Francis Xavier Waldron (August 10, 1905 – January 31, 1961), best known by the pseudonymEugene Dennis and Tim Ryan,[1] was an American communist politician and union organizer, best remembered as the long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and as named party in Dennis v. United States, a famous McCarthy Era Supreme Court case.
As Dennis and his co-accused had never openly called for the violent overthrow of the United States government, the prosecution depended on passages from the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin that advocated revolutionary violence and on the testimony of former members of the party who claimed Dennis and others had privately advocated the use of violence.
After a nine-month-long trial and the imprisonment of the defense lawyers for contempt of court, Dennis and his co-defendants were found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment. They appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled 6–2 against the defendants on June 4, 1951, in Dennis v. United States, 341U.S.494 (1951). The Court later scaled back its Dennis opinion in Yates v. United States and rendered the broad conspiracy provisions of the Smith Act unenforceable.[citation needed] Eugene Dennis was imprisoned in the years 1951–1955, according to the verdict in his case.[4]
Dennis remained General Secretary until 1959 when he succeeded Foster as party chairman and held that position until his death in 1961.
The elections and the outlook for national unity., New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1944.
America at the crossroads: postwar problems and communist policy., New York, New century publishers, 1945.
Marxism-Leninism vs. revisionism., New York, New Century Publishers, 1946 (with William Z. Foster, Jacques Duclos, and John Williamson; foreword by Max Weiss).
The people against the trusts; build a democratic front to defeat reaction now and win a people’s victory in 1948., New York, New Century Publishers, 1946.
What America faces: the new war danger and the struggle for peace, democracy, and economic security., New York, New century publishers, 1946.
Let the people know the truth about the Communists which the un-American committee tried to suppress., New York, New century publishers, 1947.
Louis Budenz, Men Without Faces: The Communist Conspiracy in the USA. New York: Harper, 1948; p. 252.
Peggy Dennis, The Autobiography of an American Communist: A Personal View of a Political Life, 1925-1975. Westport, CT: L. Hill, 1977.
John D. Gordon III, "The Dennis Case, Communist Bail Jumpers, and Oliver Ellsworth's 'Outlawry' Bill," American Communist History, vol. 14, no. 2 (August 2015), pp. 105–134.
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
Ann Kimmage, An Un-American Childhood. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998; pp. 21–22, 120.
William M. Wiecek, "The Legal Foundations of Domestic Anticommunism: The Background of Dennis v. United States," Supreme Court Review, vol. 2001 (2001), pp. 375–434. in JSTOR.