James Ferdinand Morton Jr.

[2] A newspaper article from 1906 refers a little to his youth - that he worked as a "newsboy, bootblack, an organ blower, and an employe (sic) in a jelly factory".

[1] The Harvard Secretary's Report of 1896 noted by then he was in the temperate Independent Order of Good Templars, animal rights oriented New England Anti-Vivisection Society and had campaigned under the People's Party.

[13] When living in the West Morton wrote for or edited various anarchist journals[5][14] such as Free Society,[15] Discontent, The Demonstrator, and Emma Goldman's Mother Earth[16] as well as the Freethought periodical Truth Seeker and lived at the Home, Washington anarchist commune which had been raided though Morton was not arrested,[17] and was still present when the news of the assassination attempt against US President William McKinley arrived.

[14] He campaigned actively for civil rights for blacks, challenged productions like Thomas Dixon's The Clansman,[3] and in 1906 published The Curse of Race Prejudice,[21] which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's The Crisis listed among its suggested reading materials in many editions over the years.

[30] A third topic was of lasting concern to Morton—the facets of advocacy for women, including suffrage,[31] feminism,[32] and conventions on limitations on sexuality and contraception.

[46]), publisher of The Brooklynite, and named after the traditional Blue pencil editor's corrections, and supported appreciation of literature in a number of talks.

[50] Morton was a key member of the Kalem Club, the close circle of friends around Lovecraft in New York City in the mid 1920s.

[2][4] Beginning in 1907 Morton also published a series of articles under "Fragments of a Mental Autobiography" in a journal named Libra[53] which outlines his religious background beginning with Baptist family heritage, goes through Unitarian relatives, and Theosophy exploration,[54] (he was president of the Boston Theosophical Society in 1895)[7] and placing Jesus and the Buddha among those on the highest level of his admiration even if he found fault with all scripture and organized religion.

It held place for what was best in Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Freethought and all the rest, warring with none of these, but finding each of them definitely serviceable to the larger spiritual plan of the universe.

It increases, rather than decreases, my eagerness to continue the investigation of truth without bias, and to labor energetically in all branches of human service.

[59] He received two letters (aka "Tablets") from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, in 1919 which were later published in the Baháʼí journal Star of the West.

[60] Morton increasingly gave public talks related to the religion from the late 1910s through the 20s and into the 30s[61] and during the same period addressed the topic of Esperanto sometimes as a Baháʼí specifically.

[62] He was vice-president of the Esperanto League for North America, and was the lead teacher of that language at the Ferrer Center (a long-running anarchist school) in New York City.

Jaxon had been an anarchist a decade before and been involved in another commune of sorts at Topolobampo Mexico, and then joined the religion about 1897 in Chicago shortly before Aimée.