Biography
Benjamin Lowell Careathers was a Black Communist organizer active among Pittsburgh steelworkers. Federal agents arrested him and four other Pittsburgh Communist leaders on August 17, 1951 under the Smith Act. A jury convicted the five in 1953 and the court imposed five-year sentences, but Careathers remained free on bail during appeal. The convictions were overturned, and in 1957 the court threw out the retrial and prosecutors dropped the case. The reviewed record does not establish that he served the federal sentence.
