In 1935, Brode followed Oehler in opposing the decision of the Trotskyist organization to link up with leftwardmoving forces inside the Socialist Party by becoming members of that organization. But when the Socialist Workers Party was formed in 1938 and became the American section of the Fourth International, Brode rejoined.
In 1939, he and his wife, whom he had met in the unemployed movement, hitchhiked to Houston. There he worked on the docks and for the rail-
During the war, he advocated inside his union a sliding scale of wages for railroad workers. For this and his other political views, persecuted as an "enemy alien" because of his German citizenship. For a time, no job was open
He managed to get hired by a chemical plant where he helped lead a union organizing drive at the time of the MeCarthy anticommunist hysteria. Management replied by locking out all the workers indefinitely. In 1952, he returned to the railroads and kept the job until he retired in
When the rise of the civil rights movement and later the growing opposition to the war in Vietnam broke the political quiescence of the previous decade, Brode was quick to lend a hand. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he played a central role in reestablishing a Houston
His activity earned him the hatred of right-wing vigilantes and the Klan. His house was shot up several times and in 1970 a defense committee raised funds to put up a wall of sandbags to shield it from gunfire. A united campaign eventually forced a series of indictments that curtailed the terrorists.
Brode became separated from the SWP in the course of a political dispute in the mid-1970s but continued until his death to defend revolutionary Marxism and the Fourth International, helping to circulate the press of the International.
He was a witty, stubbornly independent and courageous man. About 100 friends gathered to remember him on October 26; they included Yvonne Nicolette, a leader of the Houston Committee to End the War in Vietnam; Ben Levy
Democratic Socialists America; John Sarge, from the Socialist
Party; Dave Rossi, personal friend; and others who had known him in his many activities on behalf of the
INPREKOR
Polish INPREKOR No. 6 and the strategy of a general strike;
movement in the West; The British movement and the GDR; Massacre of
Archives of the workers movement:
Felix Morrow: Workers insurrection
Montreuil, France.