Mary Inman, 1894-1986

Mary Inman, Communist and crusader for women's rights, was born Ida May Inman on June 11, 1894, in Burnside, Kentucky, to James Jett and Mildred (Taylor) Inman. MI was the last of her parents' nine children; her mother and an older sister died by the time she was thirteen, leaving MI to manage the household for her father and five brothers. She did this until 1917, when she married James F. Ryan. Their union was a happy one and lasted until his death in 1959.

When MI was sixteen, she became a member of Eugene V. Debs's Socialist Party. After her marriage, she took a job, joined the Railroad Workers' Union, and spent several years doing trade union organizing. She lived more than half her life in California, first in Los Angeles and then in Long Beach. After moving there, she became an active member of the Communist Party although she drew censure from some Party members for her advocacy of women's rights.

MI's efforts to incorporate women's rights with Marxism began in 1934, when she read Clara Zetkin's pamphlet, Lenin on the Woman Question . She urged various party leaders to write a document which would help women organize themselves as a labor force. When no one responded to her call, she rented an office and wrote her first book, In Woman's Defense . She adopted the pen name Mary Inman, which she used from then on with most people outside her immediate family.

MI spent the rest of her life writing articles, pamphlets, and many letters and giving speeches insisting that women's work in the home is a necessary form of labor that deserves wages and unions. Her writings include the newspaper, Facts for Women, which she edited and published from 1943 to 1946, and the pamphlet, The Two Forms of Production under Capitalism .

From the guide to the Papers, 1940-1983, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)