Irwin Silber

(1925 - 2010)

Born in New York City, Irwin Silber attended Brooklyn College, where he developed an interest in folk music that quickly aligned with his socialist politics. After the end of World War II, Silber—along with Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Alan Lomax, Pete Seeger, and others—began printing a bulletin called People’s Songs. In 1950 it relaunched as Sing Out! and became a central promoter of the folk-music boom. He is the author of Socialism—What Went Wrong?: An Inquiry into the Theoretical and Historical Roots of the Socialist Crisis (1994) and Press Box Red: The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports (2003), among other books.