Home → Libraries and Collections → "I Am Entitled to Counsel of My Choice": Radical Attorney Robert Treuhaft Challenges HUAC and "McCarthyism"
 
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"I Am Entitled to Counsel of My Choice": Radical Attorney Robert Treuhaft Challenges HUAC and "McCarthyism"

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Author:
Subject:
Humanities
Institution Name:
American Social History Project/Center for History and New Media
Collection:
Many Pasts (CHNM/ASHP)
Grade Level:
Secondary, Post-secondary
Abstract:

In 1940, Congress passed the Smith Act making it illegal to support the overthrow of state or national governments. In 1949, 11 Communist Party leaders were convicted under this Act. The attorneys for the accused were themselves convicted of contempt of court and half served prison terms. Subsequently, most lawyers refused to represent suspected Communists unless they themselves were members of the Communist Party. In the following testimony before a House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearing investigating Communist activities in the San Francisco area, radical attorney Robert E. Treuhaft (1912-2001) described his unsuccessful attempts to hire respected lawyers--who privately disapproved of HUAC--to represent him. Treuhaft, an Oakland-based lawyer who had represented labor unions and African-Americans deprived of civil rights, had joined the Communist Party in the 1940s. Subsequently, he became the unpaid counsel for the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), a trust fund that supplied bail money for Communists arrested under the Smith Act. The Justice Department included the CRC on their official list of subversive organizations, and following his appearance before HUAC, the Committee listed Treuhaft among the 39 most dangerous subversive lawyers in their pamphlet, "Communist Legal Subversives: The Role of the Communist Lawyer." Jessica Mitford, Treihaft's wife, wrote in her memoir, A Fine Old Conflict, that the San Francisco HUAC hearing targeted did serious damage "in destroying livelihoods and muzzling political dissent at the grass-roots level."

Languages:
English
Material Type:
Primary Source
Media Format:
Text/HTML
Conditions of Use:
Custom License
Fair Use for educational purposes
Copyright Holder:
Copyright 1998-2005 American Social History Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.

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