Biography
James H. Dolsen was a Pittsburgh Communist organizer and Daily Worker correspondent prosecuted under both Pennsylvania’s sedition law and the federal Smith Act. He received a five-year federal sentence on August 25, 1953. On November 2, 1953, a state court also sentenced him to twenty years and a $10,000 fine, and he was confined at the Allegheny County Workhouse in Blawnox. He served several years before the state case and federal conviction were undone by the Supreme Court’s Pennsylvania v. Nelson and Mesarosh rulings.
Daily Worker, August 8, 1925, page 2: The San Francisco report dated August 4 says James H. Dolsen spoke at O’Farrell and Fillmore, the same location where he and a comrade identified only as Fleming had been arrested a week earlier. The new meeting proceeded without police interference. Fleming’s case, rather than Dolsen’s, was reported postponed to October 1. This adds a distinct 1925 street-speaking arrest to Dolsen’s later Pittsburgh prosecutions without transferring Fleming’s hearing date to him or asserting an unreported disposition. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n179-NYE-aug-08-1925-DW-LOC.pdf
