Richard O. Boyer

Richard O. Boyer (10 January 1903 – 7 August 1973) was an American freelance journalist.

Richard Owen Boyer was born on January 10, 1903, in Chicago.^[1]

Boyer worked at various newspapers, including the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Boston Herald, New Orleans Item, and Dallas Times Herald.^[1]

Boyer co-founded the Boston Newspaper Guild.

He contributed to The New Yorker magazine during the 1930s and 1940s.^[1]

In the late 1940s, he was foreign correspondent for PM newspaper in Germany, France, Italy, and Central America. He was also editor of U.S. Week.^[1]

In 1948, he was an editor of the cultural monthly magazine Masses & Mainstream.^[1]

Before appearing at a Senate hearing, he had written for the Daily Worker. He was implicated in Winston Burdett's June 1955 testimony before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee hearings as a Communist. The Senate subpoenaed Boyer in November 1955 and he testified the next January.^{[citation needed]} At the hearing, Boyer refused to answer questions about his affiliations with the Communist Party, under the protection of the First and Fifth Amendment.^[2] He was one of many witnesses in 1956 called by the Subcommittee in an "inquiry into New York press. To questions of whether he was a Communist or whether others were party members, the write invoked both his First and Fifth Amendments. Privately, however, Boyer identified himself as a Communist, saying that he had been a party member from the 1930s until 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev, the then Soviet leader, disclosed the secrets of the Stalin regime."^[2]

Boyer died age 70 on August 7, 1973.^[2]

• The Dark Ship (1947)^[1]
• If This Be Treason (1948)^[1]
• Labor's Untold Story: The Adventure Story of the Battles, Betrayals and Victories of American Working Men and Women (1955)

• Time magazine article, January 16, 1956
• Richard O. Boyer's obituary at the New York Times