Robert Berkeley "Bob" Minor (15 July 1884 – 26 January 1952), alternatively known as "Fighting Bob", was a political cartoonist, a radical journalist, and, beginning in 1920, a leading member of the American Communist Party.
Background
Robert Minor, best known to those who knew him by the nickname "Bob", was born July 15, 1884, in San Antonio, Texas. Minor came from old and respected family lines. On his father's side, General John Minor had served as Thomas Jefferson's Presidential campaign manager; his mother was related to General Sam Houston, first President of the Republic of Texas. His father was a school teacher and lawyer, later elected as a judge, while his maternal grandfather was a doctor.
Despite the notable family forefathers, Bob Minor was not brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth — rather he was the product of what one historian has called "the hard-up, run-down middle class," living in an "unpainted frontier cottage in San Antonio." Minor was unable to begin school until age 10 due to his family's dire financial straits before leaving school at age 14 to take a job as a Western Union messenger boy to help support his family. Minor left home two years later, going to work at a variety of different jobs, including time spent as a sign painter, a carpenter, a farm worker, and a railroad laborer.
Career
In 1904, at the age of twenty, Robert Minor was hired as an assistant stereotypist and handyman at the San Antonio Gazette, where he developed his artistic talent in his spare time. Minor emerged as an accomplished political cartoonist.
Cartoonist
Minor moved to St. Louis to take a position as a cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Minor's work, initially very conventional in form using pen-and-ink, was transformed by his move to the use of grease crayon on paper. Minor gained recognition as the chief cartoonist at the Post-Dispatch and was considered by many to be among the best in the country.
In 1911, Robert Minor was hired by the New York World, where he became the highest paid cartoonist in the United States. His father was on a parallel path of advancement, transformed by a 1910 election "from an unsuccessful lawyer to an influential district judge."
Journalist
In 1907, Minor joined the Socialist Party of America. However, by the beginning of 1912, he had moved towards an anarchist orientation and support of revolutionary industrial unionism.
Minor had saved several hundred dollars earned in St. Louis and decided that he wanted to go to Paris to attend art school to perfect his craft. In France he enrolled in a class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the French national art school, but he found the experience unsatisfying. Minor spent the rest of his time in Paris studying art on his own and taking part in the left wing labor movement through the Socialist Party of France. Minor returned to the United States in 1914, just prior to the outbreak of World War I.
The year 1914 saw Minor in the unusual position of being paid but unable to work, with an old contract he had signed with the New York World continuing to pay him a salary merely to keep him from drawing for other papers. However, with the outbreak of hostilities in August Minor began to make a series of aggressive and provocative cartoons attacking both sides of the European conflict for their imperialism. While The World initially began to use these cartoons, it was not long before Minor came to the banks of the Rubicon, when his employer demanded that the artist begin to draw pro-war panels. Minor was unalterably opposed to the World War and was faced with a choice between his paycheck and his beliefs. His convictions won and Minor was successful in having his contract with The World annulled.