“Apostles of a New Order”

This chapter examines the crucial experiences that boosted the self confidence and social awareness of Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway and gave them a budding sense of purpose and direction. Before they first met in Chicago in the summer of 1937, the education of Gibbons and Calloway continued on parallel tracks. Amid the profound social dislocation of the Great Depression, each of them experienced epiphanies that they subsequently credited with bolstering their determination to lift up the working class. This chapter first considers Gibbons and Calloway's life in Chicago before discussing how the city's overlapping circles of reform and radicalism made it a political cornucopia for the two men following their escape from the constricted world of their coal patch youths. It also looks at three mentors who introduced Gibbons to the concepts of a strong union movement, independent political action, and the importance of education for effective citizenship: Annetta Dieckmann, Lillian Herstein, and Paul Douglas. Finally, it describes Brookwood Labor College's influence on Calloway's thinking as well as his anti-communism.