Five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate and pioneer of industrial railroad unionism
At his 1918 sentencing he declared: "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
The most iconic figure of American socialism and a pioneer of industrial unionism. After leading the American Railway Union through the Pullman Strike of 1894, he embraced Marxism in prison and helped found the Socialist Party of America (1901) and the IWW (1905). He ran for president five times, winning 6.0% in 1912, and from an Atlanta prison cell in 1920 he won over 914,000 votes, the high-water mark of American socialist electoral politics.
Career timeline
- 1875Joined Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen
- 1880–1893BLF Grand Secretary-Treasurer & magazine editor
- 1885Indiana State Representative (Democrat)
- 1893–1897Founder & president, American Railway Union
- 1901Co-founder, Socialist Party of America
- 1905Founding member, Industrial Workers of the World
- 1900–1920Socialist Party presidential candidate (5 campaigns)
- 1919–1921Imprisoned, Atlanta Federal Penitentiary
He raised the workers' flag and the republic's on a single staff
Too wounded to stand, he was shot tied to a chair — Kilmainham Gaol, 12 May 1916
A socialist revolutionary who fused Marxism with Irish national liberation. He founded the Irish Citizen Army, commanded the Dublin Brigade in the 1916 Easter Rising, and was executed by the British after its suppression.
Career timeline
- 1896Founds the Irish Socialist Republican Party
- 1903–1910IWW organizer in America
- 1910–1914Leads the ITGWU through the 1913 Dublin Lockout
- 1910Published Labour in Irish History
- 1913Founds the Irish Citizen Army
- 1915Published The Re-Conquest of Ireland
- 1916.04Easter Rising — Dublin commandant, signatory of the Proclamation
- 1916.05Shot at Kilmainham Gaol
"Capitalism cannot reform itself": father of the modern Negro liberation movement who joined the Communist Party at 93
"Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day." — from his 1961 application to join the Communist Party USA, submitted at age 93
American sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, and the single most important African American intellectual of the 20th century. A co-founder of the NAACP, he edited its magazine The Crisis for 24 years, shaping the direction of the black civil rights movement, while his books The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America transformed American sociology and historiography. He viewed capitalism as the root cause of racism and pursued a synthesis of Marxism and Pan-Africanism. In 1961, at age 93, he joined the Communist Party USA; invited by Kwame Nkrumah, he settled in Ghana to begin work on the Encyclopedia Africana, and died there in 1963.
Career timeline
- 1895–1897Wilberforce University; University of Pennsylvania researcher, published The Philadelphia Negro (1899)
- 1897–1910Atlanta University professor; published The Souls of Black Folk (1903); founded Niagara Movement (1905)
- 1910–1934NAACP co-founder, editor of The Crisis; organized Pan-African Congresses
- 1934–1944Atlanta University professor; published Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
- 1944–1948NAACP Director of Special Research; attended UN founding conference
- 1950–1951Peace Information Center chair; indicted under FARA, acquitted
- 1961–1963Joined CPUSA; emigrated to Ghana, began Encyclopedia Africana
From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to longest-serving leader of American communism
“The only party that genuinely represents the interests of the workers is the revolutionary party.” — Pages from a Worker's Life, 1939
From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to becoming the CPUSA's longest-serving leader. He rebuilt the party after Browder dissolved it in 1944 and authored major Marxist histories including History of the Communist Party of the United States.
Career timeline
- 1901Joins Socialist Party of America
- 1909Joins the IWW; Spokane free-speech fight
- 1912Founds the Syndicalist League of North America
- 1917–1918Organizes Chicago packinghouse workers; wins 8-hour day
- 1919Leads the Great Steel Strike of 250,000 workers
- 1920Founds the Trade Union Educational League
- 1921Joins Communist Party after 3rd Comintern Congress
- 1924First presidential campaign on Communist ticket
- 1929Becomes CPUSA Chairman; founds the TUUL
- 1935Elected to ECCI Presidium
- 1944–1945Fights Browder's dissolution; rebuilds CPUSA as General Secretary
- 1948Indicted under Smith Act; trial postponed
- 1957Retires as CPUSA Chairman Emeritus
- 1961Dies in Moscow; state funeral in Red Square
From eyewitness of the Bolshevik Revolution to founder of the Communist Labor Party of America: an American buried at the Kremlin Wall
At the mass funeral for revolutionary martyrs in Red Square, Reed suddenly understood: the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer.
American journalist and communist. He witnessed the 1917 October Revolution and wrote Ten Days That Shook the World. He co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America and served on the Comintern Executive Committee. One of the very few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall.
Career timeline
- 1910Graduated Harvard, began journalism career in New York
- 1913Joined The Masses; first arrest covering Paterson silk strike
- 1913–1914War correspondent in Mexico — 4 months with Pancho Villa's army; published Insurgent Mexico
- 1917Witnessed the October Revolution in Petrograd; worked with the Bolshevik Foreign Commissariat
- 1919Published Ten Days That Shook the World; co-founded the Communist Labor Party of America
- 1919–1920Comintern Executive Committee member; U.S. delegate to 2nd Comintern Congress; attended Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East
The labor organizer who read Trotsky's critique in Moscow and founded the American Trotskyist movement
“They had expelled the heart of their party; Trotsky had won over all the serious young activists, leaving only a dead husk.” — after the Socialist Party expelled the Trotskyists, 1937
A Kansas-born labor organizer of Irish descent, James P. Cannon helped found the Communist Party of America in 1919 and was elected to the Comintern Presidium in 1922. In 1928, after reading a misdirected critique of the Comintern by Trotsky in Moscow, he turned to the Left Opposition, was expelled from the CPA, and co-founded the Communist League of America. He led the landmark 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, and in 1938 founded the Socialist Workers Party, becoming its first National Secretary. Imprisoned for 18 months under the Smith Act for opposing U.S. entry into World War II, he remained a central leader of the Fourth International and shaped the American Trotskyist tradition across four decades.
Career timeline
- 1908Joins the Socialist Party of America
- 1911Joins the IWW; organizes throughout the Midwest under 'Big Bill' Haywood
- 1919Founding member of the Communist Labor Party; District Secretary for KS, MO, NE
- 1922U.S. delegate to 4th Comintern Congress; elected to ECCI Presidium
- 1925Founds International Labor Defense; serves as its first national secretary
- 1928Expelled from CP for Trotskyism; co-founds the Communist League of America
- 1934Directs the historic Minneapolis Teamsters strike
- 1938Founds the Socialist Workers Party; elected first National Secretary
- 1944–1945Imprisoned 18 months under the Smith Act for anti-war stance
- 1953–1974Steps down as National Secretary, becomes national chairman emeritus; dies in Los Angeles
The CPUSA leader who declared Communism was 20th-century Americanism, and then dissolved his own party
“Communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” — July 4, 1938, beneath the Star-Spangled Banner and the red flag together
A Kansas-born CPUSA leader for 15 years from 1930, Earl Browder proclaimed 'Communism is 20th-century Americanism' and in 1944 dissolved the party into a 'Communist Political Association', a strategy known as 'Browderism.' Expelled in 1946, he broke definitively with the party.
Career timeline
- 1907Joins Socialist Party of America at age 16
- 1912Leaves Socialist Party in 1912 split; joins Syndicalist League of North America
- 1917–1918Arrested for anti-WWI activism under the Espionage Act; serves 2-year sentence
- 1920Joins the United Communist Party of America
- 1921Sent to Moscow as U.S. delegate to RILU founding congress
- 1926–1929Secretary of RILU's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, based in Shanghai
- 1930Becomes Secretary of the CPUSA Political Bureau — de facto party leader
- 1932–1945General Secretary of the CPUSA Central Committee
- 1935Elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI)
- 1936CPUSA candidate for U.S. President
- 1940Sentenced to 4 years for passport fraud; runs again for president
- 1942.05Released after 14 months by President Roosevelt's commutation
- 194412th CPUSA Convention dissolves the party; creates Communist Political Association
- 1945.0713th Convention repudiates Browderism and reconstitutes the CPUSA
- 1946.02Expelled from the CPUSA
- 1958Publishes Marx and America, arguing Marxism is inapplicable to U.S. conditions
