Joseph William Sharts (September 14, 1875 – May 15, 1965) was an American attorney, political activist, newspaper editor, and novelist. Sharts is best remembered as a popular novelist of the first two decades of the 20th century and as a defense attorney in a number of high-profile political trials, including cases involving Socialist Party of America leader Eugene V. Debs, future Workers (Communist) Party leader C. E. Ruthenberg, and radical clergyman William Montgomery Brown.
Sharts was a top leader of the Socialist Party of America, sitting on that group's governing National Executive Committee from 1925 to 1932. He was three times the Socialist candidate for Governor of Ohio.
Joseph Sharts was born September 14, 1875, in Hamilton, Ohio. He was the son of an attorney who moved the family to the small city of Dayton, Ohio, when Joseph was just a boy. It was in Dayton that Sharts attended public school, graduating from high school there. [1]
After graduation Sharts enrolled at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1897. [1]
Sharts gained some note as the writer of popular fiction, publishing his first book, Ezra Caine, in 1900. [1] Sharts published six novels in all between 1900 and 1913, these being essentially works of light romantic fiction in which protagonists battled obstacles to their realization of true love en route to inevitable happy endings. [2]
Sharts's literary work was lauded by critics for high competence in execution, although criticized for lacking imagination with respect to plot. [3]
A graduate of Harvard Law School, Sharts was an attorney who participated in a number of important political cases during the late 1910s and the decade of the 1920s. During World War I he defended a number of individuals tried for various violations of the Espionage Act, including most prominently a position on the defense team of Socialist Party icon Eugene V. Debs. [1] He had earlier headed the defense of future Communist Party leaders C. E. Ruthenberg, Alfred Wagenknecht, and Charles Baker, charged with violation of the Espionage Act in Ohio in 1917.
Although not himself a Communist, Sharts did not hesitate to represent Communists in legal proceedings, including a 1920 case filed by the Communist Labor Party of America against the American Legion for damages suffered during a mob action against one of their offices. [1]
During the early 1920s Sharts was the publisher and editor of The Miami Valley Socialist, a weekly newspaper which covered contemporary political news and promulgated the ideas of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). [4] In this role he was instrumental in rebuilding the Socialist Party of Ohio, which had been shattered and nearly obliterated in the 1919 split of the left wing to form new Communist political organizations. [5]
Sharts was a member of the governing National Executive Committee of the national Socialist Party from 1925 to 1932, having held a similar post on the short-lived Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA), an exploratory group for a potential labor party which existed from 1922 to 1925. [1]
Sharts was a candidate for Ohio Attorney General in 1920. He would later run for Governor of Ohio three times, heading the SPA's ticket in the state in 1926, 1928, and again in 1932. [6] Sharts's best showing was in his final gubernatorial race, when he was the recipient of slightly more than 1.25% of total votes cast. [6]
In 1924 Sharts played a leading role in the trial of defrocked Episcopal bishop William Montgomery Brown, a Communist Party supporter from Massillon, Ohio, in his trial for heresy. [1]
Sharts was a popular figure within Socialist Party ranks and was among those considered for nomination for President of the United States at the SPA's 1928 convention in New York City. [5]
Sharts was a freemason and was a member of the United Spanish War Veterans. [1]
Joseph Sharts died May 15, 1965, in Dayton, Ohio. [7] He was 89 years old at the time of his death.
His estate was probated in Dayton. His will specified that his estate be divided among the descendants of his great, great grandparents (sixteen people). The executor was unable to identify all of those ancestors, and was unable to identify all of the identified ancestors' descendants before the probate case was closed due to lack of time and funding.The executor estimated the number of living descendants of merely one great, great grandparent --- Jonathan Minshall --- to be in "the hundreds, if not thousands." [8]
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: CS1 maint: location (link)The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.
The Communist Labor Party of America (CLPA) was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA.
The Proletarian Party of America (PPA) was a small communist political party in the United States, originating in 1920 and terminated in 1971. Originally an offshoot of the Communist Party of America, the group maintained an independent existence for over five decades. It is best remembered for carrying forward Charles H. Kerr & Co., the oldest publisher of Marxist books in America.
Charles Emil Ruthenberg was an American Marxist politician who was the founder and first head of the American Communist Party (CPUSA). He is one of four Americans to be buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Benjamin Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. At the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential during the McCarthy period. Gitlow remained a leading anti-communist up to the time of his death.
The Workers Party of America (WPA) was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929.
Alfred Wagenknecht was an American Marxist activist and political functionary. He is best remembered for having played a critical role in the establishment of the American Communist Party in 1919 as a leader of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. Wagenknecht served as executive secretary of the Communist Labor Party of America and the United Communist Party of America in 1919 and 1920, respectively.
John Louis Engdahl was an American socialist journalist and newspaper editor. One of the leading journalists of the Socialist Party of America, Engdahl joined the Communist movement in 1921 and continued to employ his talents in that organization as the first editor of The Daily Worker. Engdahl was also a key leader of the International Red Aid (MOPR) organization based in Moscow, where he died in 1932.
James J. Oneal, a founding member of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), was a prominent socialist journalist, historian, and party activist who played a decisive role in the bitter party splits of 1919–21 and 1934–36.
Ludwig Erwin Alfred "Dutch" Katterfeld was an American socialist politician, a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America, a Comintern functionary, and a magazine editor.
David Courtney Westenhaver was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
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).
Emil M. Herman (1879–1928) was a German-American socialist and anti-war activist. A three-time candidate for Congress on the ticket of the Socialist Party of America, Herman is best remembered for his imprisonment by the Wilson administration due to his political activity in the outspokenly anti-war Socialist Party of America during World War I.
The Socialist Party of Washington was the Washington state section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), an organization originally established as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations.
Hermon Franklin Titus (1852–1931) was an American socialist activist and newspaper publisher. Originally a Baptist minister before becoming a medical doctor, Titus is best remembered as a factional leader of the Washington state affiliate of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) during the first decade of the 20th century and as editor of The Socialist, one of the most-widely circulated radical newspapers of that period. Titus led a party split from the Socialist Party of Washington in 1909 and helped found a short-lived organization called the Wage Workers Party. His paper failed with that organization and he died in self-chosen obscurity in New York City, a medical doctor working in a low paying service job.
Elmer T. Allison was an American socialist, political activist, and newspaper editor. He is best remembered as the longtime editor of The Cleveland Socialist and The Toiler, forerunners of the official organ of the Communist Party, USA, The Daily Worker.
Alexander "Alex" Trachtenberg was an American publisher of radical political books and pamphlets, founder and manager of International Publishers of New York. He was a longtime activist in the Socialist Party of America and later in the Communist Party USA. For more than eight decades, his International Publishers was a part of the publishing arm of the American communist movement. He served as a member of the CPUSA's Central Control Committee. During the period of McCarthyism in America, Trachtenberg was twice subject to prosecution and convicted under the Smith Act; the convictions were overturned, the first by recanting of a government witness and the second by a US Circuit Court of Appeals decision in 1958.
Isaac Edward "Ed" Ferguson (1888–1964) was a North American lawyer and political activist. A founding member of the Communist Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party, USA, Ferguson is best remembered a co-defendant and attorney in a highly publicized 1920 trial together with party leader C. E. Ruthenberg for alleged violation of New York state law against so-called "criminal anarchism." Following conviction and a term served at Sing Sing prison, Ferguson withdrew from radical politics to become a prominent Chicago civil rights attorney.
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
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