Life
Meltzer was born in Worcester, Massachusetts to Benjamin and Mary Meltzer, semi-literate immigrants from Austria-Hungary. One of three sons, Meltzer was the only child to graduate high school, furthering his education at Columbia University from 1932 to 1936, he had to drop out of college before graduating to support his family after his father died of cancer. Meltzer became a writer for the Works Project Administration, a program designed by the Federal Government to provide jobs for the millions of unemployed during the Great Depression.
Meltzer wed Hilda "Hildy" Balinky on June 22, 1941. After serving in the Army during World War II, Meltzer was a writer for the CBS radio broadcasting network and later a public relations executive for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. While traveling the country for Pfizer, Meltzer did research at historical societies, local archives and museums and collected nearly 1,000 illustrations to begin a career writing history books with a focus on social justice. Meltzer co-authored with Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes, A Pictorial History of the Negro in America published in 1956.
The Meltzers had two daughters and two grandsons. Hildy Meltzer died in 2009. Meltzer most recently lived in New York City where he died at the age of 94 from esophageal cancer.
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“My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing a Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)