Cornell Charles

American Communist. While a teacher in San Francisco in the 1930s, he became active in the American Trotskyist movement and joined the newly founded Socialist Workers Party in 1938. From June 1939 to August 1940, he served as one of Leon Trotskys bodyguards while Trotsky was living in exile at Coyoacán, Mexico. Cornell could not prevent the fatal attack on Trotsky on 20 August 1940, which was carried out by the Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader, who had infiltrated the household and stabbed him in the back of the head with an icepick. With Joe Hansen, Cornell overwhelmed the assassin and handed him over to the police. On his return to the USA, Cornell remained a member of the Socialist Workers Party in New York City for a couple of years. Eventually he went into the real-estate business, first in Connecticut, and later in Arizona. He died on 1 January 1989. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less