Helen Winter

Helen Allison Winter (born Helen Allison Wagenknecht; 1908 – December 13, 2001) was an American political activist and organizer. A member of the Communist Party USA, she was the daughter of Alfred Wagenknecht and the wife of Carl Winter.

Biography Winter was born in 1908, in Seattle. A red diaper baby, her parents were Marxist activists Alfred Wagenknecht and Hortense Allison. She grew up in Cleveland, where her family moved to when she was five years old. During World War I, her father was imprisoned in Canton due to being a conscientious objector. Throughout her childhood, she was involved in a socialist church and helped deliver copies of a socialist newspaper, The Ohio Socialist. She joined the Young Communist League USA, followed by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

During the 1926 Passaic textile strike, Winter worked at the union relief office, which her father was the organizer of. In 1927, she married fellow Communist Carl Winter, who she met in her senior year of high school. In the late 1920s, she and her husband moved to New York City. There, she worked as an organizer for the Trade Union Unity League. She was also a founding member of the Office and Professional Employees International Union. She continued her organizing through the Great Depression in the United States, and during that time also worked as a journalist for the Daily Worker. They moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, and in 1942, their only child, daughter Michele, was born. They moved to Detroit . In 1965, she and her husband returned to New York City, where she again worked as an organizer. She was a founding member of the U.S. Peace Council. It was around this time where she also served as International Affairs Secretary of the CPUSA.

Winter lived the remainder of her life in Detroit, where she held offices in the Michigan branch of the CPUSA. She died there on December 13, 2001, aged 92 or 93.