John Leonard

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John Leonard grew up in Washington, D.C., Jackson Heights, Queens, and Long Beach, California, where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Raised by a single mother, Ruth Smith, he made his way to Harvard University, where he immersed himself in the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, only to drop out in the spring of his second year. He then attended the University of California at Berkeley.

A political leftist, Leonard had an unlikely early patron in conservative leader William F. Buckley, who gave him his first job in journalism at National Review magazine in 1959. He wandered from job to job for years, and at times was homeless. He eventually landed a job working for communist bosses as a union organizer of migrant farm workers, and as a protest organizer in 1967. In 1968, he made a pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.