Minneapolis Trotskyists Sentenced to Prison for Violating the Smith Act
Twenty-three Minneapolis Teamsters Union members, who were also Trotskyists (a dissident Marxist sect that was critical of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin), were sentenced to prison on this day for violating the Smith Act, which prohibited advocating the overthrow of the government by force or violence.
The prosecution of the Teamsters/Trotskyists was the first significant case involving the 1940 Smith Act, passed on June 29, 1940. Civil libertarians and many legal scholars regarded the Smith Act as the most serious threat to First Amendment protection of freedom of speech since the Espionage Act during World War I. The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the Minneapolis case, which prevented a test of the constitutionality of the Smith Act.
The prosecution of the Minneapolis Teamsters was a shabby political operation, urged on by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration with the help of the national Teamsters Union leadership, who wanted to be rid of a dissident faction, and the Communist Party, which wanted to be rid of a dissident Marxist group. (During World War II, the Soviet Union was a key ally in the war against Nazi Germany, and the American Communist Party abandoned its radical Marxist views in favor of an aggressive pro-American, pro-war stance.)
The Smith Act finally reached the Supreme Court in Dennis v. United States on June 4, 1951, in which the Court upheld both the constitutionality of the law and the conviction of the top leaders of the Communist Party. Because the government offered no real evidence of any acts related to the violent overthrow of the government, and relied largely on the words of the defendants, the Dennis decision is regarded by civil libertarians as a serious blow to the First Amendment. Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas delivered strong dissents from the court’s majority opinion.
The Supreme Court limited the scope of the Smith Act and the Dennis decision in Yates v. United States, on June 17, 1957, one of the famous “Red Monday” decisions that limited various anti-Communist measures. In Yates, the Court held that the actions of the defendants did not pose a “clear and present danger.” Yates essentially ended the government’s use of the Smith Act.
Learn about the case: Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Persecution Since the Age of FDR (2016)
Learn more: Richard W. Steele, Free Speech in the Good War (1999)
Learn more about the Trotskyists Smith Act trial here
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