Smith Act

And that's why I guess, as you say, we're now seeing it where we didn't before out in the open.

The Smith Act of 1940 actually made it a federal crime to advocate, teach, or knowingly participate in activities that would foster the overthrow of the government, and it was by force or violence again.

And this is where I guess is where it would come into play with the Supreme Court when you get to that level.

But really, isn't what's happening a preparation for almost a revolt, you know, à la, uh, Lenin style in 1918?

You're down by six with 30 seconds left.

In 1951, the Supreme Court decided Dennis versus the United States, upholding the Smith Act convictions of 11 Communist Party leaders for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the government.

They hadn't attempted to overthrow anything.

They hadn't armed anyone.

Constitutional protections don't disappear first on paper, not in a courtroom.

They disappear first as political agreement about who deserves them.

The Smith Act prosecutions didn't create a consensus that communists stood outside of legitimate politics.

That work had already been done by blacklists, the Red Scare, Republicans and Democrats targeting, playing it all out.

Through this and the pushback against bombs law, Middleton was eventually released from Sing Sing in 1935.

Sticking to his leftist beliefs, he was named art director of the Champion Labor Monthly, a communist paper for which he provided editorial cartoons, while also rallying for the anti-lynching bill in New York State in 1939 and against the Smith Act in 1940, which aimed to punish anyone who called for the violent overthrow of the government, which Middleton believed unfairly targeted blacks.

While he satisfied his political passions, Middleton still had to put food on the table.

To make ends meet, Middleton turned to comic books, like many other artists at the time, doing a six-page story, Two Months in the Bush, and War Heroes No. 5, July-September of 1943, for Dell Publishing.

The Hollywood blacklist begins to emerge and a lot of this is carried out through private employment as well.

One of the most dramatic trials of that moment comes in 1948, 49, and 1950 when the entire leadership of the American Communist Party is put on trial in federal court under a law called the Smith Act.

And the Smith Act was a law that had been passed in 1940 to attempt to contain domestic dissent.

But what's interesting about the Smith Act is that it's a law about speech and loyalty.

It says if you belong to or believe in an organization that advocates revolution in the United States, the overthrow of the government, then that set of ideas in itself is enough to subject you to criminal prosecution.

And in fact, they are convicted and many members of the Communist Party go to jail.

It's a mandate that law has been on the books for probably over 20 years.

We receive our appropriations and are ordered every year to maintain this general surveillance of the communist operations with the view of amending, improving, correcting, laws having to do with our internal security, the Internal Security Act of 1950, Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Smith Act, and so on.

This is part and parcel of our general studies of the machinations of the communist conspiracy.

The communist apparatus activated its trained agitators and propagandists in the San Francisco Bay Area months before the scheduled hearings were to begin.