Yokinen Show Trial  The Yokinen Show Trial was a March 1931 public disciplinary proceeding conducted by leaders of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) against August Yokinen, a Finnish-American Communist janitor who allegedly made racially disparaging remarks against several African-American members of the organization at a social event. Attended by more an audience of 2,000 people, the "party trial" of Yokinen was publicized across America and was intended to emphasize the CPUSA's commitment to eliminate "White Chauvinism" from its ranks and to thereby bolster its status in the eyes of the black American working class and among white intellectuals seeking an end to racism. For his actions Yokinen was expelled from the CPUSA for one year, with provision made for eventual readmission conditional upon active participation in the organization's anti-racist activities. News of the "Yokinen Trial" was picked up by the Associated Press and publicized around the country. The event was also the subject of a pamphlet published by the CPUSA's publishing house, helping to establish the Soviet-style show trial as a seminal event in the history of American Communism during its ultra-radical Third Period of the early 1930s. This publicity attracted the attention of U.S. Immigration authorities, who immediately detained Yokinen for deportation on the grounds that he had violated terms of his entry into the country by holding membership in an organization advocating the use of "force and violence" to overthrow the United States government. Yokinen was defended against these deportation charges by the same Communist Party which had inadvertently placed his immigration status in jeopardy through its International Labor Defense affiliate. The early American Communist Party (CPUSA) was numerically dominated by a membership composed of European working class immigrants. Upwards of 90% of the party's founding membership were first and second generation immigrants who spoke languages other than English, participating in networks of local groups organized as semi-autonomous language federations — including in particular Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Latvian, South Slavic, and other groups. Additional mergers in 1921 of large sections of the Finnish Socialist Federation and Yiddish-speaking Jewish Socialist Federation further bolstered the non-English contingent of the American Communist movement. By way of contrast, American Communist support among the black workers of the United States was extremely weak, limited to a small handful of radicals around the New York City-based African Blood Brotherhood, a number of whom were themselves immigrants to the country from the Caribbean basin. Talented American-born black radicals were few, a deficiency which galled the Moscow-based Executive Committee of the Communist International, which saw the hyper-exploited American black population as potentially fruitful grounds for the recruitment of new Communists.