This article is part of the People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.
As U.S. imperialism escalated the Cold War abroad in the aftermath of World War II, it also executed a campaign of vicious anti-communism at home. The goal was to cripple the organized labor movement, which had grown powerful during the Depression and war years, derail the fight against Jim Crow racism, strangle the peace movement, and build domestic support for an aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union.
One crucial tool deployed by the ruling class was the Smith Act, a reactionary law used to charge Communist Party members with “conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence.” In effect, it criminalized thought.
In the late 1940s, there had already been the Hollywood witch-hunts targeting progressive filmmakers and cultural figures. These were buildups to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s main target: the leadership of the CPUSA. In 1948, he directed the Justice Department to bring charges against the party’s top leaders. He hoped to indict all 55 members of the party’s National Committee, but eventually only netted charges against 12 defendants:
- Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. – Chairman of the CPUSA’s Legislative Committee and a member of New York City Council.
- Eugene Dennis – General Secretary of the CPUSA
- William Z. Foster – National Chairman of the CPUSA (indicted but not tried due to illness)
- John Gates – Leader of the Young Communist League
- Gil Green – Member of the National Board, previous leader of the YCL
- Gus Hall – Member of the National Board, noted Ohio labor leader
- Irving Potash – Furriers Union official
- Jack Stachel – Editor of the Daily Worker
- Robert Thompson – New York State Chair, CPUSA
- John Williamson – Member of the National Committee
- Henry Winston – Member of the National Board
- Carl Winter – Michigan State Chair, CPUSA
Their trial was held at the Foley Square courthouse in New York City and was heard by reactionary right-wing Judge Harold Medina, a man who’d made a name for himself defending Nazi Anthony Cramer before the Supreme Court on a treason charge.
Prosecutors never had the evidence to assert that the Communist defendants had specifically planned to overthrow the government; they could only allege that Marxist-Leninist philosophy advocated violence. The defendants and their attorneys pointed out that this was a “thought-control trial” whose real targets were the labor and people’s movements.
The trial of the 11 Communist leaders—which was one of the lengthiest in American history—became a national civil rights struggle. Thanks to Dennis and the attorneys, fundamental questions were raised about the survival of constitutional democracy in the United States and the growing threat of a fascist police state. Thousands of supporters of the First Amendment marched on the courthouse for the duration of the trial, and a worldwide solidarity movement raised awareness about the anti-communist persecution campaign.
Guilty verdicts for all of the defendants were handed down 75 years ago this week, on Oct. 14, 1949. The 11 were sent to prison immediately, and, shockingly, Medina even locked up all their lawyers on contempt charges. For his service to the ruling class, Media received an appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals from President Harry Truman.
The two articles below are from the Oct. 17, 1949, issue of the Daily Worker, the first full edition of the paper after the trial concluded. The first article is DW reporter Harry Raymond’s direct account from inside the courtroom as the verdict was delivered. He details CPUSA General Secretary Eugene Dennis’ counter-indictment of Medina and the frame-up nature of the trial.
The second is the statement issued by the remaining un-imprisoned national and state leaders of the CPUSA, headed by William Z. Foster and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
Foley Square was the first big anti-communist trial, but others would continue well into the 1950s across the country. Over 100 CPUSA members in total were eventually prosecuted. This period of intense judicial attack on the Communist Party only tapered after the 1957 Yates decision by the Supreme Court ruled that defendants can only be charged for actions and not beliefs (real or alleged).
Medina Jails 11, Sentences Lawyers
By Harry Raymond
NEW YORK—With swift fascist-like judicial wrath, Judge Harold K. Medina on Friday ordered the 11 national Communist leaders to jail to await sentence, after a jury of eight women and four men in U. S. District Court declared them guilty of the trumped-up charge of conspiring to teach and advocate the “overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence.”
He lifted the $5,000 bail posted for each of the defendants and set Friday, Oct. 21, 10:30 a.m., as the time of sentence. They face ten years in prison and $10,000 fines each.
He loosed a violent tirade against the five defense lawyers and Communist Party General Secretary Eugene Dennis, who was acting as his own counsel, adjudged their courtroom conduct “contemptuous,” and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 30 days to six months.
He ordered the attorneys and Dennis to begin serving “contempt” sentences on Nov. 15. The end of the historic nine-month thought control trial came at 11:25 am. A dozen armed U.S. deputy marshals took positions behind the long row of red leather-backed chairs where the defendants sat.
Cops file in
Twenty more marshals poured into the marble-walled courtroom. A platoon of blue-coated New York City policemen filtered into the corridors. It appeared as though the jury verdict had been secretly signaled from the jury room in advance.
The jury, which deliberated six and a half hours—just about long enough to sort out the documentary evidence and trial exhibits—filed in.
Mrs. Thelma Dial, the foreman, arose and in an almost inaudible voice declared: “We find each of the defendants guilty.”
The judge rocked back and forth in his high-backed chair, his face rigid and grey, as he listened to the polling of each individual juror.
No sooner had the last juror out of the room than the judge swung around and ordered defense attorneys Harry Sacher, Richard Gladstein, George W. Crockett, Jr., Louis F. McCabe, A.J. Isserman, and Eugene Dennis to rise.
Prepared in advance
He read from a document he had carefully prepared in advance of the verdict. It was a certificate of “contempt” charging the six had acted “in agreement” and in a “cold and calculating manner” to “overstep the bounds of propriety” of the court; to “attack the jury system,” the “President of the United States, the police, and the press.”
The irascible judge heaped one angry accusation after another on Dennis and the attorneys. He sentenced Sacher, Gladstein, and Dennis to six months imprisonment, starting Nov. 15. Crockett was ordered to serve four months. McCabe was sentenced to serve 30 days.
Dennis, however, was immediately committed to the Federal House of Detention with his 10 comrades, two of whom, Henry Winston and Gus Hall, have been imprisoned since June 3, and one of whom, Gilbert Green, has been imprisoned since June 20, for orally objecting to Judge Medina’s biased rulings.
Denies time for appeal
The lawyers and Dennis were on their feet immediately objecting to the denial of the right of bail for the defendants, to the unprecedented sentencing of counsel. They have asked for 30 days to prepare a motion for appeal. This the judge denied.
He ordered the motion papers to be ready by 3:30 p.m., Oct. 24. The motion is scheduled to be argued Friday, Oct. 28.
The long oaken courtroom benches were packed with silent spectators. Wives, relatives, and friends of the Communist leaders occupied about a quarter of the available space. Most of the seating capacity was reserved for friends of the judge and prosecutor, John F. X. McGohey.
Courthouse guards could be heard shouting excitedly to one another as they raced aimlessly up and down outside in the corridor blocking off this and that entrance for no apparent sensible reason.
Dennis speaks
Dennis arose to address the court. Every spectator leaned forward as the tall grey-haired party leader, former West Coast teamster, faced the judge, who by this time was fidgeting in his chair.
“This trial and this verdict is an evil, illegitimate product of a bipartisan conspiracy of men who want to destroy the Bill of Rights,” Dennis told the judge.
He looked Judge Medina squarely in the eye. The judge kept rocking back and forth.
The sentencing of the lawyers and denial of bail for the defendants (which is traditionally granted in Federal Court even to convicted thieves, counterfeiters, and narcotics smugglers and peddlers) revealed the “sinister and police state character of the trial,” Dennis said.
“Don’t think the people will toss off lightly the sentencing of the lawyers,” he warned. He reminded the judge that men in Nazi Germany also “wore black robes and handed down fascist decrees.”
“But I’ll say to the court the people reversed those verdicts, and they will reverse these verdicts here, too,” he concluded.
Defendants Dennis, City Councilman Benjamin J. Davis, John Gates, Irving Potash, Carl Winter, Jack Stachel, John Williamson, Gilbert Green, Henry Winston, Robert Thompson, and Gus Hall were then surrounded by Federal marshals and led off to jail.
(Edited for length.)
_____
Fight grows on thought-control verdict against 11
Statement of the Leaders of the CP
The following statement was issued by William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the Communist Party, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, National Committee member, and joined in by the state and district heads of the party in the major districts: Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, District of Columbia, Eastern Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Washington, and California:
American democracy has suffered a heavy blow in the verdict declared against the 11 Communist leaders of our party. Unless the American people realize this, new and more deadly blows against the people’s rights will be struck—against the labor movement, against the Negro people, the Jewish people, and the foreign-born; against all progressive Americans.
This verdict gives aid and comfort to the pro-fascist forces that threaten peace and democracy in America and throughout the world.
Its aim is to try to outlaw the Communist Party in violation of the constitutional guarantees of the Bill of Rights, as the first step toward new and more drastic measures of repression against the civil liberties of the American people, toward increasing attacks on the living standards of the workers, and toward a bigger armaments program for war.
The trial in which this verdict was rendered was conceived and carried through in an atmosphere of fear, prejudice, and hysteria unparalleled in American history. This case established a sinister precedent in putting on trial a political party and its leaders; in putting ideas, beliefs, and books on trial. This precedent threatens the rights of every American to his beliefs, to his freedom of political opinions and associations.
This precedent must be set aside by the American people, in their own interest. Furthermore, all Americans must be on guard against the attempts of reactionary forces to consider the verdict against the 11 Communist leaders as a “mandate” to launch a campaign of repression against democratic rights. The press and radio are seeking to whip up an atmosphere of fear and hysteria, and engaging in wild and fantastic speculations, in order to prepare the ground for cracking down on anyone who expresses dissent from the policies of the two major parties of Wall Street.
We declare that, in spite of these attempts, the Communist Party will continue to function, as always, as an American working-class political party, fighting in the people’s interests, defending its legality and its right to function as a political party, which right cannot be abrogated by the government or any court without violating the Constitution of the United States. We will carry this fight to the people and appeal the verdict to the highest courts, but we do not hereby recognize that the verdict outlaws the Communist Party.
We are confident that every party member will stand at this post, rally the labor and progressive movement to fight back and defeat this drive to outlaw our party, and rally support to the appeal for a Defense Fighting Fund.
We are confident that the party membership will continue and intensify their activities in defense of the economic standards of the people, in defense of the rights of the Negro people against Jim Crow oppression, and in defense of liberty and peace.
We call first of all for the rallying of millions of Americans to protest the verdict against the 11
Communist leaders and the unprecedented sentencing of their attorneys, and to demand of President Truman and Attorney General McGrath the immediate release on bail of the 11 defendants.
We call for action to arouse the people against the Nazi-like attempt to oust Benjamin J. Davis, the elected representative of the people, from the New York City Council and the threat to remove him from the ballot and deprive the people of the right to vote for a candidate of their own choice.
The party must mobilize the trade union movement, now itself under heavy attack, to defend in its own interest the rights of Communists. The Negro people’s movement must also see their own struggle for freedom realized in the fight to defend the rights of the Communist Party.
We express our confidence and pledge our support to the 11 imprisoned members of our National Committee, and declare that we will do our utmost to bring about their freedom. Neither they nor the Communist Party are guilty of any of the false charges of “conspiracy to advocate” force and violence.
The Communist Party publicly advocates, as it has for 30 years, the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the principles of socialism, which have been advanced for 100 years throughout the world, and which have been embraced by hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. These principles cannot be outlawed.
We believe that eventually, the majority of the American people will support the principles of socialism. But we believe that the American people today, whatever their views on socialism, will support and defend our right to advocate our program, and our rights as a political party.
We believe that the American people, as they see the growing threat of fascism and war that confronts our country, will see this as the real danger that threatens America, and will reject the Hitler-like “anti-Communist” hysteria that is now being used to conceal the real danger. We are confident that the American people will set aside the Foley Square verdict in the interests of democracy and peace.
(Signed by)
William Z. Foster
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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