Beecher's Early Years
John Henry Newman Beecher was born in New York City on January 22, 1904. Beecher's family was descended from New England abolitionists (including Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and his father was a steel industry executive. In 1907, Beecher's father was transferred to Birmingham, Alabama to work for the United States Steel Corporation; as a result of this, Beecher spent the rest of his childhood in the American South.
Beecher's family had intended their son to become an executive like his father. However, as a young man Beecher went to work in the steel mills as a teenager, having graduated from high school at age sixteen. The labor abuses he saw there caused him to become active in labor movement issues. He also wrote a few of the radical activist poems he eventually became known for.
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