Al Lannon

Al Lannon (1907–1969), born Albert Vetere, was an Italian-American leader in the Communist Party USA and a co-founder of the National Maritime Union (NMU), best known for organizing and activism for American labor unions on behalf of merchant mariners and stevedores (1930–1955).

Background Albert Vetere was born in 1907 in Italy. In his teens, he ran away from home.

In the 1930s, Lannon worked in the waterfront sections of both the national CPUSA and for the New York State Communist Party. On July 23, 1943, as District 34 Secretary, Lannon and Franklin Victor Reno met so Lannon could obtain the results of an election at Local 43 for the Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard. On October 19, 1943, he and fellow CPUSA Roy Hudson met with Father John Francis Cronin in Baltimore to discuss the labor situation at the Bethlehem Fairfield shipyard, then the largest shipyard in America. During World War II, Lannon dispatched Corinne Shear Wood (1925-2009), at the time a shipyard worker in Baltimore, to Jacksonville, Florida to help seamen there produce their union newsletter. Lannon also recruited African-American sea captain Hugh Mulzac.

On July 21, 1947, Walter S. Steele named Lannon before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as head of a "Coordinating Committee, National Maritime Field."

On June 20, 1951, Lannon was among 17 second-tier CPUSA leaders arrested under the Smith Act, followed by more than 100 more party members arrested between 1951 and 1956. On July 11, 1951, FBI informant Mary Stalcup Markward named Lannon as a CPUSA leader before HUAC. Lannon went to prison in the second-string Smith Act trials From 1956 to 1957, Lannon was leader of the left faction that opposed the reforms of John Gates,

Lannon's son gave Tamiment Library at New York University his archives about his father: 12 FBI files on Lannon, two files on his wife (also a Communist), one file on his son, an FBI report "Communist Infiltration of the Merchant Marine (1955), and a file called "Notes from Al Lannon's FBI File" from historian Harvey Klehr

Books The Maritime Workers and the Imperialist War (1940) The Communists' Message to Trade Unions (1944) The Mystery of 1000 "Vanished" Ships (1947) Let's Overthrow the Smith Act and Save the Bill of Rights (date?)