Orr, Violet

Violet Orr was active in the Communist Party in California in the 1930s and 1940s, serving as an organizational secretary in Oakland; a candidate for State Assembly from Richmond (1934); a laundry worker and labor organizer in San Francisco (1935-1937); and an advertising and circulation manager of the People's World in San Francisco and Los Angeles (1937-1946).

Biographical Information

Communist and peace activist Violet Orr was born in San Francisco in 1904. She spent her childhood in San Francisco, Iowa, Oregon, and finally Palo Alto, graduating from Stanford University. She married Paul Orr in 1926, and together they traveled to the Soviet Union, living there for two years, from 1928 to 1930. Active in the Friends of the Soviet Union, the Orrs joined the Communist Party in 1932. As a Communist Party activist, Violet Orr filled many positions in Northern and Southern California: as an organizational secretary in Oakland in the early 1930s; a candidate for the California State Assembly from Richmond (1934); a laundry worker and labor organizer in San Francisco (1935-1937); and an advertising and circulation manager of the People's World in San Francisco and Los Angeles (1937-1946). Throughout this period, she played an energetic role in California's radical print culture, not only as a manager of the People's World, but also as a founder of the San Francisco laundry workers' newspaper, the Shake Out ; a contributor to the Western Worker ; and a leafleteer among Richmond refinery workers. During the 1934 General Strike, the Orrs' Point Richmond home was ransacked by vigilantes.

After World War II, Violet and Paul Orr worked as school teachers in Oregon, returning to California in 1951 after losing several jobs in the early years of the post-war Red Scare. They continued to feel the strain of rising anti-communist anxiety in Pasadena, where Paul was fired from his job at the California Institute of Technology for refusing to disavow his Communist Party membership. In Pasadena, Violet was active in the Methodist Church and in various peace movements. She and Paul co-authored a utopian novel, 1993, the World of Tomorrow, which was published by Pacific Progress Publishers in 1968.