Edward Teixeira, 72, communist organizer who put a smiling face on the party
Edward S. Teixeira was a communist and proud of it. But he didn't fit the stereotype of the fanatical, unsmiling zealot. The longtime organizer for the New England Communist Party was always happy to warn of the evils of capitalism with a wink and a smile over a mug of beer at Clery's Pub in the South End, where he was a regular.
"He was a very warm and chatty man who had a way with people," Sam Webb, national chairman of the Communist Party said yesterday. "He put a human face on the Communist Party that was very different from the stereotype."
Mr. Teixeira who suffered from heart disease, died Tuesday in Boston. He was 72.
He grew up in New Bedford, where he worked in a shoeshine parlor as a youth. Shortly after graduating from high school, he got a job at a local electronics factory.
"Conditions at the factory were terrible, and New Bedford was a union town," said his wife, Tillyruth (Handleman). "He was a union organizer before he was old enough to vote."
His wife said he joined the Communist Party because he was an idealist. "He profoundly believed that people should get to keep what they worked for," she said. "He was a bright-eyed former altar boy, who took it seriously when he was told Jesus threw the moneylenders out."
Mr. Teixiera was also active in the civil rights and antiwar movements. "He felt war was a way of exploiting working people," said his wife.
Mr. Teixeira, who sometimes distributed leaflets in front of the church where he served Mass, eventually found himself blacklisted from local factories.
He could not get a job in New Bedford, so he moved to Boston, where he worked in a succession of factory jobs. "Every time he got a really good job or a job with skill training, the company would move South," his wife said.
From the mid 1960s to the mid-1970s, he was the proprietor of the Frederick Douglass Bookstore in the Back Bay, while continuing his organizing work for the Communist Party.
He worked at a cluttered desk in a cubbyhole, surrounded by stacks of books such as "Lenin's Ideas Realized" and "Black Worker in the Deep South." On the wall hung a large picture of Angela Davis, a communist and a hero to militant black youth of the time.
"It was a hangout for the civil rights movement," his wife said.
It was also a lightning rod for right-wing demonstrators who sometimes picketed the shop. The establishment was smoke-bombed in 1966.
In 1972, Mr. Teixiera ran for the state House of Representatives in Ward 14 in Boston. When the State Election Commission ruled that it was illegal to have the Communist Party on the ballot, he successfully sued to have the adjective communist placed beside his name.
"I am running to win," Mr. Teixiera said in a story published in the Globe in 1972. "In this time of high unemployment, increasing taxes and prices, continuing war, and deteriorating public services, people are ready to listen to and support the Communist Party program for radical change."
They were not. Mr. Teixeira lost the election by a wide margin.
In recent years, the small man with the mustache and the thick-rimmed glasses suffered from heart disease, and his doctor advised him that it was too stressful for him to do party work. He sometimes found work as a bartender and was active in the Massachusetts Senior Action Council.
"It took a lot of courage for him to stand up for his convictions when it clashed with what other people believed," said his daughter, Juliet of Attleboro. "But he taught us all that if you saw something wrong, you should speak up. He was a great role model and a great human being."
Besides his wife and daughter, he leaves two sons, Victor of Watertown and Robert of Ann
A memorial service is being planned.
