Cover of Books on trial

Books on trial

"In a raid on the Progressive Bookstore of Oklahoma City in 1940, local officials seized thousands of books and pamphlets and arrested twenty customers and proprietors, several of them members of the Communist Party. All were detained incommunicado and many were held for months on unreasonably high bail. Four were tried and convicted for violating Oklahoma's 'criminal syndicalism' law and sentenced to ten years in prison. The defendants' convictions and sentences caused a nationwide furor and were ultimately overturned on appeal after protests from labor unions, churches, publishers, academics, librarians, the American Civil Liberties Union, members of the literary world, and prominent individuals ranging from Woody Guthrie to Eleanor Roosevelt." "Shirley A. Wiegand and Wayne A. Wiegand share the story of this important case for the first time, drawing on recently discovered trial transcripts, interviews with witnesses and those arrested, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and other primary sources."—BOOK JACKET.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 286 pages

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  1. Great day coming Shares communists, USA, history
  2. Zagadka Gorbacheva Shares communists, history
  3. Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties Shares censorship, history
  4. Anyplace But Here Shares Oklahoma

“If you want more of the same (history about civil rights), start with these.”

  1. We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law
  2. Rethinking the judicial settlement of Reconstruction
  3. The Bill of Rights
  4. In the shadow of Korematsu

“If it was the communists that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Dancer in the Revolution
  2. The Nine Lives of Otto Katz
  3. El unico camino
  4. The Mercy Seat

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Troublemaker
  2. The Dachau defendants
  3. The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Life in the Balance
  4. The World Is Bigger Now: An American Journalist's Release from Captivity in North Korea . . . A Remarkable Story of Faith, Family, and Forgiveness