Biography
David Gordon was a Communist trade unionist, author, editor, and journalist. Born in Ukraine, he immigrated to the United States at the age of three. As a teenage worker-poet he was convicted of obscenity for his poem "America" — published in the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA — which compared the country to a whorehouse; sentenced to the New York reformatory, he was, after a broad free-speech campaign, paroled to the University of Wisconsin's Experimental College, where he held a Zona Gale literary scholarship and studied for two years. He became active in the labor movement as an organizer for the Paper, Pulp and Sulphite Workers Union and then as a Communist Party organizer in Toledo, Ohio, where he took part in the 1934 Auto-Lite strike. From 1936 to 1938 he served with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and was afterward briefly held in an internment camp on the French border. In September 1942 he entered the U.S. Army, where he wrote hometown press releases about soldiers' families and drafted medal recommendations. Through the 1950s and 1960s he wrote feature articles for medical journals and taught Communist history and theory; he edited the Communist-initiated cultural periodical American Dialog and served on the Cultural Commission of the Communist Party USA. In 1970 he became cultural editor of the Party's newspaper, then titled the People's Daily World, and he made several trips to Cuba, writing extensively about them. He died on June 21, 1973.
Grace Hutchins’s essay in Labor Defender, July 1932, recalls the Young Communist League poet prosecuted for America, published in the Daily Worker on March 12, 1927, and says a one-year punishment was upheld on appeal before he was sent to jail. This retrospective sentence wording differs from other recorded nominal terms; it is not substituted for the separate 1928 custody phase, whose precise completed duration is unresolved or treated as an additional year served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1932/v08n07-jul-1932-LD.pdf#page=4
The June 8 issue explicitly reports Gordon held in the Tombs before sentence. The June 17 boxed notice says the eighteen-year-old poet was sentenced the previous Friday, indicating June 10, to thirteen months to three years, and that on June 16 he was granted a certificate of reasonable doubt and ordered released on bail. That order is not proof of physical departure. This earlier 1927 confinement must remain distinct from the separate 1928 custody phase, whose precise completed duration is unresolved. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n132-NY-jun-17-1927-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1 Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-ny/v04-n124-NY-jun-08-1927-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
The June 14, 1927 Daily Worker explicitly says Dave Gordon had been sent to the reformatory, adding an accomplished transfer to the already documented initial Tombs detention. June 14 is a reporting upper bound, not an exact physical-intake day. This belongs to the existing 1927 custody phase; the later June 16 bail order is still distinguished from proof of physical release, and the separate April–May 1928 detention requires independent endpoint and duration review. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1927/1927-nat/v04-n129-NAT-jun-14-1927-DW-RIAZ-op.pdf#page=1
The May 11 report still anticipated parole on the following Tuesday, May 15, while describing about five weeks held to date. The targeted May 15 report still expected release that day; the May 16 report states he had already been released after one month. These approximate accounts conflict and do not establish exact April 5 admission, May 10 discharge or thirty-five actual days. The 1928 phase remains distinct from 1927; April and May are retained only at month precision, with no computed day total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n111-NY-may-11-1928-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1 Supporting targeted reports: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n114-NY-may-15-1928-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2; https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n115-NY-may-16-1928-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1.
The December 12, 1927 Daily Worker reports that Gordon was free on bail pending further appeal after a certificate of reasonable doubt stayed his sentence. Read with the documented June 1927 confinement, this establishes physical release during 1927, without an exact day. It supplements the earlier June 16 bail order, which alone did not prove departure. The later 1928 custody phase remains separate, and neither phase supplies a complete measured custody total.
