Arnold Johnson, 84; Longtime U.S. Communist Party Leader

Arnold Johnson, a longtime national leader of the Communist Party who was once jailed for advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, died Tuesday at a New York City hospital after a long illness. He was 84.

Born in a Seattle lumber camp, Johnson began working in a lumber mill at age 12. He worked his way through school, earning a master’s degree from Teachers College at Columbia University and a bachelor of divinity degree from the Union Theological Seminary.

In 1929 he joined the state Socialist Party in New York and in 1931 was arrested in Harland, Ky., where many union sympathizers had gone after a miners strike.

He later joined the Communist Party and in 1953 he and a group of other party leaders were convicted of violating the Smith Act, which prohibits calling for the violent overthrow of the government. Johnson was jailed for 28 months.

In 1970, he was cited for contempt of Congress when he refused to testify before the House Committee on Internal Security, but the matter was later dropped.

Johnson served as national legislative director, public relations director and in other posts in the party’s national- and state-level organizations. He also ran for the U.S. Senate on the Communist Party ticket.