Theodore Draper was born Theodore Dubinsky on September 11, 1912, one of four children. His younger brother was Hal Draper, who became a noted Marxist historian. Theodore's parents were ethnic Jews who emigrated to New York City from Ukraine, then part of the Russian empire. His father, Samuel Dubinsky, was the manager of a shirt factory who died in 1924. His mother, Annie Kornblatt Dubinsky, ran a candy store to make ends meet following her husband's death. He was raised in Brooklyn, New York and graduated from the borough's Boys High School. His mother insisted they change the family name to the "American-sounding" surname "Draper" when Ted was 20 so that the children could avoid anti-semitism during pursuit of their careers. In 1930, Draper enrolled at the College of the City of New York, better known as "City College". It was there that he joined the National Student League (NSL), a mass organization of the Communist Party USA targeted at organizing and mobilizing college students. This marked the start of a decade during which Draper chose to remain reliably within the Communist Party's orbit. Draper later recalled: "My initiation came in the National Student League, which I joined in 1930... Most of its leaders were members of the Young Communist League, but I was not. I preferred being a 'fellow-traveler,' which was how I came to be around it. I was enough of a true believer to be convinced that whatever its faults or shortcomings, only the Communist movement was capable of making the 'Revolution'; a revolutionary, therefore, had to be close to it. Nevertheless, I was unwilling to give up a measure of freedom or absence of discipline, such as I could enjoy as a fellow-traveler." Draper noted that his non-party status "may even have helped me, because it could show that one did not have to be a card-carrying Communist to hold a leading position in the NSL." Membership did come at a cost, however, as a decision was made by the Communist Party to distribute NSL members from City College, where the organization was strong, to other campuses where the fledgling organization had no presence. Draper was instructed to enroll at the Brooklyn branch of City College, forerunner of Brooklyn College, a decision which he later remembered as "one of the saddest days of my life." Draper graduated from Brooklyn College with a B.S. in philosophy in 1933; by this time, the College's National Student League organization "was so large and influential that it could virtually close down the school on May Day."