Biography
Pettis Perry was the highest-ranking Black member of the Communist Party USA at the time of his Smith Act prosecution and one of the partys most influential theorists on Black liberation. Born to sharecroppers in Alabama in 1897, he came to Communist politics through his work with the International Labor Defense in the Scottsboro Boys defense campaign and rose through the partys ranks during the 1930s and 1940s. By the time of his 1951 indictment in the Foley Square Second String he was a member of the partys Secretariat and the head of its National Negro Commission.
Convicted in early 1953 alongside Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the rest of the second string, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison. He served his time at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, where the conditions in the segregated Black wing severely damaged his health. After his release he traveled to the Soviet Union for medical treatment and died there in 1965.
