WThe Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, 54 Stat. 670, 18 U.S.C. § 2385 is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence, and required all non-citizen adult residents to register with the federal government.
WThe Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in New York City from 1949 to 1958 were the result of US federal government prosecutions in the postwar period and during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) were accused of violating the Smith Act, a statute that prohibited advocating violent overthrow of the government. The defendants argued that they advocated a peaceful transition to socialism, and that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and of association protected their membership in a political party. Appeals from these trials reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled on issues in Dennis v. United States (1951) and Yates v. United States (1957).
WJames Patrick Cannon was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
WBenjamin Jefferson "Ben" Davis Jr., was an African-American lawyer and communist who was elected in 1943 to the city council of New York City, representing Harlem. He faced increasing opposition from outside Harlem after the end of World War II. In 1949 he was among a number of communist leaders prosecuted for violating the Smith Act. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
WHarry DeBoer (1903–1992) was an American labor militant and Trotskyist. He was born in Crookston, Minnesota, and worked in the Minneapolis coal yards. DeBoer became one of the leaders of the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 – a particularly well-organized action that resulted in the shutting down of most commercial transport in the city. A leading member of the Socialist Workers Party, DeBoer was imprisoned together with many other SWP leaders under the Smith Act for opposing the US involvement in World War II. In 1987, DeBoer authored the essay "How to Win Strikes: Lessons from the 1934 Minneapolis Truckers Strike", in which he sought to disseminate the tactics used in the Minneapolis strike for the benefit of a new generation of socialists.
WFrancis Xavier Waldron, best known by the pseudonym Eugene Dennis and Tim Ryan, was an American communist politician and union organizer, best remembered as the long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and as named party in Dennis v. United States, a famous McCarthy Era Supreme Court case.
WElizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in the Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.
WJohn "Johnny" Gates, born Solomon Regenstreif (1913–1992) was an American Communist business man, best remembered as one of the individuals spearheading a failed attempt at liberalization of the Communist Party USA in 1957.
WGus Hall was a leader and chairman of the 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.
WDorothy Ray Healey was a long-time activist in the Communist Party USA, from the late 1920s to the 1970s. In the 1930s, she was one of the first union leaders to advocate for the rights of Chicanos and blacks as factory and field workers.
WClaudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black nationalist, using the false name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. She founded Britain's first major black newspaper, West Indian Gazette (WIG), in 1958.
WRobert Klonsky was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which fought on the side of the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to World War II.
WClaude M. Lightfoot (1910–1991) was an African-American activist, politician, and author. From 1957 until his death in 1991 Lightfoot was an officer of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) and was several times the nominee of that party for elected political office. The author of many books and articles about racism and communism, Lightfoot also traveled and lectured throughout the world.
WFelix Morrow was an American communist political activist and newspaper editor. In later years, Morrow left the world of politics to become a book publisher. He is best remembered as a factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement.
WJacob Abraham "Jack" Stachel was an American Communist functionary who was a top official in the Communist Party from the middle 1920s until his death in the middle 1960s. Stachel is best remembered as one of 11 Communist leaders convicted under the Smith Act in 1949, for which he served a sentence of five years in prison.
WRobert George Thompson, was a distinguished US soldier who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross during World War II but was later jailed for several years for his communist sympathies.
WHenry M. Winston was an African-American political leader and Marxist civil rights activist.