Biography
Harvey O'Connor (March 29, 1897 – August 29, 1987) was a labor journalist and author, born in Minneapolis and raised in the Pacific Northwest, who worked in Seattle journalism and the radical press from about 1918 to 1924 and later wrote extensively on labor history, corporate power and the petroleum industry. His papers are held by the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.
During or immediately after the February 1919 Seattle General Strike, O'Connor was arrested in a police roundup of labor radicals. Authorities accused him and other radical publishers of producing material tending to cause a breach of the peace, and he was indicted or threatened with prosecution under Washington's criminal-anarchy law, which carried up to ten years. He was never tried: prosecutors abandoned the case after the state failed in a test prosecution meant to establish the legality of its broader criminal-anarchy campaign.
Decades later he was indicted for contempt of Congress in October 1953 for refusing, on First Amendment grounds, to answer Senator McCarthy's questions. His case became part of the broader First Amendment resistance to congressional investigations of the McCarthy era.
The October 6, 1933 Pittsburgh dispatch published October 7 reports O’Connor arrested because his car had repeatedly been seen in the Ambridge strike area and then released on habeas corpus. It identifies him as the author of Mellon’s Millions. The nine other jailed strike leaders are unnamed and their continuing custody is not assigned to O’Connor. This is a distinct 1933 episode from his Seattle and later congressional cases, without an exact admission, physical discharge or measured service total. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n241-oct-07-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
National Guardian, October 19, 1953, New York insert page 4: An October 22 meeting announcement identifies the labor author as having challenged Senator McCarthy's jurisdiction in July and refused questions on First Amendment grounds. It reports a Senate contempt citation and possible future court proceedings. The prospective wording does not establish a completed conviction, imprisonment or a fresh arrest by publication. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1953-10-19-5-52-nat-guardian.pdf
The National Guardian of December 5, 1955 reported that Judge Joseph C. McGarraghy imposed a $500 fine and a suspended one-year sentence on Harvey O’Connor on November 18. O’Connor had refused to answer McCarthy’s questions on First Amendment grounds; his lawyers announced an appeal. The one-year term was suspended and is not recorded as imprisonment actually served.
