[HUAC – SMITH ACT] [PITTSBURGH SIX] Civil Rights Congress

Pittsburgh Freedom News. Pittsburgh People Rally to Fight Witchhunt Attack

New York: Civil Rights Congress, [1951]. Tabloid (38m) on newsprint; 4pp bifolium; illus. Paper aged and slightly brittle at folds, but complete and Good.

One-off newssheet documenting the case of the Pittsburgh Six, a group of labor organizers with communist affiliations, indicted in 1950 for violating both Pennsylvania's Sedition Act and the federal Smith Act. The paper was issued by the Civil Rights Congress, the legal defense arm of the CPUSA and successor to the League for Industrial Democracy. Includes biographies of the six defendants, other examples of red-baiting by the "Americans Battling Communism" crusade in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, and instructs readers on how to contribute to the defense of the indicted workers. By 1956 the Supreme Court ruled the Pennsylvania Sedition Act unconstitutional; original evidence in the trial was also determined to have been perjured, and charges were dropped against all the defendants, though the most prominent among them - Steve Nelson (aka Stjepan Massaros), a former steelworker and CPUSA organizer, served seven months in jail following his original conviction. An interesting snapshot of a little-remembered episode of the Second Red Scare, and quite ephemeral; we find no other copies in commerce; none separately catalogued in OCLC; one copy located in the finding aid to the Billy James Hargis papers at University of Arkansas.

Price: $125.00

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