William Z. Foster

Released

Full name:William Foster

Date of birth:25. 02. 1881

Date of death:01. 09. 1961

Age:80^{† Deceased}

Gender:Male

Race:White

Era:1950s

State:New York

Support

Communism Labor Organizing Communist Party USA

Biography

William Z. Foster was the national chairman of the Communist Party USA and the lead-named defendant in the 1948 Smith Act indictment of the party's leadership. His case was severed because of a serious heart condition and he was never brought to trial, but he remained under indictment through the 1950s.

Foster's imprisonment and prosecution reach back well before the 1948 indictment. During the IWW free-speech fight at Spokane in 1909 and 1910 he was jailed for forty-seven days. On August 22, 1922 he was arrested at Chicago after federal and Michigan authorities raided the underground Communist Party convention at Bridgman, Michigan, and was the first Communist leader tried under Michigan's Criminal Syndicalism Act; his 1923 trial ended in a hung jury, divided six to six after more than thirty-one hours, and he served no sentence on it.

Cases

Charges: Smith Act — conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the government

Arrested: Mar 6, 1930

Sentence: Under indictment (severed); not tried Note on the arrest date stored on this row. March 6, 1930 is the date of the New York unemployment demonstration at Union Square, more than eighteen years before the Smith Act indictment; it cannot be the arrest for this case. It is left in place rather than deleted because it appears to be a real datum attached to the wrong row, and the 1930 prosecution — for which Foster did serve time — has no record of its own. Worth giving one.

Convicted: Indicted 1948; case severed for ill health; never tried

Spokane City Jail

Charges: Arrested in the Industrial Workers of the World free-speech fight at Spokane, Washington, 1909-1910.

Sentence: Forty-seven days in the Spokane City Jail, during the IWW free-speech fight of 1909-1910. This is the longest term Foster is recorded as actually serving. No dates are entered, and so no imprisonment counter is produced from this row. The forty-seven days are documented but its endpoints are not, and the schema records a documented duration in months (imprisoned_for_months), not in days — a documented day-count with unknown endpoints has nowhere to go. Recorded here in the text so the fact is not lost.

Convicted: Yes

Institution State: Washington

Charges: Michigan Criminal Syndicalism Act — attending the underground Communist Party convention at Bridgman, Michigan, raided by federal and state authorities on August 22, 1922.

Arrested: Aug 22, 1922

Sentence: No conviction and no sentence. Foster was arrested at Chicago on August 22, 1922 and was the first Communist leader brought to trial after the Bridgman raid; the jury hung six to six in 1923 and he served nothing on the charge. No custody dates are entered. He was arrested and prosecuted, and the length of any pretrial detention is not established, so this row carries no imprisonment figure. It is here because the database records politically motivated arrests and prosecutions that end without conviction, not only completed sentences.

Convicted: No — the 1923 trial ended in a hung jury, divided six to six after more than thirty-one hours

William Z. Foster

Biography

Cases

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