The Civil Rights Defense Committee was organized in August 1941, to defend the 28 socialist members of the Minneapolis Teamsters Union, #544, who were charged with seditious conspiracy in the “Minnesota labor case.” From the materials in the collection, the functioning of the Civil Rights Defense Committee appears virtually indistinguishable from the issues of this case and the two cases which arose from it. This case, which was the first conviction under the Smith Act, arose out of an inter-union dispute and the influence of the Socialist Workers Party in Local #544. During the 1930s Local #544 emerged as one of the most powerful trade unions in the Midwest as a result of its militant unionism. However, after 1934, its socialist political views became an increasing source of friction between the local and Daniel J. Tobin, the more conservative head of the AFL Teamsters International. When Tobin attempted to take control of the local in June 1941, #544 voted to affiliate with the CIO. Tobin's personal influence with President Roosevelt led to a governmental investigation and indictment of 28 members of the local and of the Socialist Workers Party by a Federal Grand Jury in 1941 for violation of the Smith Act.
Provisions of this act were such that the defendants were accused for their verbal expressions of opinion rather than their actions. It was the Civil Rights Defense Committee's exposure of this threat to freedom of speech which allowed the Committee to win wide support for the defendants. In addition, the Committee gained strong support from labor because of the anti-labor implications of the act. These supporters were organized into a national committee composed of individuals prominent in many fields; and thirty local committees, largely made up of unionists. The Committee's activities were directed by the National Secretary, George Novack, and National Chairman, James T. Farrell. Until 1943, the Committee was involved in fund raising and publicity work, but despite the efforts of the CRDC, the conviction of the 18 defendants, who were found guilty, was upheld through several appeals, and the defendants were sentenced to sixteen-month prison terms. The Committee then tried unsuccessfully to gain a presidential pardon for the prisoners.
The expiration of the sentences in 1945 did not end the activities of the CRDC, for two cases which arose from the Minnesota labor case remained to be settled. The first of these involved Kelly Postal, the secretary-treasurer of Local #544, who had transferred its funds to local control when the local left the AFL in 1941. As a result of the FBI investigations of the Minnesota labor case, Postal was charged with embezzlement. The materials in this collection are vague concerning the Committee's activities with reference to Postal, although the Committee was concerned by this threat to local democracy within the trade union movement. Postal was found guilty and served one year of a five-year sentence.
The second case arose from attempts of the government to deport Carl Skoglund, the immigrant president of Local #544, for his former Communist Party membership. In 1941, the FBI offered to drop its prosecution of Skoglund if he would testify in the government's case against the 28; but, having rejected this, Skoglund was imprisoned with the other 17 defendants. In 1949 the CRDC, which had been inactive, was reorganized to defend Skoglund when the government reopened its deportation proceedings. In April 1954, after numerous appeals, Skoglund's deportation, ordered under the McCarren Act of 1952, was prevented only by the seventy-year-old Skoglund's cardiac condition. Further appeals then won a suspension and the cancellation of Skoglund's Alien Bail bond in 1958. The case was finally closed by Skoglund's death shortly thereafter.
