Ray Ginger

Raymond Sydney Ginger (October 16, 1924 – January 3, 1975) was an American historian, author, and biographer of wide-ranging scholarship whose special focus was on labor history, economic history, and the epoch often called the Gilded Age. His biography of the American labor leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs is widely considered definitive, and his account of the Scopes trial has also received high praise. Both titles are still in print, and both, along with many of his other works, have been widely used in college courses across the United States.

Ginger was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the fourth son and next-to-last child of an affluent Southern family that moved to Indiana (Debs' home state) while he was very young, and was shortly thereafter plunged into abject poverty by the Great Depression. After four years "squatting" in a series of unoccupied houses in Greencastle while their eldest son attended DePauw college, the Ginger family settled in Indianapolis, still in extremely difficult circumstances. These experiences deeply influenced Ray Ginger's political convictions and much of his historical work: in later life he frequently recounted his childhood humiliation when sent to collect the bag of flour that was the only form of public welfare available, and also the intense personal rage that dominated his youth.

Despite his troubled childhood, and the equally troubled personality it engendered, his incisive intelligence and great verbal gifts were rewarded by acceptance to both Harvard College and the University of Chicago before his 17th birthday. In another frequently-told tale, he chose Chicago in the belief that it would be easier to augment his scholarship with part-time employment "in a big city like Chicago than in a small town like Cambridge." He didn't think to look at a map, and wouldn't have dreamed of asking for advice. At Chicago he soon took a step towards fulfilling his supreme ambition at that time — to become a sportswriter — by landing a post as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune — "the only time my father was ever really proud of me." This job turned into something more than menial when the United States entered World War II shortly thereafter, most of the reporters became foreign correspondents, and Ginger was promoted to a writing job in the city room.

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