Steve Nelson (activist)

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Steve Nelson is an alias of Stephen Mesarosh (1 January 1903 – December 1993) who was born in Chaglich, Croatia in 1903. ^[1] (The Communist Party of the United States would later claim he was born in Steelton, Pennsylvania.^[1]) In 1919, he emigrated to the United States, working in a Pittsburgh slaughterhouse. ^[1] Dissatisfied with labor conditions, he joined the Socialist Labor Party but left in 1928 to join the Communist Party of the United States. ^[1] He studied at the Lenin Institute in Moscow before returning to the United States to work fulltime for the Communist Party. ^[1] He went to Spain in 1937, and was initially political commissar of the Lincoln Battalion of XV International Brigade. He became commander of the battalion on the first day (6 July 1937) of the Battle of Brunete, replacing Martin Hourihan who was badly wounded.^[2]

In 1956, he was a party in two Supreme Court cases arising out of his membership of the Communist Party. In the first case (Pennsylvania -v- Nelson), his conviction for sedition (for which he was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment) was reversed. The second case (Mesarosh -v- United States) was of a more technical nature.

He became national commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at its 1967 convention.^[3]