When Leon Wofsy died at age ninety-seven on August 25, progressive movements throughout the United States lost a champion. Leon accomplished many things in his long life — he was an innovative scientist, and a fine writer and teacher — but above all, he was a patient and peerless organizer.

He honed those skills during the Great Depression and the political repression that followed in the wake of World War II. The child of a radical working-class family, he gave his first political speech at age eleven in 1932 at a rally for the presidential candidate of the Communist Party. He threw himself into organizing just two years later, cohering a high school group that affiliated with the radical American Student Union. As a college student at the City College of New York from 1938 to 1942, he became president of the Marxist Cultural Society and then leader of the Young Communist League.

Drafted into the US Army and focused on the “Double V” (victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home) effort during World War II, Leon had his nose broken by a military police officer when protesting the treatment of black soldiers. Heading the Communist Party–linked Labor Youth League from its founding in 1949 to 1956, Leon was called to testify before the Subversive Activities Control Board during the height of McCarthyism.