Clarence Hathaway
"Charlie" Hathaway (8 Jan 1892 – 23 January 1963) was an activist in the Minnesota trade union movement and a prominent leader of the Communist Party of the United States from the 1920s through the early 1940s.
[3] Historian Harvey Klehr has characterized Hathaway as having been an "outgoing, friendly man, a former semi-pro baseball player not adverse to having several drinks.
Hathaway attended the "Unity Convention of Communist Parties" at the Overlook Mountain Hotel in Woodstock, NY, for a four-day meeting in May 1921.
[7] Hathaway was elected a delegate to the 3rd National Convention of the Workers Party of America from Minnesota, held December 30, 1923, to January 2, 1924, in Chicago.
[3] The gathering named him the secretary of the national Federated Farmer-Labor Party, a position in which he served until dissolution of the organization late in that same year.
The janitor, August Yokinen, was accused of having rudely threatened three black attendees of a party-sponsored dance — an action which undercut the party's professed support of social equality.
[16] A Soviet-style show trial was held on March 1, 1931, in front of an audience of 1,500 — a gathering which included 211 delegates from 113 different "mass and fraternal organizations" associated with the Communist Party.
Hathaway called for Yokinen's expulsion from the party for "acting as a phonograph of the capitalists," while Moore blamed the "vile, corrupt, oppressive system" of capitalism for the defendant's undisputed transgressions.
[18] The object lesson taught, the gathering sang The Internationale and disbursed, with the proceedings of the show trial subsequently published in pamphlet form for a broader audience.
[16] Hathaway's place as a top leader of the Communist Party was further illuminated on February 15, 1934, when he shared the platform with CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder and former vice presidential candidate James Ford in speaking before 8,000 people at a meeting held at the Bronx Coliseum attempting to drum up support for a broad coalition to fight against the spread of fascism.
[19] Incensed that the Socialists had invited Matthew Woll of the American Federation of Labor and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as speakers, the assembled Communists chanted and booed in an attempt to disrupt the meeting.
[19] When Hathaway came to the podium as David Dubinsky was finishing speaking, several members of the audience jumped on the Daily Worker editor and began beating him with fists and chairs before picking him up and forcibly throwing him over a railing off the platform.
[20] When chairman of the meeting Algernon Lee attempted to read a resolution in condemnation of the actions of the Dollfuss government in Austria, Communists in the audience began to chant "We Want Hathaway!"
[24] Although this information came to the attention of American Communist Party leaders too late for his removal without provoking a crisis in the New York organization,[25] Hathaway was soon shunted out of power, ostensibly for reasons of health.
[26] Hathaway's papers, consisting of 21 published articles and speeches in one archival box, are held at the library of the Minnesota Historical Society at St.
