Biography
Ben Rubin was a young Communist Party organizer in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania — a wounded, decorated veteran of the Spanish Civil War — who ran as the CP candidate for Congress. From August 1940 he was repeatedly arrested and prosecuted on 'perjury' and election-code charges for gathering signatures on his party's nominating petitions, a campaign used to keep the Communist ticket off the ballot. Facing dozens of indictments, he accumulated roughly seventeen years in cumulative sentences and awaited a third trial in early 1941.
