Gus Hall

Gus Hall (born Arvo Kustaa Halberg; October 8, 1910 – October 13, 2000) was an American communist activist who served as the general secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) from 1959 to 2000. As a labor leader, he was closely associated with the "Little Steel" strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel manufacturers. Hall was indicted under the Smith Act during the Second Red Scare and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. After his release, Hall led the CPUSA for over 40 years, generally taking an orthodox Marxist-Leninist stance and becoming a perennial candidate for president of the United States. Born to Finnish immigrants in Cherry Township, Minnesota, Hall's parents were active communists and had been involved with the CPUSA and the Industrial Workers of the World. Hall's family had ten children, and to support them, Hall left school and started working blue-collar jobs at age 15. He joined the CPUSA two years later, and by 1931, his apprenticeship in the Young Communist League allowed him to study abroad at the International Lenin School in the Soviet Union. Hall moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota after returning from Moscow and became involved with various labor strikes there. He had been blacklisted after his participation in the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, for which he spent six months in jail. It was then that he began calling himself Gus Hall, as he could no longer find work under his original name. He was a founding member of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in the mid 1930s. He was a leader of 1937's unsuccessful "Little Steel" strike, which led to his arrest for allegedly transporting bomb-making materials, to which he pled guilty and paid a $500 fine. Afterwards, he began climbing the ranks of the Communist Party,...