Eugene Victor Debs was the most important figure in the history of American socialism, a fiery labor organizer and orator who ran for president five times and became the conscience of the American left. Born in Terre Haute, Indiana, he left school young to work on the railroads, an experience that drew him into the labor movement.
Debs first rose to prominence organizing railway workers, and in 1894 he led the great Pullman strike, a nationwide railroad boycott that was crushed by federal troops and an injunction. Jailed for defying that injunction, Debs spent his imprisonment reading Karl Marx and emerged a committed socialist.
He helped found the Socialist Party of America and became its perennial presidential candidate, running five times between 1900 and 1920. A spellbinding speaker who could move audiences to tears, he won growing support, polling nearly a million votes in 1912 and championing the rights of workers, the poor, and the powerless.
His final campaign was the most extraordinary: a passionate opponent of the First World War, Debs was convicted under the Espionage Act in 1918 for a speech denouncing the war, and in 1920 he ran for president from a federal prison cell, again winning nearly a million votes. Released in 1921, his health broken by imprisonment, he died in 1926, revered as a martyr for his cause.