H.H. (Harold Harwell) Lewis was born on January 13, 1901, near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He was one of four children (one of three sons) of Thomas and Catherine (Tisdale) Lewis. He received his secondary education at the Southeast Missouri State Normal School Training School. In his autobiographical story “Down the Skidway,” Lewis recounted his travels as a common laborer in the Southwest during the Great Depression. He eventually returned to the family farm to pursue a career of freelance writing, including publishing his own magazine, The Outlander. Lewis wrote for a variety of publications, including H.L. Mencken’s American Mercury, the New Republic, the New Masses and the Daily Worker. He received Poetry magazine’s Harriet Munroe Lyric Award in 1938 for his “Farmhand’s Refrain.” The Missouri farmhand poet and Communist essayist wrote both poetry and prose on the condition of Native Americans, African Americans, and sharecroppers. His writings were translated into Japanese, French, German and Russian. He was praised in the Soviet Union for his proletarian and revolutionary sympathies. After several unsuccessful attempts to secure a Guggenheim Fellowship to support research on sharecroppers, Lewis devoted the rest of his life to exposing subversive threats to his country at home and abroad. He was interested particularly in conspiracies relating to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the role played by the Communist Party and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1981 Lewis was the subject of the interview H.H. Lewis: The Farmhand Poet. He died in Chaffee, Missouri, on January 24, 1985. He is buried in Cape Girardeau.