Charlotte Anita Whitney Arrested, Heads for Supreme Court
Charlotte Anita Whitney was arrested on this day for violating the California Criminal Syndicalism law. Always known as Anita, she was arrested in Oakland for giving a speech at a left-wing rally. The appeal of her conviction resulted in Justice Louis Brandeis’ extremely important and influential opinion in Whitney v. California, decided on May 16, 1927.
The Supreme Court in Whitney unanimously upheld her conviction, but Justice Louis Brandeis wrote a concurring opinion that was virtually a dissent, and is generally regarded as one of the most eloquent and influential defenses of freedom of speech in the history of the Court. See the quote from his opinion below.
Anita Whitney was quickly pardoned by the Governor of California on June 20, 1927. She remained a committed and active Communist until she died at age 87 in 1955. In 1936 she was named national chairwoman of the Communist Party. And in 1949 at age 82, frail because of her age, she was carried to a rally to protest the Smith Act prosecutions of the top Communist Party leaders.
Justice Brandeis: “ . . . order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies….”
Learn more about Charlotte Anita Whitney.
Read the new biography of Brandeis: Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (2016)
Learn more: Geoffrey Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004)