who supported a settlement house and other philanthropic ventures. They finally divorced over political differences; she was an advocate for birth control and political activism. Romain returned to college and in 1930, he received a Bachelor of Science degree from New York University. Stokes died of breast cancer in 1933 at the age of 53. Romain moved to Hollywood for a year to raise money for the Spanish Loyalists, or Republicans. Returning to New York in 1935, he became editor of The Communist, writing under the pseudonym V. J. Jerome. This magazine later became known in 1944 as Political Affairs. He served as its editor until 1955. In 1937, he married Alice Hamburger. Jerome, as he was known, was among the cultural spokesmen of the American Communist Party. He rose in the party hierarchy in the mid-1930s. Membership grew during the economic upheaval and trials of the Great Depression. Between 1935 and 1965, Jerome wrote constantly. He wrote two autobiographical novels, A Lantern for Jeremy (released during the "Foley Square Trials" in 1952), and its sequel, The Paper Bridge (published posthumously in 1966). He also published a collection of vignettes, Unstill Waters (1964). A prolific writer, he created short stories, plays, and literary, and art criticism. But he is best known for his political and cultural essays, such as "The Intellectuals and the War" (1940), "Culture in a Changing World" (1948), and "The Negro in Hollywood Films" (1950). During this period he was chairman of the Party's Cultural Commission and was "considered a bluntly dogmatic thinker," serving a role in the US similar to that of Zhdanov in the Soviet Union. In the postwar period, Congress and local governments reacted to the Cold War with investigations of communist activity. Jerome was prosecuted and convicted under the Smith Act for committing the "overt act" of conspiracy to teach and encourage overthrow of the US government through his pamphlet, "Grasp the Weapon of Culture", which he presented as a report to the Communist Party in 1950. He recommended that the Party consider art and entertainment part of its "mass work". He was indicted in 1951, together with 16 other Communist leaders, during a second wave of trials of communist leaders that took place across the country. The first trial was conducted in New York in 1947. During a nine-month trial in New York's federal Foley Square Courthouse, Jerome passed the long hours