Biography
Benjamin Gitlow was a New York State assemblyman and founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America. He also served as business manager of the socialist newspaper, The Revolutionary Age. In November 1919 he was arrested under New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902 for his participation in the paper. He was found guilty and sentenced to 5-10 years at Sing Sing. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction and he was pardoned by Governor Al Smith in December 1925.
Custody and sentencing source conflicts requiring reconciliation
The 2006 editorial footnote to the National Defense Committee’s 1922 account, page 2, states that Benjamin Gitlow was freed on $7,500 bail on December 13, 1922. That intervening release conflicts with treating the current enclosing 1920–1925 dates as one uninterrupted custody period. The original pamphlet’s main text dates conviction/sentence to February 5, 1920, while the editorial footnote says February 11 and the current case field says February 10. No custody span or sentencing day is changed from this conflicting source alone; the original prison and bail records are needed.
The University of Minnesota Law Library history identifies Gitlow’s fellow criminal-anarchy defendant as the Irish activist James Larkin. This corrects the biography’s mistaken name Alan Larkin; it does not change Gitlow’s custody dates, sentence, appeal outcome or duration.
Contemporary labor and defense account, August 1925
Thurber Lewis reports Gitlow participating in the June 28, 1925 National Conference for Labor Defense in Chicago and its closing mass meeting. Gitlow discussed the Supreme Court decision in his case while expecting a call back to Sing Sing. This establishes his participation and an anticipated prison return, not the day he actually reentered custody.
The Workers Monthly, August 1925, printed pages 460–461, 474.
Daily Worker, September 11, 1925; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, September 10, 1926; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, February 18, 1927; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, November 3, 1928; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Daily Worker, October 7, 1925; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
Socialist Call, June 26, 1937; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The biographical dictionary records Gitlow’s birthplace as Elizabethport, New Jersey, and his place of death as Crompond, New York. It identifies him as an autobiographical author as well as a Socialist and Communist politician. Its brief reference to imprisonment for publishing revolutionary material supplies no additional custody dates or duration.
Jacob Rader Marcus, editor, and Judith M. Daniels, associate editor, The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography, printed page 199 (PDF page 202).
Separate prison terms
- February 13, 1920 – April 25, 1922
- September 7, 1922 – December 13, 1922
- November 9, 1925 – December 11, 1925
The imprisonment counter adds these recorded prison terms and excludes the intervals on bail. It does not treat the entire 1920–1925 span as uninterrupted confinement.
Sources: first term and second admission; second release; final readmission; final release.
