Biography
Eugene Dennis was the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. In 1947 he refused to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, challenging the legitimacy of its inquiry into his politics, and was cited and convicted of contempt of Congress. The Supreme Court let the conviction stand, and in 1950 he served a one-year term at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. His imprisonment for contempt was only the beginning of his ordeal: he was simultaneously a lead defendant in the 1949 Foley Square trial, where the Party’s leaders were convicted under the Smith Act of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government, and after the Supreme Court affirmed those convictions in Dennis v. United States (1951) he returned to prison for a five-year sentence.
