Frank Wilkinson Assassination Plot: FBI Stands By, Does Nothing
On the evening of this day, political activist and anti-HUAC leader Frank Wilkinson was the target of an assassination plot by right-wing extremists. The FBI files on Wilkinson later revealed that the Bureau had information about the plot but did nothing to warn him or to arrest the plotters.
Wilkinson had lost his job with the Los Angeles Housing Authority on October 28, 1952, because of his political views, and from that time forward because a political activist, leading the campaign to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.
The key issue causing Wilkinson to lose his job and the LAHA was his support for a public housing project in the Chavez Ravine area of Los Angeles. Powerful commercial and political interests, however, wanted the area for a baseball stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers who were moving the Los Angeles. In a public hearing on eminent domain in the Chavez Ravine area a lawyer for real estate interests suddenly asked Wilkinson a question about his political associations. He refused to answer any questions about that subject. The hearing was suspended and he was soon fired from his job. Read all about Frank Wilkinson and the Chavez Ravine affair here.
He refused to answer questions before HUAC on January 30, 1958, and went to prison on May 1, 1961, as a result. He planned the famous demonstrations against HUAC in San Francisco, which began on May 12, 1960, the largest public protest of the committee up to that time. His FBI file of 132,000 pages is believed to be the largest file on any single individual. Wilkinson died on January 2, 2006.
Learn more: Robert Sherrill, First Amendment Felon: The Story of Frank Wilkinson, His 132,000 Page FBI File and His Epic Fight for Civil Rights and Liberties (2005)
Watch an interview with Frank Wilkinson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMAE8iun_RU
Frank Wilkinson’s work lives on at the Defending Dissent Foundation: http://www.defendingdissent.org/now/