William Bross Lloyd

William Bross Lloyd (February 24, 1875 – June 30, 1946) was an American attorney and political activist. The oldest son of the muckraking journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd and Jessie Bross, daughter of Chicago Tribune founder William Bross, William Bross Lloyd is best remembered as a founding member and financial angel of the fledgling Communist Labor Party of America, forerunner of the Communist Party USA.

Biography

Early years

William Bross Lloyd Sr. was born February 24, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the oldest son of muckraking progressive journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd and Jessie Bross, daughter of Chicago Tribune founder William Bross, through whom he ultimately inherited a valuable one-quarter share of the newspaper.

Lloyd attended Harvard College from which he graduated in 1898. Thereafter he enrolled at Harvard Law School, completing his studies there in 1902 and continuing to practice law in the states of Massachusetts and Illinois. The couple would have four children, three girls and a son, before a bitter divorce in 1916.

Following the split of the left wing from the Socialist Party in the summer of 1919, Lloyd became a founding member of the Communist Labor Party of America. After just three months of public existence this organization was subjected to government repression as one of the targets of the Palmer Raids of January 2/3, 1920, and was driven underground.

Lloyd would be one of 20 Communists tried for conspiring to overthrow the US government in a major Chicago trial, which was prosecuted by future Chicago judge Frank D. Comerford and defended by celebrated attorney Clarence Darrow. The trial, which ran from May 10 to August 2, 1920, resulted in convictions for all of the defendants. Lloyd received a sentence of from 1 to 5 years in prison but remained free on bail pending resolution of the appeal process. Though the appeals process was exhausted in 1922, Lloyd was no longer seen as a threatening advocate of communism by that date and his sentence was accordingly commuted.

Death and legacy

William Bross Lloyd died of cancer on June 30, 1946, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. The collection, totaling 24 linear feet of material, is housed in 41 archival boxes and includes writings, publications, photographs, and family correspondence.

Footnotes

Works

Peace: Now You See It and Now You Don't; or, That's All — The Prestidigitator. n.c. [Chicago?]: n.p., [c. 1917]. The Socialist Party and Its Purposes. With Isaac Edward Ferguson. Chicago: Goodspeed Press, 1918. "Silence — And the Resurrection: A Letter from William Bross Lloyd" with "In Reply" by Max Eastman, The Liberator, vol. 1, no. 6 (Aug. 1918), pp. 30–32.