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.
Career
CPUSA
Lannon joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and attended the International Lenin School in Moscow.
At some time during his career, Albert Vetere changed his name to Albert Francis Lannon.
Lannon was an organizer for the Marine Workers Industrial Union, and Roy Hudson national MWIU secretary).
In the 1930s, Lannon worked in the waterfront sections of both the national CPUSA and for the New York State Communist Party.
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.
From 1943-45 he served as district organizer of the Party's Maryland-Washington, D.C., 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.
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."