[1] In his memoirs, Freeman recalled a traumatic boyhood incident which had followed shortly after a pogrom of the Jewish population of a neighboring town: Less than a week later a bearded peasant came into my mother's store drunk.
[2]Along with hundreds of thousands of others fleeing ethnic violence in Russia, the Freemans emigrated to the United States in 1904.
[3] Following graduation from Columbia, Freeman went to work on the editorial staff of a book project initiated by Harper's Magazine entitled Illustrated History of the World War.
[4] Freeman went abroad in 1920 to take a position on the staff of the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune, later moving to London to work for the paper from that location.
[4] In 1922, Freeman returned to New York City, where he soon landed a staff position on Garment News, the New York-based publication of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union.
[4] He became an editorial staff member of the left-wing artistic magazine The Liberator in 1922, and was promoted to Associate Editor of the publication in 1923.
[5] He was subsequently active in various mass organizations of the party, including the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born and the All-America Anti-Imperialist League.
The Freeman's social circle included Harry's wife Vera Schaap (wife of Al Schaap, a Young Communist League founder), Sender Garlin, Abe Magill, James S. Allen, Joseph North (of The Daily Worker and New Masses), Anna Rochester, Grace Hutchins, Nadya Pavlov, and Kenneth Durant.
[7] Freeman was a founding editor of Partisan Review in 1934, a publication which touted itself as "A Bi-Monthly of Revolutionary Literature Published by the John Reed Club of New York."
[3] From 1948 until 1961, Freeman worked in the private sector in the field of public relations, employed by the firms of Edward L. Bernays (1948–1952) and Executive Research, Inc.
[3][6] In 1929, while working for TASS in Mexico, Freeman met and married Ione Robinson, an American painter who modeled for and studied under Diego Rivera.
[10] Freeman married American journalist, abstract painter, and art critic, Charmion von Wiegand, in 1932[11][12] or 1934,[13] in New York.
[6] Some of Freeman's papers, consisting of 4 linear feet of material, are housed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University in New York City.