Noel Ignatiev grew up in Philadelphia in the 1940s. He wrote in his memoir, Acceptable Men, that “from the time I was a youngster I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to revolution.” His parents had both been communists and he inherited the family business, traversing over his lifetime a variety of revolutionary groupings, from Stalinist to proto-anarchist. A man ahead of his time, he maintained a steady focus on the fight against racial oppression.