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Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders

The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in New York City from 1949 to 1958 were the result of US federal government prosecutions in the postwar period and during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) were accused of violating the Smith Act, a statute that prohibited advocating violent overthrow of the government. The defendants argued that they advocated a peaceful transition to socialism, and that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and of association protected their membership in a political party. Appeals from these trials reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled on issues in Dennis v. United States (1951) and Yates v. United States (1957).

Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders

1949–1958

144 leaders of the Communist Party USA

Violating the Smith Act, by conspiring to violently overthrow the government

Federal courthouses in New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Seattle, Baltimore, Seattle, Detroit, St. Louis, Denver, Boston, Puerto Rico, New Haven

Over 100 convictions, with sentences up to six years in prison and each a $10,000 fine

The first trial of eleven communist leaders was held in New York in 1949; it was one of the lengthiest trials in United States history. Numerous supporters of the defendants protested outside the courthouse on a daily basis. The trial was featured twice on the cover of Time magazine. The defense frequently antagonized the judge and prosecution; five defendants were jailed for contempt of court because they disrupted the proceedings. The prosecution's case relied on undercover informants, who described the goals of the CPUSA, interpreted communist texts, and testified of their own knowledge that the CPUSA advocated the violent overthrow of the US government.


While the first trial was under way, events outside the courtroom influenced public perception of communism: the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon, and communists prevailed in the Chinese Civil War. In this period, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had also begun conducting investigations and hearings of writers and producers in Hollywood suspected of communist influence. Public opinion was overwhelmingly against the defendants in New York. After a 10-month trial, the jury found all 11 defendants guilty. The judge sentenced them to terms of up to five years in federal prison, and sentenced all five defense attorneys to imprisonment for contempt of court. Two of the attorneys were subsequently disbarred.


After the first trial, the prosecutors – encouraged by their success – prosecuted more than 100 additional CPUSA officers for violating the Smith Act. Some were tried solely because they were members of the Party. Many of these defendants had difficulty finding attorneys to represent them. The trials decimated the leadership of the CPUSA. In 1957, eight years after the first trial, the US Supreme Court's Yates decision brought an end to similar prosecutions. It ruled that defendants could be prosecuted only for their actions, not for their beliefs.

– Chairman of the CPUSA's Legislative Committee and Council-member of New York City

Benjamin J. Davis Jr.

– CPUSA General Secretary

Eugene Dennis

– CPUSA National Secretary (indicted; but not tried due to illness)

William Z. Foster

– Leader of the Young Communist League

John Gates

– Member of the National Board (represented by A.J. Isserman)

Gil Green

– Member of the CPUSA National Board

Gus Hall

– Furriers Union official

Irving Potash

– Editor of the Daily Worker

Jack Stachel

– Lead of the New York branch of CPUSA

Robert G. Thompson

– Member of the CPUSA Central Committee (represented by A.J. Isserman)

John Williamson

– Member of the CPUSA National Board

Henry Winston

Carl Winter – Lead of the Michigan branch of CPUSA

Aftermath[edit]

Legal[edit]

The Yates and Noto decisions undermined the Smith Act and marked the beginning of the end of CPUSA membership inquiries.[165] When the trials came to an end in 1958, 144 people had been indicted, resulting in 105 convictions, with cumulative sentences totaling 418 years and $435,500 ($4,996,789 in 2023 dollars[73]) in fines.[166] Fewer than half the convicted communists served jail time.[3] The Smith Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2385, though amended several times, has not been repealed.[167]


For two decades after the Dennis decision, free speech issues related to advocacy of violence were decided using balancing tests such as the one initially articulated in Dennis.[168] In 1969, the court established stronger protections for speech in the landmark case Brandenburg v. Ohio which held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action".[169][170] Brandenburg is now the standard applied by the Court to free speech issues related to advocacy of violence.[171]

CPUSA downfall[edit]

The Smith Act trials decimated the leadership ranks of the CPUSA.[18] Immediately after the 1949 trial, the CPUSA – alarmed at the undercover informants that had testified for the prosecution – initiated efforts to identify and exclude informers from its membership. The FBI encouraged these suspicions by planting fabricated evidence which suggested that many innocent Party members were FBI informants.[172] Dennis attempted to provide leadership from inside the Atlanta penitentiary, but prison officials censored his mail and successfully isolated him from the outside world.[135] Prison officials from the Lewisburg prison prevented Williamson from writing to anyone other than immediate family members.[135] Lacking leadership, the CPUSA suffered from internal dissension and disorder, and by 1953 the CPUSA's leadership structure was inoperative.[135][173] In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev revealed the reality of Stalin's purges, causing many remaining CPUSA members to quit in disillusionment.[174] By the late 1950s, the CPUSA's membership had dwindled to 5,000, of whom over 1,000 may have been FBI informants.[175]

Auerbach, Jerold S., Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America, Oxford University Press, 1977,  978-0-19-502170-7

ISBN

Belknap, Michal R., Cold War Political Justice: the Smith Act, the Communist Party, and American Civil Liberties, Greenwood Press, 1977,  978-0-8371-9692-3

ISBN

Belknap, Michal R., "Foley Square Trial", in American Political Trials, (Michal Belknap, Ed.), Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994,  978-0-275-94437-7

ISBN

Belknap, Michal R., "Cold War, Communism, and Free Speech", in Historic U.S. Court Cases: An Encyclopedia (Vol 2), (John W. Johnson, Ed.), Taylor & Francis, 2001,  978-0-415-93019-2

ISBN

Eastland, Terry, Freedom of Expression in the Supreme Court: The Defining Cases, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000,  978-0-8476-9710-6

ISBN

(Editor), Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (two volumes), CRC Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-94342-0

Finkelman, Paul

Klehr, Harvey, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-300-08462-7

Haynes, John Earl

Kemper, Mark, "Freedom of Speech", in Finkelman, Vol 1, p 653–655.

Killian, Johnny H.; Costello, George; Thomas, Kenneth R., The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation, Library of Congress, Government Printing Office, 2005,  978-0-16-072379-7

ISBN

"Noto v. United States" and "Scales v. United States" in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, Hall, Kermit; Ely, James; (Eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-517661-2

Konvitz, Milton R.

"Smith Act", in Finkelman, Vol 1, p 1488.

Levin, Daniel

Martelle, Scott, The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, Rutgers University Press, 2011,  978-0-8135-4938-5

ISBN

Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, Random House, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8129-7302-0

Morgan, Ted

Oakes, James L., "Memorial to Harold R. Medina", Columbia Law Review, Vol. 90, No. 6 (Oct., 1990), pp 1459–1462.

O'Brien, David M., Congress Shall Make No Law: the First Amendment, Unprotected Expression, and the Supreme Court, Rowman & Littlefield, 2010,  978-1-4422-0510-9

ISBN

Naming Names, Macmillan, 2003, ISBN 978-0-8090-0183-5

Navasky, Victor S.

Powers, Richard Gid, Broken: the Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the FBI, Simon and Schuster, 2004,  978-0-684-83371-2

ISBN

Rabban, David, Free Speech in Its Forgotten Years, Cambridge University Press, 1999,  978-0-521-65537-8

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Redish, Martin H., The Logic of Persecution: Free Expression and the McCarthy Era, Stanford University Press, 2005,  978-0-8047-5593-1

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Sabin, Arthur J., In Calmer Times: the Supreme Court and Red Monday, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999,  978-0-8122-3507-4

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Starobin, Joseph R., American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957, University of California Press, 1975,  978-0-520-02796-1

ISBN

Walker, Samuel, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU, Oxford University Press, 1990,  978-0-19-504539-0

ISBN

Bell, Jonathan, The Liberal State On Trial: The Cold War And American Politics In The Truman Years, Columbia University Press, 2004,  978-0-231-13356-2

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Birdnow, Brian, E., Communism, Anti-communism, And the Federal Courts in Missouri, 1952–1958: The Trial of the St. Louis Five, E. Mellen Press, 2005,  978-0-7734-6101-7

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Caute, David, The Great Fear: the Anti-Communist purge under Truman and Eisenhower, Simon and Schuster, 1978,  978-0-671-22682-4

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McKiernan, John, "Socrates and the Smith Act: the Dennis prosecution and the trial of Socrates in 399 B.C.", Temple Political and Civil Rights Law Review, Vol. 15 (Fall, 2005), pp 65–119

Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-691-04870-3

Schrecker, Ellen

Smith, Craig R., Silencing the Opposition: How the U.S. Government Suppressed Freedom of Expression During Major Crises, SUNY Press, 2011,  978-1-4384-3519-0

ISBN

Steinberg, Peter L., The Great "Red menace": United States Prosecution of American Communists, 1947–1952, Greenwood Press, 1984,  978-0-313-23020-2

ISBN

Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism, W. W. Norton, 2004, ISBN 978-0-393-05880-2

Stone, Geoffrey R.

Contemporary legal analyses


Selected works by Smith Act defendants


Selected works by prosecution witnesses


Documentaries