The song was first performed publicly by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays on June 3, 1949 at St. Nicholas Arena on W. 66th Street in New York at a testimonial dinner for the leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, who were then on trial in federal court, charged with violating the Smith Act by advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.
The Smith Act was written so that federal authorities could deport radical labor organizer Harry Bridges, an immigrant from Australia.
•
The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act), 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch.
•
It drew some of its language from statutes recently passed at the state level and combined anti-alien and anti-sedition sections with language crafted specifically to help the government in its attempts to deport Harry Bridges.
Act of Parliament | Act | Statute Law Revision Act 1948 | Will Smith | Statute Law Revision Act 1888 | Kevin Smith | Adam Smith | Smith College | Patti Smith | Michael W. Smith | Act of Congress | Reform Act 1832 | Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act | Endangered Species Act | Chad Smith | Ian Smith | Fort Smith, Arkansas | Digital Millennium Copyright Act | Clean Water Act | Anna Nicole Smith | American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 | National School Lunch Act | Kiki Smith | Statute Law Revision Act 1863 | Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby | Criminal Justice Act 1988 | Alexander McCall Smith | Stan Smith | Local Government Act 1972 | Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 |
He was active in the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America and later became a member of the Socialist Workers Party and as a leading member of the SWP he was imprisoned under the Smith Act together with many other SWP leaders for opposing the US involvement in the Second World War.
The bill, which resembled the anti-communist Smith Law passed by the United States Congress in 1940, was signed into law by the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico Jesús T. Piñero on June 10, 1948, and became known as Ley 53 (Law 53).
At the last of these sessions, John Gates, editor of the official party newspaper, The Worker, was sharply critical of the American party's blind obedience, its support of its Trotskyist opponents under the Smith Act, and its failure to commit itself to a peaceful path to socialism based upon maintained civil liberties.
Klonsky's father, Robert Klonsky, a World War II veteran who fought as a volunteer against the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, had been arrested and convicted of "conspiring to advocate Marxist views" in violation of the Smith Act during the McCarthy period.
The Mother's Movement was involved in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, in which the government charged an assortment of 30 heterogeneous individuals with violations of the Smith Act of 1940 and the Sedition Act of 1917; the defendants were held to be pro-fascist participants in a Nazi conspiracy.
The bill, which resembled the anti-communist Smith Law passed in the United States, was signed into law on June 10, 1948, by the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Jesús T. Piñero and became known as Ley 53 (Law 53).
Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. (1903–1964), New York Communist city councilman, imprisoned for violations of the Smith Act
The Smith Act was written after the Pennsylvania Sedition Act, but both were created during the Cold War, during the age of Joseph McCarthy and his House Unamerican Activities Committee; this was the time of the “Red Scare,” where McCarthy investigated everyone, because anyone could be a communist.