Ben Rubin (legislator)
Ben Rubin (December 20, 1886 – February 24, 1942) was a cigar maker, zookeeper, union activist and member of the Wisconsin State Assembly from Milwaukee who served four terms. He was elected in 1930 and served one term as a Socialist. He was later elected as a Progressive on a fusion ticket, serving for six years (1937–1942).
Rubin's district had the largest concentration of African-Americans in Wisconsin, and he was the author of a number of civil rights bills on topics such as insurance, employment by regulated utilities, and public accommodations.
Background
Rubin was born December 20, 1886, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended public school to the age of ten, when he became an apprentice in a cigar factory. He worked as cigar maker up to 1919, and during these years was a member of and served offices in the Cigar Makers' Union. In 1919, he went to work as a zookeeper in the Washington Park Zoological Garden. When first elected to the Assembly in 1930 he had been president of the Building Service Employees Union and secretary of the Central Board of Milwaukee municipal employees' unions, and had been (by his estimate) a member of the Socialist Party for about twenty years.
