Eugene Debs
1855 – 1926 American labor leader, socialist, presidential candidate
American socialist leader imprisoned under the Espionage Act for an anti-war speech.
- Religion
- Secular; raised in a French immigrant family.
- Affiliations
- American Railway Union; Socialist Party of America.
Eugene Debs was a founder of American industrial unionism and five times the Socialist Party candidate for president. In 1918 he was convicted under the Espionage Act for a speech opposing US entry into the First World War and sentenced to ten years, running his last campaign from prison. His case is a landmark in the history of wartime speech suppression.
In the timeline
- 1917 The Espionage and Sedition Acts jail wartime dissent mentioned