Sentner spent a great deal of time defending himself and his family from relentless persecution.

Beginning in 1949, the Sentner family fought the government's attempt to deport Toni Sentner, who had steadily if unsuccessfully sought citizenship papers since 1937. She had been denied because of her husband's prominence and open status as a CP member.

Mrs. Sentner had come to the U.S. at the age of 8, and had been radicalized from her family's experiences in the coal fields of the U.S., not in her native Croatia. (Coming soon: excerpt from interview with Toni Sentner)

Because of her family responsibilities, she had not been active in the CP since the 1930s. Her main political activities had been support for the UE and work in the Croatian Fraternal Union in the St. Louis area.

Government officials targeted her primarily because of her relationship to William Sentner. The initial prosecution was timed perfectly to coincide with the UE District elections, in October 1949. William Sentner charged that the deportation proceedings were "an ugly, crude attempt of the Government and enemies of the UE to slander our union, undermine our fight for wage increases and against the growing economic crisis."

Prosecuted under immigration laws and later under the McCarran Act, she was named "one of the 86 top alien Communists in the United States ."

In 1952 in the midst of negotiations at Eagle Signal in Moline , William Sentner was arrested and charged under the Smith Act with “conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence”.

This was part of the “red roundup” of “second string” Midwest Communist leaders, whom FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared were among the most dangerous in the country.

Eagle Signal management, told that Sentner was due to be arrested, held up negotiations accordingly.

Awakening him in his hotel room in the early morning, FBI agents seemed bemused that they found a Missouri fishing license rather than CP paraphernalia in his wallet. "The charge is ridiculous," Sentner said, and he accused the government of intentionally disrupting union negotiations and giving employers ammunition in the nearby Farm Equipment Union strike in which Sentner was also critically involved: "They are going stark mad in Washington when they do this kind of stuff. The only thing I have conspired in is to keep the Eagle Signal Corporation from installing an incentive [pay] system at the plant."

In 1952, these women picketers at Eagle Sgnal in Moline, Illinois were recovering from an atack by company foreman. Their negotiations for a contract were held up so that the FBI could dramatically arrest William Sentner during the middle of them. FBI agents informed Eagle Signal managers, who arranged the event for maximum publicity against the union..

The trial began in early 1954. Sentner passionately defended his belief in democratic socialism, the U.S. Constitution, and non-violence, evidence for which was in the FBI files that were withheld from his defense team.

His attorney, Sidney Berger, sought to show that the prosecution was "trying to prove that dissent is treason," since they had not shown Sentner guilty of conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the government.

But in the frenzied atmosphere of the times, the jury took little time to find him and the four other St. Louis Smith Act defendants guilty for their beliefs and association.

Sentner was sentenced to five years in prison, though he was released pending appeal. .

Sentner remained an UE international representative until 1954, when the national office decided it could no longer support an open Communist.

He was trailed and harassed wherever he attempted to lead organizing drives during these years.

FBI agents notified employers of his Communist affiliation in the small towns and remote areas of Illinois , Indiana , Missouri and southern states.

In 1951 Newsweek heightened the stakes when it labeled him the CP's top choice to “hurt the United States defense effort.”

The hardships of the series of legal prosecutions were compounded by Sentner's inability to find work.

He took odd jobs to make ends meet and eventually obtained a job at St. Louis' Barnes Hospital as a maintenance carpenter, though constant illness left the family in dire circumstances.

Still, he continued to remain active in political affairs. When he ran for Board of Freeholders to revise the city charter, the vote for him was high enough to raise alarm bells about the St. Louis African American community's support for a member of the CP.

William Sentner, right, on a construction job, 1956

Despite Sentner's continuing misgivings about CP policy, he did not officially resign until early 1957. But the revelations about Stalin made him question his previous efforts to legitimize the party, but he was still deeply committed to the idea of a need for a working class party dedicated to socialist principles, the very impetus that had caused him to cast his lot with the CP more than twenty years before.

According to FBI informants, at the time he resigned he expressed regrets about the mistakes he had made after he joined the CP. He spoke somewhat wistfully of how workers had urged him to leave the party, noting their promise that if he would, they would support his right to discuss socialism--"but as long as you are a Communist we are afraid to take a chance." With his resignation, he noted that he might at last expect the "end to government persecution."

Sentner did not have much time to enjoy such freedom. Just two months after the Supreme Court's Yates decision overturned the Smith Act convictions in 1958, Sentner died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-one.

The vast number of people who came to pay their last respects, and who helped to pay for the costs of the funeral for a family that was penniless, was an indication of the affection and respect that many held for Sentner, even when they did not feel free to openly express it.