35 Facts About Benjamin Gitlow

Benjamin Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early 20th century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA.

Benjamin Gitlow remained a leading anti-communist up to the time of his death.

Benjamin Gitlow was born on December 22,1891, in Elizabethport, New Jersey.

Benjamin Gitlow's parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire; his father, Lewis Albert Gitlow, moved to the United States in 1888, followed by his mother, Katherine, in 1889.

Benjamin Gitlow later recalled this experience as formative to his own political development:.

Benjamin Gitlow studied law while working as a retail clerk in a department store in Newark, New Jersey.

Benjamin Gitlow helped to organize the Retail Clerks Union, political activity for which he was discharged from his job and blacklisted by the Merchants' Association.

In June 1914, Benjamin Gitlow testified before the US Commission on Industrial Relations on conditions prevalent in US department stores.

Benjamin Gitlow was a committed and active member of the party and he was elected a delegate to the New York state convention of the SPA in 1910, the year after his joining.

Benjamin Gitlow was one of 10 Socialists elected to the Assembly of 1918, all of them from New York City.

From its earliest days in 1919, Benjamin Gitlow was an adherent of the proto-Communist Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party, working closely with renowned radical journalist and war correspondent John Reed.

Effective with the June 14,1919, issue, Max Cohen exited the scene and Ben Benjamin Gitlow assumed the post of business manager.

Ben Benjamin Gitlow served as business manager of this publication, which was adopted by the Communist Labor Party in the fall, shortly before its termination due to lack of finances.

Ben Benjamin Gitlow's widely publicized trial began in New York City on January 22,1920, and went to the jury on February 5.

Benjamin Gitlow addressed the jury in his own defense in the case, saying:.

Benjamin Gitlow was convicted of the charge against him and on February 11,1920, was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison.

Benjamin Gitlow served over two years at Sing Sing prison before being released on bail related to his filing of a writ of error.

Benjamin Gitlow was elected as a delegate to the Communist Party's ill-fated August 1922 convention held at Bridgman, Michigan, a gathering which was infiltrated by a Justice Department spy and raided by police.

Benjamin Gitlow was arrested and jailed in the aftermath, eventually released on bail.

The appointment was political in nature and Benjamin Gitlow was removed from the paper as soon as the Foster faction achieved majority control of the party apparatus.

In 1924, Benjamin Gitlow was named the candidate of the Workers Party of America for Vice President of the United States.

In November 1925, Benjamin Gitlow was ordered back to Sing Sing Prison by the court to finish his sentence.

Benjamin Gitlow was immediately transferred to a new section of the prison located on a hill, a much more comfortable facility than that in which he had previously been confined.

Benjamin Gitlow was assigned to a cleaning detail that occupied only about one hour of his time.

Benjamin Gitlow considered this an unfortunate turn of events, as he sought freedom to continue his political activities without the constraint of parole supervision and the threat of a rapid return to jail.

Benjamin Gitlow's wife received word by telephone at that time that his decision on whether to accept a parole was moot as the Governor had decided to grant him a full pardon.

In 1926, Benjamin Gitlow ran on the ticket of the Workers Party of America for Governor of New York.

In 1928, Gitlow was named the candidate of the Workers Party of America for Vice President of the United States, running for a second time on a ticket headed by William Z Foster.

Benjamin Gitlow reached the summit of his political life as a Communist Party leader shortly after the conclusion of the 1928 campaign, when on March 16,1929, Benjamin Gitlow was named to the three-man Secretariat at the helm of the Communist Party, assuming the post of Executive Secretary.

Together with his factional co-thinker Jay Lovestone, Ben Benjamin Gitlow was expelled from the party as purported supporters of Nikolai Bukharin in the USSR in opposition to the hardline faction of Joseph Stalin.

Benjamin Gitlow was named a member of the governing National Council of the CP in October 1929.

In 1940, Benjamin Gitlow published his first work of political autobiography, I Confess: The Truth About American Communism.

In 1948, Benjamin Gitlow followed his 1940 memoir with a steamier retelling of old tales called The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America.

Benjamin Gitlow died in Crompond, New York, on July 19,1965.

Benjamin Gitlow's papers are housed at the Hoover Institution Archives, located at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.