On this day
June 30, 1918
Eugene Debs arrested for denouncing World War I
Eugene Debs
Released
Eugene Debs, The foremost American socialist of his era — locomotive fireman, founder of the American Railway Union (1893), leader of the 1894 Pullman Strike, IWW co-founder (1905), five-time Socialis...
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On this day in 1918, Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs was arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, two weeks after his Canton speech denouncing World War I and capitalist war-making. Convicted under the Espionage Act as amended by the Sedition Act and sentenced to ten years, he entered prison in April 1919, ran for president from his Atlanta cell in 1920 — winning nearly a million votes — and was released on December 25, 1921, when President Harding commuted his sentence.