H. H. Lewis

Who was H. H. Lewis?

H.H. Lewis was a Communist American poet during the 1930s thru the 1970s.

Harold Harwell Lewis, or H.H. Lewis as he become known, was born January 13, 1901, near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He was one of four children born to Thomas and Catherine Tisdale Lewis.

He received his secondary education at the Southeast Missouri State Normal School--Third District Training School, which is now named Southeast Missouri State University. During the Great Depression, Lewis traveled as a common laborer in the Southwest. Away from his parents for the first time, Lewis was incredibly poor and many of his encounters and experiences traveling would fuel his future career.

That "stove-devil," heat-blanched and heat-crazed, gaunt and flagrantly dirty, up against it for twelve hours daily, received $60 per month. The waiters got $1.25 per day. The restaurant belonged to a chain of such for dime-gripping bums and low-paid working-stiffs. Came gringos and greasers for coffee and stew, hash, beans—a large bowl of brown beans for a dime. Came Negroes, humblest of all. Came "mouthmen" and "wolves," proletarian beasts of the ghastliest ilk. From the poverty of America, in this bottomless hell, came these contorted and condemned souls.