Joseph Lewis

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1889, Joseph Lewis left school young because of poverty and was largely self-educated. Reading writers such as Thomas Paine and Robert G. Ingersoll helped shape the ideas that would define his life and work.

Lewis went on to become an American author, publisher, lecturer, and legal activist associated with the freethought movement. He led Freethinkers of America and wrote extensively against organized religion, while also promoting free expression and the writings of Paine and Ingersoll.

His work made him a prominent public atheist in the United States during the mid-1900s. Although strongly controversial in his own time, he remains a notable figure in the history of American secularism and radical publishing.