Al Lannon

In 1999, Lannon's son published a biography of his father, Second String Red.

During 1956-1957, Lannon was leader of the left faction that opposed the reforms of John Gates, who had accepted Nikita Khrushchev's criticisms of Stalin and supported Howard Fast, who was quite critical of the USSR. In 1957, Lannon moved to San Francisco, California, because the FBI had killed his employment chances in New York, while the CPUSA would not help out because of Lannon's political differences. Eventually, he got a job in warehouse under ILWU Local 6.

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

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. As CPUSA head William Z. Foster wrote in 1952:

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 in the Federal Correctional Complex, Petersburg in Petersburg, Virginia, for two years.

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."

From 1943-45 he served as district organizer of the Party's Maryland-Washington, DC district. During 1943, after the Tehran Conference, as Earl Browder considered reform of the CPUSA and Joseph Stalin dissolved the Comintern, Lannon advised local Maryland CP members to integrate into existing neighborhood clubs. He banned recruitment of African Americans in eastern Maryland while continuing to recruit them in western Maryland to support these policy shifts. 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.

The Lannons lived in Brooklyn, the Upper West Side, East Bronx, Washington Heights, and the Lower East Side in New York City; Baltimore, Maryland; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Biloxi, Mississippi. During the late 1940s, his son later recalled:

During the 1940s, Lannon and Pauline Rogers served as editor of West Side Record newspaper, published by the New York State Communist Party's 3rd and 5th Assembly Districts.

In May 1937, Lannon became one of the founders of the National Maritime Union (NMU), representing merchant mariners on the East and Gulf coasts, and on the Great Lakes.

In 1935, Lannon married Elva Elizabeth Lund. They had a daughter Karen and son Albert Francis Lannon Jr., also known as Albert Vetere Lannon (1938-2020), became president of ILWU Local 6 (1982-1988) and later became chair of the Labor Studies program at Laney College.

In the 1930s, Lannon worked in the waterfront sections of both the national CPUSA and for the New York State Communist Party.

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).

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