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Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin “Ben” Gitlow (December 22, 1891 - July 19, 1965) was a prominent American socialist politician of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of t...view moreBenjamin “Ben” Gitlow (December 22, 1891 - July 19, 1965) was a prominent American socialist politician of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, he turned to conservatism and wrote two exposés of American Communism, which proved very influential during the McCarthy period.
Born in Elizabethport, New Jersey in 1891 to Jewish immigrant parents from the Russian Empire, Gitlow studied law while working as a retail clerk in a department store in Newark, New Jersey, where he helped to organize the Retail Clerks Union, political activity for which he was discharged from his job and blacklisted by the Merchants’ Association. He entered the world of radical journalism in 1919.
At 18, he joined the Socialist Party of America, where he was a committed and active member and was elected a delegate to the New York state convention of the SPA in 1910. In the fall of 1917, he was elected on the Socialist ticket to the New York State Assembly (Bronx Co., 3rd D.), and sat in the 141st New York State Legislature.
Charged with violation of the New York Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902, Gitlow served over two years at Sing Sing prison. Upon his release in spring 1922, he became a full-time employee of Communist Party of America. The governing Central Executive Committee named him as Industrial Organizer for a large area stretching from New York City to Philadelphia, and which encompassed the entire New England region.
His original conviction was upheld in in 1925 and Gitlow returned to prison, but was pardoned in December 1925. He briefly rejoined the Socialist Party in 1934, but became disillusioned with radicalism and emerged as an outspoken anti-communist. In 1939, he publicly rejected the Communist Party in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Gitlow remained a leading anti-communist up to the time of his death in 1965 at the age of 73.view less