Alberto Moreau

1897 – 1977

He was born Alberto Moise on December 15, 1897 in Salonika, at that time part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents were Sephardic Jews and Salonika was renowned at the time for the size and activism of the socialist movement in the Sephardic Jewish community. He was active in the socialist movement from an early age and was briefly jailed in 1915 for his opposition to World War I. He emigrated to the United States in 1916.

Initially, Moreau was involved in the leftwing of the US Socialist Party, working among its Spanish speaking members and supporters. He joined the Communist Party in 1920 and quickly became a leading figure among those working with the Spanish speaking community in New York City. He participated in the founding of the Workers (Communist) Party in 1925 and soon held a variety of positions within the organization. At the local level he was a Member of the New York City Central Committee, Member of the New York District Committee. Nationally, in 1929 he was Secretary of the Spanish Bureau of the Central Committee and then in 1930-31 Secretary of the Colonial Department of the Central Committee. He played a leading role in convincing the Party to make a priority of work among Latinos in the U.S.

In 1927 he traveled to the Soviet Union and, upon his return, lectured on what he had seen there.

In 1928 he was the Workers (Communist) Party candidate for the New York State Assembly 17th District and the Party's Harlem Campaign Election Director. In 1929 he was again the Party's candidate for the New York State Assembly 17th District.

Moreau was active in a variety of Party mass organizations, including the Club Obrero Español, that he helped to found and where he regularly lectured. In 1929, together with Leon Slavin Ruiz, he authored the first US Communist pamphlet on Latin American immigrant workers in the United States: “Los Latino-Americanos en los Estados Unidos.”

Moreau was secretary of the US All-American Anti-Imperialist League and was a member of the US delegation to the Second World Congress Against Imperialism, held in Frankfurt in 1929.

In the early 1930s he began working in the apparatus of the Communist International, including as a member of the Secretariat of the Caribbean Bureau of Socorro Rojo Internacional. From its creation sometime in 1931, he was a member of the Comintern’s Caribbean Bureau and later its secretary from 1933-1935. The Bureau was responsible for the Communist Parties in Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia.

In 1932, he represented the Bureau at the 5th Plenum of the Communist Party of Cuba. In 1934 he did the same at the Party’s second congress. He was a member of the committee that produced the founding program of the Communist Party of Venezuela.

During this period he wrote extensively for the Communist press, including in The Communist, Daily Worker, Labor Defender, International Press Correspondence, The Negro Worker, Mundo Obrero, Vida Obrera, El Luchador del Caribe, El Trabajador Latinoamericano, and La Correspondencia Sudamericana. In additional to Albert Moreau, he wrote under the pseudonyms John Bell, Manuel Valencia and Alfredo Moreno.

In 1936 he returned to working for the Communist Party, USA primarily in the field of education, including as the director of the New York State Party School Commission. He reguarly taught courses at the New York Workers School, where he was Director of the Extension Division, and later, at the Jefferson School of Social Science.

Moreau continued to be an active Party leader for the rest of his life in various capacities, in the National Committee and on the NY District CP Committee, the Puerto Rican Commission, and the Latin American Commission.

He died in 1977 and his ashes were interred at Waldheim Cemetery, Chicago, near the graves of the Haymarket Martyrs.