Wellman, Saul (1913–2003)

Detroiter Saul Wellman risked his life for his beliefs, nearly died in battle in two wars, lived as a radical political leader and then as an outcast, spurned material rewards and security, and eventually became an internationally honored mentor of two generations of younger political activists.

A committed revolutionary from his earliest days until his death at 90, Wellman lived by the credo of wanting to make the playing field level—meaning equality of everyone. His life was a model of social and political commitment, dedicated to the belief that the struggle against oppression knows no boundaries [Page 1460]and is the duty of all people, not merely those most immediately affected.

Wellman lived at the center of events during the middle third of the 20th century. He grew up in Brooklyn's Williamsburg, a hotbed of Jewish radicalism. While still a boy, he plunged into the ferment around him, deciding when expelled from high school that he wanted to be a “professional revolutionary.” During the Depression, he was a union organizer of young candy store truck drivers in New York. He volunteered for the Canadian-American Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, became its political commissar, and was wounded at the Battle of the Ebro. (In 1996, he and the other living Brigadistas were granted honorary citizenship by the Spanish Parliament.)

Wellman fought the military bureaucracy during World War II to become, at age 29, a paratrooper in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. He was seriously wounded and escaped from the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he became an organizer for the Communist Party, moving to Detroit to direct auto industry efforts. He became chair of Michigan's Communist Party in 1949.

During the McCarthy period, he lived underground but was arrested by the FBI in 1952. He was the lead defendant among six Michigan Communists charged under the Federal Smith Act in Detroit's most famous political trial (the “Michigan Six”) in which all were convicted. After Wellman and others served most of their sentences, the convictions were vacated and the case not retried in a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Yates v. United States. He left the Communist Party in 1957 after the Khrushchev revelations about Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

In his 50s, Wellman became a truck driver, then an apprentice printer and union activist. After receiving journeyman status and overcoming the reservations of colleagues suspicious of his past, he was elected a union leader. In the 1960s, he became part of the New Left and for years was active in the anti-war and civil rights struggles. In 1979, he was honored for his activism, receiving citations by the Michigan State Senate and the Detroit City Council. Subsequently, speaking at colleges and universities as well as public meetings, he became an inspiration to younger activists in Germany, Italy, and Canada, as well as the United States.