Hiss, Alger

Alger Hiss (1904-1996) was born in Baltimore, Maryland and educated at Baltimore City College, Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School. During the new Deal period he worked as an attorney at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, in the Solicitor General's Office at the Justice Department, as Assistant Secretary of State and in other positions in the State Department, and as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Yalta conference in 1945. He served as Secretary General of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco in April 1945. In 1947 he left government service to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International peace. Hiss's public career ended abruptly in 1948 when Time managing editor Whittaker Chambers, a former underground Communist Party operative testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), charged him with being both a Communist and a spy. Hiss voluntarily testified before HUAC, and, after a Grand Jury proceeding, was indicted on charges of perjury. Hiss's first trial ended in a hung jury on July 7, 1949. On January 21, 1950, he was convicted in a second trial. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served 44 months in Lewisberg Penitentiary. Hiss spent much of the rest of his life campaigning for vindication. The collection contains correspondence and subject files relating to Alger Hiss, the Hiss family and Hiss's court cases. The collection contains correspondence, materials pertaining to the Hiss Case, including government reports and newspaper clippings, the Crimea Conference Scrapbook containing mimeographed bulletins and other documents pertaining to the Conference, and photocopied materials including correspondence, Alger Hiss's handwritten notes, memoranda and writings.

Lawyer, government official.