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168 / THE ALGER HISS TRIAL
What Happened to Alger Hiss?
On March 22, 1951, Hiss went to prison. He spent forty-four months in a federal penitentiary. Priscilla got a job in a bookstore and brought up their ten-year-old son, Anthony. Hiss was freed on Friday, November 26, 1954. He spent the next sixteen months writing a book, In the Court of Public Opinion, in which he analyzed why the evidence at his trial was insufficient to convict him of perjury. Then he found a job working as an assistant to the president of a small company that produced novelty costume jewelry.
In 1959 he and Priscilla separated. At the same time, he lost his job. He found work as a salesman of office supplies and printing and began rebuilding his life. He remarried. He became a frequent speaker at colleges and universities about his years in government service and his case. There is now an endowed professorship at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, called the Alger Hiss Chair. He was eventually readmitted to the Massachusetts bar.
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