Smith Act. In 1940, with war erupting in Europe, radical ideologies winning domestic support, and the
Supreme Court curtailing the government's ability to regulate speech, Congress passed the so‐called Smith Act, named for its author, Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia. This law made it a crime to “advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force”; to “print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute or publicly display” such ideas; or to organize, belong to, or “affiliate with” any organization espousing such doctrines.
Federal prosecutors first applied the law in 1941 against union activists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who belonged to the Trotskyite Socialist Workers party. In
Dennis v.
U.S. (1951), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act and sent eleven leaders of the U.S. Communist party to prison. Justice Hugo
Black, in dissent, called the law “a virulent form of prior censorship of speech and press, which I believe the First Amendment forbids.” In
Yates v.
U.S. (1957), also involving Communist party officials, the high court narrowed the law by ruling that the ban on “organizing” a revolutionary group applied to the original founders only, not to later officials. In
Scales v.
U.S. (1961), the Supreme Court further limited the Smith Act by distinguishing between “active and purposive” membership as opposed to merely “passive” membership in banned organizations. Congress sought to close these loopholes in a 1962 bill signed by President John F.
Kennedy. Of 141 people indicted under the Smith Act in the 1950s, 29 went to prison. Though prosecutions under the Smith Act largely ended by the early 1960s, the law remains on the books.
See also
Anticommunism;
Censorship;
Communist Party—USA.;
Sedition.
Bibliography
Michal R. Belknap , Cold War Political Justice: The Smith Act, the Communist Party and American Civil Liberties, 1977.
Ellen Schrecker , The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, 1994.
Timothy Messer‐Kruse
