Editing Whittaker Chambers (section)

==Background==
[[File:Hartley Hall at Columbia University.jpg|thumb|right|[[Hartley Hall]] at [[Columbia University]], where Chambers boarded in the 1920s]]
Chambers was born in [[Philadelphia]], [[Pennsylvania]],<ref>
[https://books.google.com/books?id=UzpnztnNSdMC&dq=whittaker+chambers+born+philadelphia&pg=PT105 ''Alger Hiss'']</ref> and spent his infancy in [[Brooklyn]]. His family moved to [[Lynbrook, New York|Lynbrook]], [[Long Island]], [[New York State]], in 1904, where he grew up and attended school.<ref name=Britannica/><ref>{{cite news
| first = Thomas
| last = Vinciguerra
| author-link = Thomas Vinciguerra
| title = Ghosts Rest at Whittaker Chambers Home
| newspaper = [[The New York Times]]
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/30/nyregion/ghosts-rest-at-whittaker-chambers-home.html
| date = March 30, 1997
| access-date = October 31, 2018}}</ref> His parents were Jay Chambers and Laha Whittaker. He described his childhood as troubled because of his parents' separation and their need to care for their mentally-ill grandmother. His father was an artist and member of the [[Decorative Designers]]; his mother was a social worker. Chambers's brother, Richard Godfrey Chambers committed suicide shortly after he had withdrawn from college at age 22.<ref>
{{cite news
| title = Dies with Head in Oven
| work = Ithaca Journal
| url = https://ithacajournal.newspapers.com/browse/The%20Ithaca%20Journal_3801/1926/09/13
| date = September 13, 1926
| access-date = May 31, 2019}}</ref> Chambers cited his brother's fate as one of many reasons that he was then drawn to communism. As he wrote, it "offered me what nothing else in the dying world had power to offer at the same intensity, faith and a vision, something for which to live and something for which to die."<ref name=Witness />

===Education===
After graduating from [[South Side High School (Rockville Centre, New York)|South Side High School]] in neighboring [[Rockville Centre, New York|Rockville Centre]] in 1919, Chambers worked itinerantly in Washington and New Orleans, briefly attended [[Williams College]] and then enrolled as a day student at [[Columbia College of Columbia University]].<ref name="Witness" /> At Columbia, his undergraduate peers included [[Meyer Schapiro]], [[Frank S. Hogan]], [[Herbert Solow (journalist)|Herbert Solow]], [[Louis Zukofsky]], [[Arthur F. Burns]], [[Clifton Fadiman]], [[Elliott V. Bell]], [[John Gassner]], [[Lionel Trilling]] (who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel ''The Middle of the Journey''),<ref>
{{cite magazine
| url = https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,917938,00.html
| title = Education: A Sad, Solemn Sweetness
| magazine = [[Time (magazine)|Time]]
| date = November 17, 1975
| access-date = July 23, 2021}}</ref> [[Guy Endore]], and [[City College of New York|City College]] student poet [[Henry Zolinsky]].<ref name=Britannica/> In the intellectual environment of Columbia, he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.<ref>{{Harvnb|Tanenhaus|1998|p=28}}</ref>

In his sophomore year, Chambers joined the [[Boar's Head Society]]<ref name=ahearn>{{cite book
 | first = Barry
 | last = Ahearn
 | title = Zukofsky's "A": An Introduction
 | publisher = University of California Press
 | place = Berkeley, CA
 | page = 12
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=TAF9IoedE9QC&q=Richard+Godfrey+Chambers&pg=PA67
 | date = 1983
 | isbn = 9780520049659
 | access-date = March 5, 2016}}</ref> and wrote a play called ''A Play for Puppets'' for Columbia's literary magazine ''The Morningside'', which he edited. The work was deemed [[blasphemy|blasphemous]] by many students and administrators, and the controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers during his testimony against Hiss. Disheartened over the controversy, Chambers left Columbia in 1925.<ref name="Witness" /> From Columbia, Chambers also knew [[Isaiah Oggins]], who had gone into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers's wife, [[Esther Shemitz]] Chambers, knew Oggins's wife, Nerma Berman Oggins, from the [[Rand School of Social Science]], the [[International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union]], and ''[[The World Tomorrow (magazine)|The World Tomorrow]]''.<ref>{{cite book
 | last = Meier
 | first = Andrew
 | title = The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin's Secret Service
 | publisher = W. W. Norton
 | year=2008
 | pages = 224–267, 289–300
 | isbn = 978-0-393-06097-3
 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=EpGw3MsCCK8C
 }}</ref>

===Communism espionage===
In 1924, Chambers read [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s ''Soviets at Work'' and was deeply affected by it. He now saw the dysfunctional nature of his family, he would write, as "in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class", a malaise from which communism promised liberation. Chambers's biographer [[Sam Tanenhaus]] wrote that Lenin's authoritarianism was "precisely what attracts Chambers.&nbsp;... He had at last found his church."{{citation needed|date=August 2020}} Chambers became a [[Marxist]] and, in 1925, joined the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party of the United States]] (CPUSA), then known as the [[Workers Party of America]].