Hugh De Lacy, 76; Co-Founder of Progressive Party

Hugh De Lacy, a founder of the national Progressive Party that nominated Henry Wallace for President in 1948 and a former Seattle congressman, died Tuesday in Santa Cruz.

He was 76, family spokesman Steve Turner said, and died of cancer in Dominican Hospital.

De Lacy was an English teacher at the University of Washington who was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1937. He served one term in Congress, from 1944 to 1946, and then worked on Wallace’s losing campaign.

In 1954, he invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked by the House Un-American Activities Committee if he was or ever had been a Communist. He accused the committee of “insisting that a citizen surrender his constitutional rights.”

Later, De Lacy moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a contractor until retiring to Santa Cruz in the 1970s.

In 1983, Rep. Leon Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) entered a tribute to De Lacy and his wife, Dorothy, into the Congressional Record. It read in part: “The causes to which they have dedicated their lives--peace, jobs, an end to race and sex discrimination, a halt to the costly and dangerous arms race--are causes for which we are still working today.”