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, leading the party in Youngstown and then Cleveland, and he was the candidate for multiple Communist Party tickets in the state of Ohio, although he didn't garner many votes. In 1940, he spent 90 days in jail after an election scandal for which he was convicted of fraud and forgery. He served in the Navy from 1942 until 1946.
Indicted under the Smith Act in 1948, Hall was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and served over 5 more after getting caught trying to skip bail. He was elected general secretary of the CPUSA in 1959. The rise of the New Left in the 1960s hurt the Communist Party, and Hall tried but ultimately failed to form an alliance with New Left activists. He was consistently one of the staunchest supporters of the actions of the Soviet Union and became one of the best-known American politicians in the country. He made appearances on Soviet television in the 1960s and '70s, in which he always supported the Soviet government. He also frequently spoke on American talk shows to advocate for socialism in the United States.
Hall and his party endorsed Lyndon B. Johnson for president in 1964 in opposition to conservative Barry Goldwater. Beginning in 1972, rather than endorsing another party, Hall ran as the CPUSA's presidential candidate. He would do this four consecutive times until the party ceased presidential campaigns after 1984.
Hall resigned party leadership in 2000, leaving the post to Sam Webb. Hall lived with his wife in Yonkers, New York during his last years and died in Manhattan from complications relating to diabetes.
Early life and political activism Hall was born Arvo Kustaa Halberg in 1910 in Cherry Township, St. Louis County, Minnesota, a rural community on northern Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range. He was Finnish-American, the son of Matt (Matti) and Susan (Susanna) Halberg. Hall's parents were Finnish immigrants from Lapua in South Ostrobothnia, and were politically radical: they were involved in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and were early members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1919. The Mesabi Range was one of the most important immigration settlements for Finns, who were often active in labor militancy and political activism. Hall's home language was Finnish, and he conversed with his nine siblings in that language for the rest of his life. He did not know political terminology in Finnish and used mostly English when meeting with visiting Finnish Communists.
Hall grew up in a Communist home and was involved early on in politics. According to Hall, after his father was banned from working in the mines for joining an IWW strike, the family grew up in near-starvation in a log cabin built by Halberg.
At 15, to support the impoverished ten-child family, Hall left school and went to work in the North Woods lumber camps, mines and railroads. Two years later in 1927, he was recruited to the CPUSA by his father.Gus Hall obituary – World Socialist Web Site Hall became an organizer for the Young Communist League (YCL) in the upper Midwest. In 1931, an apprenticeship in the YCL qualified Hall to travel to the Soviet Union to study for two years at the International Lenin School in Moscow.
Move to Minneapolis
After his studies, Hall moved to Minneapolis to further the YCL activities there. He was involved in hunger marches, demonstrations on behalf of farmers, and various strikes during the Great Depression. In 1934, Hall was jailed for six months for taking part in the Minneapolis Teamster's Strike, led by Trotskyist Farrell Dobbs. After serving his sentence, Hall was blacklisted and was unable to find work under his original name. He changed his name to Gus Hall, derived from Kustaa (Gustav) Halberg.Gus Hall in the American National Biography The change was confirmed in court in 1935.
Ohio activism In late 1934, Hall went to Ohio's Mahoning Valley. Following the call for organizing in the steel industry, Hall was among a handful hired at a steel mill in Youngstown, Ohio. During 1935–1936, he was involved in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and was a founding organizer of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), which was set up by the CIO. Hall stated that he and others persuaded John L. Lewis, who was one of the founders of the CIO, that steel could be organized.
"Little Steel" strike and war service
Hall was a leader of the 1937 "Little Steel" strike, so called because it was directed against Republic Steel, Bethlehem Steel and the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, as opposed to the industry giant U.S. Steel. It had previously entered into a contract with SWOC without a strike. The strike was ultimately unsuccessful, and marred by the deaths of workers at Republic plants in Chicago and Youngstown. Hall was arrested for allegedly transporting bomb-making materials intended for Republic's plant in Warren, Ohio. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was fined $500. SWOC became the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) in 1942. Philip Murray, USWA founding president, once commented that Hall's leadership of the strike in Warren and Youngstown was a model of effective grassroots organizing.
After the 1937 strike, Hall focused on party activities instead of union work, and became the leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in Youngstown in 1937. His responsibilities in the party grew rapidly, and in 1939 he became the CPUSA leader for the city of Cleveland. Hall ran on the CPUSA ticket for Youngstown councilman and also for governor of Ohio, but received few votes. In 1940 Hall was convicted of fraud and forgery in an election scandal and spent 90 days in jail.
Hall volunteered for the United States Navy when World War II broke out, serving as a machinist's mate in Guam. During the first years of the war in Europe, the CPUSA held an isolationist stance, as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were cooperating based on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. When Hitler broke the treaty by invading the USSR in June 1941, the CPUSA began to officially support the war effort. During his naval service, Hall was elected in absence to the National Committee of the CPUSA. He was honorably discharged from the Navy on March 6, 1946.
Seen as a Moscow loyalist, Hall's reputation in the party rose after the war. In 1946 he was elected to the national executive board of the party under the new general secretary, Eugene Dennis, a pro-Soviet Marxist–Leninist, who had replaced Earl Browder after the latter's expulsion from the party.
Indictment during the Red Scare and rise to the head of the CPUSA
Now a major American communist leader in the post-war era, Hall caught the attention of United States officials. On July 22, 1948, Hall and 11 other Communist Party leaders were indicted under the Alien Registration Act, popularly called the Smith Act, on charges of "conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence"; his conviction was based entirely on Hall's advocacy of Marxist-Leninist thought. Hall's initial prison sentence lasted for five years.
Released on bail, Hall rose to the secretariat of the CPUSA. When the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act (June 4, 1951), Hall and three other men skipped bail and went underground. Hall's attempt to flee to Moscow failed when he was picked up in Mexico City on October 8, 1951. He was sentenced to three more years and eventually served over five and a half years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. In prison he distributed party leaflets and lifted weights. He was located in a cell adjacent to that of George "Machine Gun" Kelly, a notorious gangster of the prohibition era. The Supreme Court of the United States later reversed some convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional.
In the early 1960s, Hall was in danger of facing yet another indictment, this time under the Internal Security Act of 1950, known as the McCarran Act, but the Supreme Court found the Act partly unconstitutional, and the government abandoned its charges. The act required "Communist action" organizations to register with the government, it excluded party members from applying for United States passports or holding government jobs. Because of the Act, Hall's driver's license was revoked by the State of New York.
After his release, Hall continued his activities. He began to travel around the United States, ostensibly on vacation but gathering support to replace Dennis as the general secretary. He accused Dennis of cowardice for not going underground as ordered in 1951 and also claimed Dennis had used funds reserved for the underground for his own purposes. Hall's rise to the position of general secretary was generally unexpected by the American Communist circles (the post was expected to go to either Henry Winston or Gil Green, both important figures in the YCL), although Hall had held the office of acting general secretary briefly in the early 1950s after Dennis's arrest. In 1959, Hall was elected CPUSA general secretary and afterward received the Order of Lenin.
General Secretary of the CPUSA
The McCarthy era had taken a heavy toll on the Communist Party USA, as many American members were called to testify to congressional committees. In addition, due to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, many members became disenchanted and left the party. They were also moved by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's dismissal of Stalinism. In the United States, the rise of the New Left and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 created hostility between leftists and the CPUSA, marginalizing it.