Editing Gus Hall (section)

==Indictment during the Red Scare and rise to the head of the CPUSA==
[[File:Gus Hall.jpg|thumb|Hall's [[mug shot]], taken during his prison sentence in [[Leavenworth, Kansas]] for "Conspiring and Teaching Overthrow of the U.S. Government by Force or Violence", 1954]]
Now a major American communist leader in the post-war era, Hall caught the attention of United States officials. On July 22, 1948, Hall and [[Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders|11 other Communist Party leaders were indicted]] under the [[Smith Act|Alien Registration Act]], popularly called the [[Smith Act#Communist Party trials|Smith Act]], on charges of "conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence", although his conviction was based entirely on Hall's advocacy of Marxist thought. Hall's initial prison sentence lasted for five years.<ref name="barkan" />

Released on bail, Hall rose to the secretariat of the CPUSA.<ref name="sks" /> When the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act (June 4, 1951), Hall and three other men [[Bail|skipped bail]] and went underground.<ref name="barkan" /> Hall's attempt to flee to Moscow failed when he was picked up in [[Mexico City]] on October 8, 1951.<ref name="sks" /><ref name="barkan" /> He was sentenced to three more years and eventually served over five and a half years in [[United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth|Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary]].<ref name = "AP Obit" /> In prison he distributed party leaflets and lifted weights. He was located in a cell adjacent to that of [[Machine Gun Kelly (gangster)|George Kelly]], a notorious gangster of the [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition]] era.<ref name ="nyt" /> The [[Supreme Court of the United States]] later reversed some convictions under the Smith Act as unconstitutional.

In the early 1960s, Hall was in danger of facing yet another indictment, this time under the Internal Security Act of 1950, known as the [[McCarran Internal Security Act|McCarran Act]], but the Supreme Court found the Act partly unconstitutional, and the government abandoned its charges.<ref name="sks" /> The act required "Communist action" organizations to register with the government, it excluded party members from applying for United States passports or holding government jobs.<ref name ="nyt" /> Because of the Act, Hall's driver's license was revoked by the State of New York.<ref name ="nyt" />

After his release, Hall continued his activities.<ref name = "AP Obit" /> He began to travel around the United States, ostensibly on vacation but gathering support to replace Dennis as the general secretary.<ref name="healey">{{Cite book|first = Dorothy Ray Healey|last = Maurice Isserman|title = California Red: a life in the American Communist Party|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year= 1993|pages=172–174|isbn=0-252-06278-7}}</ref> He accused Dennis of cowardice for not going underground as ordered in 1951 and also claimed Dennis had used funds reserved for the underground for his own purposes.<ref name ="nyt" /><ref name="healey" /> Hall's rise to the position of general secretary was generally unexpected by the American Communist circles (the post was expected to go to either [[Henry Winston]] or [[Gil Green (communist)|Gil Green]], both important figures in the YCL<ref name="healey" />), although Hall had held the office of acting general secretary briefly in the early 1950s after Dennis's arrest.<ref name="healey" /> In 1959, Hall was elected CPUSA general secretary and afterward received the [[Order of Lenin]].<ref name = "AP Obit" />