached back to the pilgrims landing in 1620, his grandfather was Rev. Samuel Francis Smith. A newspaper article from 1906 refers a little to his youth - that he worked as a "newsboy, bootblack, an organ blower, and an employe (sic) in a jelly factory". In 1892, he earned Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree from Harvard University, simultaneously, in Classical Philology, earning a "Gorham Thomas" scholarship, graduated cum laude and was a member of the honors society Phi Beta Kappa. He was a classmate of W.E.B. Du Bois and carried on some correspondence with him. He gained skills in Greek, Latin and French.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Ferdinand Morton Jr.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.