Communist Party Leaders Found Guilty in Major Smith Act Trial
Eleven top leaders of the American Communist Party were convicted on this day of violating the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate the overthrow the government.
The guilty verdict was appealed, and the result was the important Supreme Court decision, in Dennis v. United States, on June 4, 1951, which upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act. In their dissents in Dennis, Justice Hugo Black and William O. Douglas argued that the government had presented no evidence of any criminal acts and relied entirely on the words of the defendants.
Following the trial, all of the defendants’ lawyers were cited for contempt (March 10, 1952). Their convictions and subsequent disbarment had a devastating impact on the left-wing bar during the Cold War.
After the Dennis decision, the Justice Department embarked on prosecutions of what were called “Second Tier” Communist Party leaders. In cases in 15 separate cities (including Cleveland, Seattle, Philadelphia, Denver, and others), 144 people were prosecuted and over 100 were convicted.
Six years after the Dennis decision, the Supreme Court narrowed the permissible application of the Smith Act, in Yates v. United States, on June 17, 1957 (known as “Red Monday” because of a set of decisions limiting anti-communist measures). Yates drew a sharper distinction between advocacy of the overthrow of the government as an idea, which was protected by the First Amendment, and actions directed toward that end. The Justice Department ceased prosecutions under the Smith Act in 1958.
Watch newsreel footage of the trial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CsldbspbtA
Read: Michael R. Belknap, Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties (1977)
Learn more about the Smith Act and its history: http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/annotation13.html
Learn more about the Cold War: Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998)