Carroll Blair, the son of poor French-Canadian parents, was born in Berlin, Wisconsin, October 4, 1906, and graduated as salutatorian from Wautoma High School in 1923. After working for four years he saved enough money to enroll at the University of Wisconsin, where he was an outstanding student for two years in the Meiklejohn Experimental College and a participant in campus politics and sports.
Blair left the University in 1929, went to Milwaukee, and in 1930 became a member of the Communist Party. That year he was arrested for striking a policeman in the Haymarket Square Riot, and he subsequently served a year in prison. To protect his family, he changed his name at this time to Fred Bassett and ultimately to Fred Bassett Blair. During the Depression Blair was unable to find work and so he devoted himself to organizing the unemployed. After 1936 he became a paid party functionary, sometimes serving as state chairman and as a member of the Wisconsin executive board. Blair also served as a member of the national committee of the Communist Party from 1945 to 1948. In Wisconsin, he was a candidate for senator in 1938 and for governor in 1930, 1932, 1940, 1942, and 1966. He has edited the Wisconsin edition of The Worker and is a frequently-published poet.
At the height of the McCarthy era Blair and his wife were forced underground, but they returned to Milwaukee in 1955 to open a secondhand bookstore. They closed the bookstore in 1969, but Blair has remained active as a writer, poet, and party leader.
