Copyright 1999. Esther Katz. All rights reserved.
Writer and political activist. Married Pearl K. Merritt (1934), no children. Born in Massachusetts to an old New England family, Morton emerged as a radical reformer and activist. A classmate of W.E.B. DuBois at Harvard, Morton became an outspoken advocate of civil rights for blacks and other minorities. An early member of the NAACP, he published The Curse of Race Prejudice
in 1906. Morton was also a supporter of Henry George's single-tax program, serving as field secretary of New York's Single Tax League from 1916-1918. Living for a time in California, Morton edited such anarchist journals as Free Society
and wrote articles for Emma Goldman's Mother Earth
. Morton was interested in words and language, was a vice-president of the Esperanto Association and in 1911, taught English and Esperanto at the anarchist-run Ferrer School
in New York. In addition to lecturing on the ethical benefits of the single tax, Morton wrote and spoke in support of free speech and birth control. He also advised Margaret Sanger on tactics for handling her 1914 indictment <308623>
for publishing The Woman Rebel
. Morton moved to Paterson, NJ in 1924, where he became curator of the Paterson Museum.