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Gus Hall was the General Secretary of Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate. As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel manufacturers. During the Second Red Scare, Hall was indicted under the Smith Act and was sentenced to eight years in prison. After his release, Hall led the CPUSA for over 40 years, often taking an orthodox Marxist–Leninist stance.
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The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a far-left communist party in the United States established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.
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Lee Pressman was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly exposed in 1948 as a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s, following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948, he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big."
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Joseph Zack Kornfeder (1898–1963), sometimes surnamed "Kornfedder" in the press, was an Austro-Hungarian-born American who was a founding member and top leader of the Communist Party of America in 1919, Communist Party USA leader, and Comintern representative to South America (1930-1931) before quitting the Party in 1934. After his wife was arrested by the secret police during the Great Terror (1937-1938), Zack became a vehement Anti-Communist and testified before the Dies Committee (1939) and Canwell Committee (1948).
During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.
American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950), is a 5-to-1 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Taft–Hartley Act's imposition of an anti-communist oath on labor union leaders does not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, is not an ex post facto law or bill of attainder in violation of Article One, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, and is not a "test oath" in violation of Article Six of the Constitution.
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Joseph Forer (1910–1986) was a 20th-Century American attorney who, with partner David Rein, supported Progressive causes including discriminated communists and African-Americans. Forer was one of the founders o the National Lawyers Guild and its DC chapter. He was also an expert in the "Lost Laws" of Washington, DC, enacted in 1872–1873, that outlawed segregation at business places.
Abraham Unger (1899–1975) was a 20th-Century American lawyer, co-founder and officer of the National Lawyers Guild, and partner in the law firm of Freedman and Unger. Defendants included: Communist Party (CPUSA), state-level Party organizations, individual Communist and Progressive activists, radical and/or Communist-associated labor unions and their leaders and activists, Puerto Rican nationalists, and fellow lawyers charged with contempt and other crimes in connection with their defense of radicals. Colleague Victor Rabinowitz noted in his memoir that Unger was "a lawyer who frequently represented the Communist party."
Charles J. Hendley (1881-1962) was a teacher, education reformer, union activist, and president of the New York City Teachers Union (TU) from 1935 to 1945.
Abram Flaxer (1904-1989) was an American union leader who founded the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America (SCMWA), which merged with the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA) to form the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA), of which he became president.
References
- ↑ Lowitt, Interpreting Twentieth-Century America: A Reader, 1973, p. 452.
- ↑ The ARTA should not be confused with the United Radio Telegraphists Association, a similar union in the U.S. founded in 1917 but which had disbanded by 1922. See: May-Stewart, Handbook of American Trade-Unions: 1936 Edition, 1936, p. 278.
- ↑ Downey, "Telegraph Messenger Strikes and Their Impact on Telegraph Unionization," in The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, 2009, p. 516.
- ↑ Stark, "Some Unions Will Sign Anti-Communist Papers," New York Times, August 31, 1947; Busky, Communism in History and Theory: Asia, Africa, and the Americas, 2002, p. 155; Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957, 1975, p. 143; Rabinowitz, Unrepentant Leftist: A Lawyer's Memoir, 1996, p. 31.
- ↑ Subversive Infiltration in the Telegraph Industry. US GPO. 30 August 1951. Retrieved 29 November 2019.
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