Walter A. O'Brien, Jr. (December 19, 1914 – July 3, 1998) was a

Progressive Party Progressive Party may refer to: Active parties * Progressive Party, Brazil * Progressive Party (Chile) * Progressive Party of Working People, Cyprus * Dominica Progressive Party * Progressive Party (Iceland) * Progressive Party (Sardinia), Ita ...

politician from Boston, Massachusetts, United States in the 1940s and the fourth child of Walter A. O’Brien from Portland and Susan Ann Crosby, both third generation

Irish Americans , image = Irish ancestry in the USA 2018; Where Irish eyes are Smiling.png , image_caption = Irish Americans, % of population by state , caption = Notable Irish Americans , population = 36,115,472 (10.9%) alone ...

. In 1949 O'Brien ran for mayor of Boston. Lacking sufficient financial support to pay for

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

advertising, O'Brien commissioned campaign songs from local folk artists promoting his themes, recorded them, then played them out of a

loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ...

on a truck driven through town. O'Brien was fined $10 for disturbing the peace as a result. One of those songs, "Charlie on the M.T.A.", has survived all memory of O'Brien himself, thanks largely to the

Kingston Trio The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, ...

, who recorded and released the song (as "M.T.A.") in 1959. The smart card for Boston transit is called a " CharlieCard". O'Brien finished last in the mayoral race. In the election of November 8, 1949,

John B. Hynes John Bernard Hynes (September 22, 1897 – January 6, 1970), was an American politician serving as the Mayor of Boston from 1950 to 1960. Career Hynes began his career at city hall in 1920 as a clerk in the health department. He later transferre ...

received 137,930 votes, James M. Curley received 126,000, Patrick J. "Sonny" McDonough received 22,230, George F. Oakes received 7,171, and Walter A. O'Brien received 3,659 (1.2% of the total). By the mid-1950s, the strong leftist policies of the Progressives combined with the Red Scare led to their public perception as

communists Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

(though they had no connection to the existing

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

). As a result, O'Brien disappeared into political obscurity along with his party. The Kingston Trio changed O'Brien's name in their version of the song to avoid it being associated with his party. In 1954

Herbert Philbrick Herbert Arthur Philbrick (May 11, 1915 – August 16, 1993) was a Boston-area advertising executive who was encouraged by the FBI to infiltrate the Communist Party USA between 1940 and 1949. His autobiography was the basis for the 1950s television ...

testified before a hearing of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee that he knew Walter O'Brien to be a member of the Communist Party and had attended cell meetings with him. After his political career ended, O'Brien retired to Harpswell in his home state of

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

, where he worked as a librarian and later ran an intermittently open used bookstore.''Walter O’Brien: The Man Who Never Returned''
Peter Dreier and Jim Vrabel. Jacobin.

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Obrien, Walter A. 1914 births 1998 deaths Massachusetts local politicians Progressive Party (United States, 1948) politicians 20th-century American politicians