19 Facts About Vern Partlow

Vern Partlow was an American newspaper reporter and folk singer who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

Vern Partlow composed the popular satirical song "Old Man Atom," which was famously banned during the period.

Vern Partlow was born Verneil Hoover Partlow in Bloomington, Illinois, a son of Abner Moses Partlow and Florence Hoover Partlow.

Vern Partlow's father Abner Moses Partlow was born in Chester, Meigs County, Ohio, son of Moses Ackley Partlow, a farmer who family tradition states was a local preacher and with his older brother Joseph Partlow was captured briefly by Colonel Morgan's troops as they retreated through the Partlow family farm in 1863.

Vern Partlow worked in early radio and wire services in Wisconsin and Chicago.

Vern Partlow began working for Manchester Boddy's Los Angeles Daily News in the 1930s.

Vern Partlow worked as a crime reporter as well as a writer of feature stories.

Vern Partlow was active in the trade union movement early in his life, even though he was actively working as a newspaper journalist.

Around the time Vern Partlow composed this song, he became a member of People's Songs.

Vern Partlow became part of People's Songs in late 1945, after several branches of the group were formed in California.

For many years thereafter, Vern Partlow remained at the core of left-wing musical culture on the West Coast.

Vern Partlow was a public relations consultant to the California Attorney General races of Edmund G "Pat" Brown in 1946 and 1950.

Vern Partlow had interviewed nuclear weapons scientists for the Los Angeles Daily News in the early fall of 1945.

In October 1952, Vern Partlow was named a member of the Communist Party by witnesses testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Vern Partlow was asked by the Los Angeles Daily News to publicly declare that he was not a member of the Communist Party USA, and he refused on the grounds that no one should be required to publicly declare his political affiliation as a requirement to keep his job.

Vern Partlow was a public relations consultant in the Los Angeles mayoral campaign of Fletcher Bowron in the early 1950s, the Los Angeles City Council races of Edward R Roybal in the late 1950s.

Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, Vern Partlow worked as a publicist and public relations expert for a number of Jewish organizations in the Los Angeles area.

Vern Partlow remained part of the protest song movement as well.

Vern Partlow died of cancer in a hospital in Los Angeles, California, on March 1,1987.