Charlotte Anita Whitney (July 7, 1867 – February 4, 1955), best known as "Anita Whitney", was an American women's rights activist, political activist, suffragist, and early

Communist Labor Party of America The Communist Labor Party of America (CLPA) was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA. The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America. Although a legal ...

and Communist Party USA organizer in California. She is best remembered as the defendant in a landmark 1920

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

criminal

syndicalism Syndicalism is a revolutionary current within the left-wing of the labor movement that seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes with the eventual goal of gaining control over the means of prod ...

trial, '' Whitney v. California'', which featured a landmark U.S. Supreme Court concurring opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis that only a "

clear and present danger ''Clear and Present Danger'' is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published on August 17, 1989. A sequel to '' The Cardinal of the Kremlin'' (1988), main character Jack Ryan becomes acting Deputy Director of Intelligence in ...

" would be sufficient for the legislative restriction of the right of free speech. This standard would ultimately be employed against the Communists again during the

Second Red Scare McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origina ...

of the 1950s.

Early life

Anita Whitney was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, California, on July 7, 1867, the daughter of a pre-eminent family whose members included the American Supreme Court

Justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

Stephen Johnson Field Stephen Johnson Field (November 4, 1816 – April 9, 1899) was an American jurist. He was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from May 20, 1863, to December 1, 1897, the second longest tenure of any justice. Prior to this a ...

and the multi-millionaire speculator and magnate Cyrus W. Field. Her father was a lawyer.Solon DeLeon with Irma C. Hayssen and Grace Poole (eds.), ''American Labor Who's Who''. New York: Hanford Press, 1925; pg. 249. Whitney attended both private and public school growing up in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, across the Bay from San Francisco. When her education in Oakland was complete, she attended a

normal school A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

before leaving for the East Coast to attend Wellesley College from which she graduated in 1889. Following graduation, Whitney worked for a time as teacher. In 1893, Whitney visited a slum in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Profoundly affected, she soon developed an interest in social work. In 1901, she took over as the new executive secretary of the United Charities of Oakland, California. She continued in that capacity until 1908. The same impulse that drove her to seek betterment in the lives of the poor and downtrodden apparently also led her to campaign actively for

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

. Two decades before women across the nation were entitled to vote, under the Nineteenth Amendment, Whitney took part in a series of early voting rights campaigns, from California to

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. By 1911, Whitney's interest in the women's rights movement led her to become the California organizer of the National College Equal Suffrage League until 1913. She would later serve as Vice President of the

National American Woman Suffrage Association The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...

.Robert McHenry, ''Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present''. Courier Dover Publications, 1983; pg. 441.

1920 criminal syndicalism trial

When

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

broke out in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, Whitney, who was a pacifist, became a member of the anti-war Socialist Party of America, joining the party meetings of the Oakland branch. When the more radical members of the Socialist Party bolted the

1919 Emergency National Convention The 1919 Emergency National Convention of the Socialist Party of America was held in Chicago from August 30 to September 5, 1919. It was a seminal gathering in the history of American radicalism, marked by the bolting of the party's organized lef ...

of the Socialist Party in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and elected to create an American Communist party, Whitney, who considered the Socialist Party too moderate, threw herself into the Communists' cause and drummed up support for the new Communist Labor Party throughout California. Following a speech at the Hotel Oakland to the Oakland Civic Club on behalf of the CLP, Whitney was arrested on November 28, 1919 and was charged with "criminal syndicalism" in violation of the California Criminal Syndicalism Act. A pre-trial hearing was held in the case on January 6, 1920, less than a week after the

US Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...

's mass crackdown on alien radicals known as the " Palmer Raids", and the case went to trial in Oakland on January 27, in the Alameda County Superior Court. Whitney was charged with five counts of having violated the state's Criminal Syndicalism law by her membership in the Communist Labor Party. Since Whitney freely admitted her status as a charter member of the CLP, the burden of the prosecution was in attempting to demonstrate the association of the organization with the syndicalist

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...

and the

Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

, based in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, organizations held to be illegal under California law. Once having established the criminal nature of the CLP, prosecutors argued that they would then establish the guilt of the defendant. Whitney's defense attorney, Thomas H. O'Connor, was unable to obtain a

continuance In American procedural law, a continuance is the postponement of a hearing, trial, or other scheduled court proceeding at the request of either or both parties in the dispute, or by the judge ''sua sponte''. In response to delays in bringing cases ...

in the case on the grounds that his daughter had fallen ill with influenza in the ongoing

1918 flu pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

. O'Connor was himself stricken on the second day of the trial and was unable to continue the trial after the third. He would die of the illness a little over a week later, as did a woman on the original jury.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pp. 44-45. Citing reasons of expense, Judge James G. Quinn swore in an alternate juror and demanded for Whitney's assistant counsel, J.E. Pemberton, to proceed with the case. A parade of 20 prosecution witnesses were presented on the stand, reading into the record hundreds of pages of IWW songs and literature, Comintern manifestos, and giving testimony about red flags in evidence at CLP headquarters.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 46. The defense called only single witness, Whitney herself. It also recalled one individual that had been forced to the stand by the prosecution, San Francisco communist leader Max Bedacht. The defense attempted to show, through its testimony, that the Communist Labor Party was opposed to the use of terrorism, violence, or force to institute changes to the American system of government. Closing arguments were made on February 20, 1920, with the defense making the argument that the prosecution had failed to prove Whitney guilty of having committed a single illegal act.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 47. The prosecution, on the other hand, argued at length that the Communist Labor Party was nothing more than "a political adjunct of the IWW" and called upon the jury "to uphold the sacred tenets of Americanism and to place, with its verdict, the seal of disapproval on the activities of the Communist Labor Party and its blood brother, the IWW." The jury deliberated six hours before finding Whitney guilty of the first count: having organized and joined an organization formed for the purpose of advocating criminal syndicalism. It disagreed on the other four counts. A motion for bail was denied. On February 24, 1920, the other four counts, which caused a deadlock in the jury, were dismissed. Whitney was given an indeterminate sentence of from 1 to 14 years in prison at San Quentin Penitentiary. The appeals process was begun. After 11 days imprisonment, Whitney was permitted to post $10,000 bail pending appeal only after three physicians gave testimony that continued incarceration would present a danger to her health.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 48. The first appeal was filed on February 28 in the District Court of Appeal in the First Appellate District, San Francisco, citing 16 grounds for appeal and points of error. No verdict was rendered on the case for over two full years, when the decision of the trial court was affirmed.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 49. On June 5, 1922, a petition for a rehearing of the evidence in the case was made before the

California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sac ...

. The petition was denied, with two justices dissenting. An appeal was finally made to the

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

on July 13, 1922. It would be more than three years before the case was actually heard, with Walter Nelles of New York City making the argument for the plaintiff in error on October 18, 1925.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 50. On October 19, the appeal was summarily dismissed, on technical grounds. An effort was then made to obtain a pardon from

California Governor The governor of California is the head of government of the U.S. state of California. The governor is the commander-in-chief of the California National Guard and the California State Guard. Established in the Constitution of California, the g ...

Friend Richardson Friend William Richardson (born William Richardson; December 1, 1865September 6, 1943) was an American newspaper publisher and politician, most famous for supporting a 1923 gun control bill aimed at Chinese and Latinos. A member of the Progressiv ...

, and an "Anita Whitney Committee" was established to push Governor Richardson in that direction. This effort was met with the refusal of the governor to offer executive clemency to the convicted communist activist. The appeals process was still not at an end, however. In December 1925, Whitney's legal team succeeded in overcoming the jurisdictional technicalities that had sabotaged its previous effort, and it won a petition for a rehearing before the Supreme Court. The case was argued again on March 15, 1926.Whitten, ''Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California'', pg. 51. Some 14 months later, on May 16, 1927, Whitney's conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in '' Whitney v. California'', 274 U.S. 357 (1927). The ruling featured a landmark concurring opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis that only a "clear and present danger" would be sufficient for the legislative restriction of the right of free speech. His opinion would be employed again in cases revoking the restrictions against the communists after a subsequent wave of imprisonments during the 1950s.

Post-trial activity

Still dogged by criminal charges from her 1919 arrest, Whitney ran for California State Controller in 1924, waging a relentless political campaign that garnered over 100,000 votes. On June 20, 1927, California Governor

C. C. Young Clement Calhoun Young (April 28, 1869 – December 24, 1947) was an American educator and politician who was affiliated with the original Progressive Party and later the Republican Party. He was elected to five consecutive terms in the Californ ...

granted Whitney an unconditional pardon, believing that putting her into a cell was "unthinkable". Young added that the law under which she was convicted was constitutional but that "abnormal conditions attending the trial" greatly influenced the jury and that "under ordinary circumstances" the case never would have been prosecuted. In 1934, she helped establish the San Francisco Workers' School (later the

California Labor School The California Labor School (until 1945 named the Tom Mooney Labor School) was an educational organization in San Francisco from 1942 to 1957. Like the contemporary Jefferson School of Social Science and the New York Workers School, it represent ...

). In 1935, she was again convicted by the California court system, related to election fraud, since eight circulators had made false attestations during a pre-election petition campaign, but the state watchdogs saw fit to add additional charges of "lecturing without a permit" and "distributing radical literature".Charlotte Anita Whitney".
''

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...

''. 2009. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online''. Retrieved 27 Apr. 2009. Her stature among radicals only enhanced by the conviction, Whitney was named the national chairwoman of the Communist Party in 1936. California's communists nominated Whitney for the

US Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

twice. Her popularity among the country's radical leftists never completely disappeared. Although trailed by a protracted record of political harassment and accusations by the California Tenney Committee, compounded by the

anticommunism Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

promoted locally by actor and future Governor Ronald Reagan in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

and across the nation by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, her 1950 campaign for senator won close to 99,000 votes.

Death

Anita Whitney died on February 4, 1955, aged 87, in San Francisco.

References

External links

A 1922 article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''.
"The Case of Miss Whitney"
'

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...