Wellman returned home at the start of the Cold War, to help organize and lead the communist party in the United States.

His mother, a Russian immigrant, believed in socialism and took Wellman to hear Eugene Debs, the leading socialist at the time, deliver a speech.

When war erupted in Spain, he and his friends, still young, had a naïve understanding of world politics and social progress, but signed up to fight in the international brigades anyway.

Later, Wellman became a leader among American Communists, but when the Soviet Union's corruption was exposed, he abandoned the movement to promote Civil Rights and protest the war in Vietnam.

Wellman acknowledges the fact that his career disadvantaged his family, but he felt that his work was necessary to change society.