Communist Party Leaders Arrested – Test of Smith Act Ahead
The top leaders of the Communist Party were arrested under the Smith Act on this day.
The Smith Act, enacted on June 29, 1940, made it a crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. After a stormy trial, in which the prosecutor relied primarily on Marxist writings and offered no evidence of any planned effort to overthrow the U.S. government, 11 party leaders were nonetheless convicted.
The appeal of their convictions resulted in the Supreme Court decision Dennis v. United States on June 4, 1951, in which the Court upheld the convictions as well as the constitutionality of the Smith Act. Civil libertarians regarded the Dennis decision as a serious blow to First Amendment rights.
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.
On June 17,1957 (known as “Red Monday”), the Supreme Court issued a set of decisions limiting anti-communist measures, including Yates v. United States, which severely limited the scope of the Smith Act, making convictions almost impossible. As a result, the Justice Department ceased all prosecutions under the law.
Read: Michael R. Belknap, Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties (1977)
Watch newsreel footage of the Smith Act trial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CsldbspbtA
Learn more: Geoffrey Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004)
Learn more about the Smith Act and its history: http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/annotation13.html