Hall, Gus (1910–2000)

THE LEADER OF the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), Gus Hall, contested the U.S. presidential election on five occasions, from 1968 until 1984. He was born in Cherry, Minnesota; his name at birth was Arvo Kusta Halberg. His parents were Finnish and both had been members of the Industrial Workers of the World and were founder members of the CPUSA When he was 15 years old, Hall left school and worked in lumber camps where he became interested in Marxism, and he joined the CPUSA two years later. For two years, from 1931, Hall studied at the Lenin Institute in Moscow. Returning to the United States, he worked in the steel industry, and helped found the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), and was heavily involved in the Little Steel strike in 1937. Hall became a full-time organizer for SWOC, which later became the United Steelworkers of America. Subsequently, Hall resigned from the union to become a Communist Party organizer in Youngstown, Ohio. During World War II he worked as an army machinist in Guam, gaining an honorable discharge in 1946.

On his return to the mainland United States, Hall was elected to the National Executive Board of the CPUSA On July 22, 1948 Hall and 11 other Communists were charged by the government with “conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence.” He was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary for eight years, with that law later struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. He convalesced in the Soviet Union. In 1959, Hall was elected as the general secretary of the CPUSA and spent much of his time organizing party events in Oregon, Washington, and California, and also addressing university campus meetings, professing a strong belief in the Bill of Rights.

In 1968, Hall contested the presidential elections for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time the Communist Party had offered a candidate for the presidential elections since 1940, when it had received 46,251 votes. In 1948 and 1952, it had advised its members to support the Progressive Party.

In 1968, Hall received 1,075 votes, with Charlene Mitchell as his vice presidential running mate. He contested elections again in 1972 and in 1976 with Jarvis Tyner, receiving, respectively, 25,595 and 58,992 votes. In 1980, contesting the election with Angela Davis, he received 43,871 votes, and in 1984 received 36,386 votes. In 1988, CPUSA voters were urged to support the Democrats. Some blamed the low voting figures on Hall's inability to forge an alliance with other left-wing groups and his aversion to environmentalism and feminism. The collapse of Communism in 1989 in Eastern Europe [Page 294]and the Soviet Union did not change his political views, and he remained a Stalinist at his death.