Biography
Daniel Boone Schirmer was a Harvard-educated Massachusetts Communist Party leader who became one of the "Bay State Reds" prosecuted under the Smith Act. In 1949 and 1951 he had represented the CPUSA in challenges to Massachusetts loyalty-oath laws barring Communists from office. Facing Smith Act sedition charges, he lived underground for about four years before voluntarily surrendering in October 1955; the prosecution of the Massachusetts defendants dragged on until the case collapsed after the 1957 Yates decision. Later disillusioned with the Soviet Union but not with socialism, Schirmer returned to graduate school, earned a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1972, and became a New Left historian and anti-imperialist — best known for "Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War" and a lifetime of Philippine solidarity work.
