Biography
Jacob Stachel was One of eleven Communists sentenced under Dennis v. United States.
Jack Stachel, a leader of the communist Workers' Party, along with ten other party leaders were found guilty for advocating the violent overthrow of the United States. None of the defendants ever directly advocated to overthrow the government, but the prosecutor claimed that by supporting an ideology that advocated for violence, they also did by extension. The defendants claimed that their First Amendment freedom of speech rights were violated and they served no "clear and present danger to the nation".
They were found guilty and each sentenced to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court who affirmed the lower court's verdict.
Writing as Jack Stachel in the February 6, 1934 New Masses, he reported from the United Mine Workers convention at Indianapolis. His account criticized John L. Lewis’s cooperation with coal operators and described the left opposition led by Paul Bohus and John F. Sloan, including efforts to defend the right to strike and restrict appointed union offices. The contributor note on printed page 23 identifies him as acting secretary of the Trade Union Unity League. This documents his earlier union work without adding a detention. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1934/v10n06-feb-06-1934-NM.pdf#page=22
Writing as Jack Stachel after the United Mine Workers’ thirty-third convention, he analyzed the small organized left opposition and criticized reliance on spontaneous discontent without sustained local organizing. He advocated rank-and-file elections, the right to strike, unemployment insurance, women’s auxiliaries and defense of Black miners and Communist members. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n030-feb-03-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=4
Earlier 1925 New York street-meeting detention
The September 12, 1925 Daily Worker individually names Jack Stachel, the alias already recorded for Jacob Stachel, in an earlier New York street-meeting arrest. After the police arrested the speaker Amter, Stachel immediately mounted the Workers (Communist) Party platform at Tenth Street and Second Avenue and was himself arrested. The International Labor Defense actually bailed both men out under $500 bonds each. Their lawyer was Joseph R. Brodsky; the judge had not completed consideration of their cases when the article was written. The formal charge and final disposition are not supplied.
This is a separate 1925 episode, not the later prosecution already represented in the case records. Arrest followed by actual bail release documents executed detention, but not its length: the article does not independently fix the physical admission or release day, and it does not establish an overnight or longer stay. No day, month-duration, nominal sentence or current ongoing custody is inferred. The new historical episode therefore has unknown endpoints and an unknown actual total; every older case and stored subtotal remains unchanged.
Daily Worker, national edition, September 12, 1925, original pages 1, 2. Contemporary political allegations are attributed to the report.
The Detroit election account reports criminal-syndicalism warrants for Philip Raymond and Jack Stachel amid meeting disruptions and eleven arrests. It says the Raymond warrant was issued the day before the mayoral election. A warrant is not proof of its execution, a new jail admission or continued custody from the earlier automobile organizing arrests; this report is preserved as election-related prosecution evidence without inventing a completed arrest day.
The dictionary records Stachel’s arrival in New York City in 1911 and his work as a Communist Party leader and executive secretary, an official of the Trade Union Educational League, and a leader of a Detroit unemployed strike. Its alternative death years, 1965 and 1966, and rounded description of five years imprisoned under the Smith Act are retained as source limitations; they do not replace the precise existing dates or measured custody total.
Jacob Rader Marcus, editor, and Judith M. Daniels, associate editor, The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography, printed page 618 (PDF page 613).
