Green, Gil, 1906-1997

Gil Green, 90, for more than 50 years a top leader in Chicago and New York of the U.S. Communist Party, was sentenced to prison in the 1949 under the Smith Act for "conspiracy to teach and advocate" the overthrow of the government.

He subsequently became a fugitive and helped operate the party from the underground, surrendered, served almost six years in the penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., and then returned to a full-time organizing position in New York until he resigned in 1968 over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

A resident of New York and formerly of Chicago, he died Sunday in a nursing home in Ann Arbor, Mich.

A bulletin published in the early 1950s called upon "alert citizens and law enforcement agencies to assist in locating Green" and gave the following description:

"Green is a quiet, convincing speaker and is not given to outbursts of emotion except on rare occasions. His appearance is neat and he frequently wears brown suits and flashy ties. He likes to chew gum and smoke cigarettes occasionally. . . . (He) has worked as a writer, lecturer, electrician and machine shop worker."

Mr. Green evaded arrest for five years but turned himself in in 1956. He had three years added to his sentence for contempt of court in jumping bail, but the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that without a jury trial, a sentence for more than one year for contempt was unconstitutional.

Born in Chicago's Maxwell Street area, he attended Marshall High School for two years and, after he joined the Communist Party in 1924, changed his name from Gershon Greenberg to Gil Green because of anti-Semitism and blacklisting.

In 1934, he became national head of the Young Communist League, which supplied many of the individuals who helped organize the industrial unions in this country, as well as thousands of volunteers who fought against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1946, Mr. Green became chairman of the Illinois District of the Communist Party. In the early 1960s, he was named head of the New York district of the party.

After resigning his position over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became a laborer at age 62 and helped construct the World Trade Center in New York.

Mr. Green's main political concern was to build bridges to various popular movements, including the labor, civil rights and peace efforts. In that regard, he considered party leader Gus Hall, who was suspicious of non-communists, more responsive to the Soviet leadership than to American workers.

Survivors include two sons, Daniel and Ralph; a stepson, Daniel North; two stepdaughters, Susan North and Nora North; six grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Plans for a memorial program in Chicago were pending.

Gil Green (September 24, 1906 – May 4, 1997) was a leading figure in the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1991. He is best remembered as the leader of the party's youth section, the Young Communist League, during the tumultuous decade of the 1930s.[1]


Contents
1 Biography
1.1 Early years
1.2 Communist youth leader
1.3 Communist Party functionary
1.4 Later years, death, and legacy
2 Footnotes
3 Works
4 External links
Biography
Early years
Gil Green was born Gilbert Greenberg in Chicago.[2] His parents were working class Jewish immigrants from the Russian empire.[3] Green's father, who worked as a tailor, died when Gil was about 10, leaving his mother to support the family as a garment worker.[2]

Green was a successful student, graduating high school in the spring of 1924 as his class president and valedictorian.[2]

Communist youth leader
Green joined the Young Workers League, youth section of the Communist Party, USA, in 1924.[4] He went to work full-time for the Young Workers (Communist) League in 1927 when he was named the organization's district organizer for Chicago.[2]

In 1928 Green spent several months in Massachusetts raising funds for striking workers embroiled in the 1928 New Bedford textile strike.[2] He was moved to New York City by the Communist Party the following year to work at national headquarters as a full-time youth section functionary.[2] He worked as the editor of the party's youth newspaper, Young Worker, and in 1930 was named New York state organizer for the renamed Young Communist League (YCL).[2] In 1931 he was promoted to the position of national secretary of the YCL.[4]

Green was named one of three communist youth leaders named to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow in 1935.[4] In that capacity he attended the 6th World Congress of the Young Communist International (YCI), which elected him to the Executive Committee and Secretariat of that body.[4]

Green remained a prominent youth leader of the American Communist Party throughout the depression decade, attending the 1936 World Youth Congress held in Geneva and serving as one of three YCI delegates to a meeting with the rival Socialist Youth International that drew up a unity agreement with regards to aiding the Spanish Republic in the ongoing Spanish Civil War.[4] Green was also a delegate to the 1938 World Youth Congress held in the United States at Vassar College.[4]

Communist Party functionary
Leaving the communist youth movement at the end of the decade, Green was selected as a member of the National Board of the Communist Party, USA.[4] He served as the party's top official, district organizer, of the key party district of New York from 1941 to 1945 and was vocal in his support of CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder.[4] In 1943, Green convinced Bella Dodd to join the Party openly, first by filling a local New York government position left open by Si Gerson (who was enlisting in the Army).[5][6] Following the fall of his patron in 1945, Green was moved out of New York to become district organizer in Chicago to become the Illinois State Secretary of the CPUSA.[2]

Green proved himself loyal to the new leadership of the CPUSA over the next two years and was returned to New York City and a place on the party's National Board in 1947.[2]

Green's status as a top official of the Communist Party made him a target for prosecution during the McCarthy era. Along with 11 other top party officials, Green was indicted in July 1948 under the Smith Act and convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment following a lengthy 1949 trial.[4] Unlike his co-defendants Green became a fugitive from justice following the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the verdict in 1951, remaining in the underground until voluntarily surrendering to authorities on February 27, 1956,[4] Thereafter, Green was incarcerated in federal prison until July 29, 1961,[4] when he was released early due to good behavior, although barred from association with known communists until expiration of his full sentence under terms of his release.[2]

From 1966 Green again returned to prominence, this time as the Communist Party's Chairman in New York.[2] He was actively involved in the political movement against the Vietnam War and by 1968 was again part of the CPUSA's governing National Committee.[2] This return to top leadership proved short-lived, however, as Green ran afoul of hardline party leader Gus Hall he joined a section of party members who vocally criticized the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia.[7]

Although re-elected to the National Committee in 1969 despite his contention that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had been "a very serious blunder,"[2] Green later quit the National Committee, although he remained a member of the Communist Party for another two decades.[7]

Later years, death, and legacy
In 1991, following the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, Green left the party and helped found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

Green died at a nursing home in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the age of 90.[7]

Michael Myerson sorted his papers.[1] Green's papers reside at the Tamiment Library of New York University in New York City and at the Chicago History Museum in Chicago, IL.