Fred Arndt
Born: Year unknown, Germany
Nationality: German
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Construction worker
Migration: Year unknown
Affiliation: IWW
Organizer and delegate for the IWW’s Local No. 573 of the Construction Workers’ Industrial Union in Seattle. He refused to register for the draft during the First World War and was arrested in February 1919 during a raid on the Seattle IWW headquarters. Charged with “criminal anarchy,” he declined to answer investigators’ questions. Because of his German nationality, he was interned as an “alien enemy” at Fort Douglas, Utah. He was released on condition of “voluntary repatriation” and deported on June 23, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54616/32; FBI file OG 347754
Charles Ashleigh
Born: 1889, London, England
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: English; Jewish
Occupation: Clerk; laborer; union organizer; journalist
Migration: Immigrated to Argentina 1909; to US 1912
Affiliation: IWW; Communist Party of America
Raised in a middle-class environment, Ashleigh joined the Independent Labour Party at age fifteen, later affiliating with the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation. He served as a secretary of the Fabian Society from 1908 and was active in the socialist Clarion Scouts. At the behest of the ILP, he organized among South Wales coal miners in 1908–9. In 1909 he moved to Buenos Aires to work as a clerk with the Central Argentine Railroad, founded a Socialist Club there, and wrote for the Buenos Aires Herald. After traveling on foot through Argentina, Chile, and Peru, he worked his way as a crew member to Portland in 1912, then regularized his legal status by crossing between Canada and the United States. He became a paid speaker for the Socialist Party of America, but soon aligned himself with the IWW and became a paid organizer. He traveled extensively as a journalist, wrote poetry, and participated in the Rangel-Cline and Everett defense campaigns. Openly gay, he maintained a romantic relationship with African American radical poet Claude McKay. Arrested in 1917, he was a defendant in the federal IWW trial and received a ten-year sentence and a $30,000 fine. He joined the Communist Party while incarcerated, and his sentence was commuted in 1921 on the condition of his voluntary departure on February 7, 1922.
In London, Ashleigh transferred to the Communist Party of Great Britain and worked for the Sunday Worker, Daily Worker, and TASS. In 1922 he was dispatched to India to deliver invitations to the Fourth Comintern Congress but was detained and expelled by British authorities, yet was able to complete his mission. Later that year, he worked as a translator at the Fourth Comintern Congress in Moscow and was asked to establish an American information section for the Red International of Labor Unions, and moved to Berlin in 1923 to work for the RILU. He was arrested and expelled from Germany shortly thereafter. Published his semi-autobiographical IWW novel The Rambling Kid in 1930. Sent to Moscow in 1931 to write for The Moscow News/Moscow Daily News, he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1934 after being denounced as homosexual by a roommate. He remained a member of the CPGB until his death in 1974, though largely marginalized within it.
Sources: INS file 54235/39-A; Steve Kellerman, “Introduction,” Charles Ashleigh, The Rambling Kid (2004); Kevin Morgan, Gidon Cohen, and Andrew Flynn, Communists and British Society, 1920-1991 (2007); Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, International Communism and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity and Suspicion (2015).
Joseph Kyauskas Aukstuolis
Born: c. 1896, Bartninkai, Russia (present-day Belarus)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Lithuanian
Occupation: Deliveryman
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Socialist Party of America
Joined the Lithuanian Federation of the Socialist Party of America in December 1913 and remained a member until September 1919, serving as secretary of its Cleveland branch for seven months. Although he claimed Russian citizenship, his deportation warrant was issued for Lithuania. Deported on February 26, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54860/795
Aurelio Vincente Azuara (or Vicente Azuara)
Born: 1884, Spain
Nationality: Spanish
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer; miner
Migration: Immigrated to Mexico 1907; to US 1912
Affiliation: IWW; anarchist
Migrated to Mexico in 1907 and to the United States in 1912. Joined the IWW in 1913 and became an unofficial organizer. In Los Angeles he edited the unofficial Spanish-language IWW paper El Rebelde (1916–17). Arrested in September 1917, he was a defendant in the federal IWW trial and received a sentence of twenty years and a $10,000 fine. His sentence was commuted on condition of deportation to Spain on March 27, 1923.
Possibly the same Aurelio Vicente Azuara who from Paris requested a visa to visit England on behalf of Spain’s anarcho-syndicalist CNT in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.
Sources: INS file 54616/48; David Struthers, The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles; https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/scw/id/4302
Alfredo Bagaglino
Born: 1864, Turin, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Miner
Migration: Immigrated to US 1907
Affiliation: Anarchist
An orphan and an anarchist, he was expelled from France in 1904 for unclear reasons. He migrated to the United States in 1907 and settled in Spring Valley, Illinois, where he lived with his wife Domenica Cariglio and their adopted son. A supporter of Cronaca Sovversiva, Umanità Nova (Milan), and Alleanza Libertaria (Rome), he was active in local mining strikes. According to Chicago immigration inspector George E. Schubert, Bagaglino was the “actual leader” and “most outspoken” of the Spring Valley anarchists, and “a forcible speaker.” Deported to Italy on March 16, 1921; his wife intended to sell their home and join him.
He continued to correspond with Italian anarchists in the United States. In 1926 he was arrested by fascist authorities for anti-fascist activities and sentenced to several years of mandato al confino (internal exile in a prison colony). He died in Turin in 1936.
Sources: INS file 54885/18; CPC busta 239; Un trentennio di attività anarchica (1915-1945); L’Adunata dei Refrattari, June 6, 1936.
Simon Bagatchuk (a.k.a. Sam Bush)
Born: 1888, Podolsk, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913 (via Canada)
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Joined the Seattle branch of the Union of Russian Workers in April 1919. Arrested in Seattle on 17 January 1919, and again on 17 November 1919. Deported on February 1, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54860/453; FBI file OG 388850.
