Talk:Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders

James E. Jackson was an indictee, so should be mentioned. Roast (talk) 23:33, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

That is feasible. The section introducing the 1951 trials begins:

When the 1951 Dennis decision upholding the convictions was announced, prosecutors initiated indictments of 132 additional CPUSA leaders, called "second string" or "second-tier" defendants. The second-tier defendants were prosecuted in three waves: 1951, 1954, and 1956. Their trials were held in more than a dozen cities, including Los Angeles (15 CPUSA defendants, including Dorothy Healey, leader of the California branch of the CPUSA); New York (21 defendants, including National Committee members Claudia Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn); Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Baltimore, Seattle, Detroit, St. Louis, Denver, Boston, Puerto Rico, and New Haven.

There were 132 additional defendants. Several are named in the article already. The article organizes them by city. Do you have a source that says what city Jackson was tried in? Noleander (talk) 00:33, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

@Noleander: He was tried in New York; inferred from the "21 indicted", information on both articles. He was also one of a handful to go into hiding, as spoken about in the Bail and prison section. The ones who went into hiding, if all known, should be listed alongside Jackson. Roast (talk) 00:59, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/nov/19/guardianobituaries.usa Roast (talk) 01:02, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the source. I added Jackson into the article: within the "Second tier defendants" section, in the list of 21 in NY indictment/trial. You mentioned the "Bail and prison" section contained some info about defendants that went into hiding, but that is within the material about the 1949 trial of the main 12 defendants. The article does not have too much detail on any of the 132 "second tier" defendants" ... readers must click on the name links to get more info. Noleander (talk) 12:44, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

The article has some conflicting info on # of 2nd tier defendants in NYC. The body text says "... 132 additional CPUSA leaders, called "second string" or "second-tier" defendants. The second-tier defendants were prosecuted in three waves: 1951, 1954, and 1956. Their trials were held in more than a dozen cities, including Los Angeles (15 CPUSA defendants, including Dorothy Healey, leader of the California branch of the CPUSA); New York (21 defendants)... " and the caption of the new image says "Sixteen of the seventeen ...".

I suspect the explanation is simply that there were several trials, at different times in different cities. The total for NYC in the 1950s was 21 (2nd tier); and the photo was taken at a specific trial where there were happened to be 16 or 17 on trial.

As an interim solution, I'll remove the ".. of 17" to eliminate any contradictions. If anyone has additional sources that shed light on the total numbers, that might be helpful. Noleander (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

@Monk of Monk Hall: - Thanks for adding some material to the article. The article is a WP:Featured Article, so it has to conform to some rigorous standards for material. Regarding the new paragraph: (1) are there any secondary sources (Hisotrians) that discuss the facts mentioned in the paragraph? The source is a primary source (a person involved) which can generally only be used as a source (especially for recent events) if there is also a 2ndary source covering similar material. (2) if the material is kept in the article, specific page numbers need to be identified in the citation, naming the exact pages that state the facts of the paragraph.

Since it is a Featured article, and is of a fairly high-level topic with lots of 2ndary academic sources, the standards for including material are rather high. Also, there is an issue of WP:PROPORTION, which says that the amount of material in an article should more or less be proportional to the amounts covered by the 2ndary (academic) sources.

An alternative to putting the material in this article is to create a new article on Sherman Labovitz or on Smith Act Trial in Philadelphia; the standards for including material there would not be as strict. Thanks again for contributing to the article! Noleander (talk) 00:58, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Noleander, thanks for your concern with the new material & source quality. I would first say that this source is a bit of a weird one, in the sense that it shares characteristics of both primary and secondary sources. It is written by a participant in the trial (more than 40 years later), but is an analysis of primary and secondary sources about the trial, including court documents, research by other historians contemporary newspaper reports, and interviews with other participants. In the acknowledgments, Labovitz writes:

Two dear friends... fortuitously came across a set of weathered but complete transcripts of my trial... they promptly presented those documents to me... I am especially indebted to all of those busy people who so graciously gave me time for interviews... Helen Weiss, widow of one of my co-defendants... major members of the defense team: Judge Joseph S. Lord II and Benjamin H. Read. The fourth was Bernard Segal, Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association at the time of my arrest. His thoughts and the files he made accessible proved to be invaluable... Two interviews with Spencer Coxe, former American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director... buttressed by the files to which he directed me... Jack Zucker... Director of the Philadelphia Civil Rights Congress... helped me immeasurably with some of the nuances of the period. While in the final analysis this book is my synthesis, I have also tried to accurately convey the views of the many contributors as to what took place... Additional information about the general "anti-communist" atmosphere in Philadelphia at the time... was gathered from interviews by Fred Zimring and from a paper by Iz Reivich... I found useful information in the Philadelphia Bar Association periodical, The Shingle, and particularly in the Temple Urban Archive Files of the Philadelphia Fellowship Commission, the Philadelphia Teachers' Union and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

I think there is at least an argument to be made that despite being written by a participant, this is closer to a secondary source. It is written by a professor (albeit in social science, not history), has endnotes, and conforms to historiographical norms. There is also precedent in history for using sources written by participants when they are the best source available, such as in the case of Tacitus. The Philadelphia trial did receive some coverage in other sources, though it was generally related to Labovitz's book. The best additional source I found was a Philadelphia Bar Association panel, broadcast on CSPAN, where Labovitz and others discuss the trial. Beyond that, Labovitz/his book received coverage in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News WHYY, the University of Pennsylvania newspaper, and the Kelly Writers House website. I hope this information is helpful, and I am interested to hear your suggestion as to how to proceed. I'm already planning to write a Sherman Labovitz page, and I am considering doing more research on the other defendants and the trial as a whole; I can definitely get some page numbers into the paragraph here if we decide to keep it. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 14:38, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

@Monk of Monk Hall - Thanks for the detailed reply. Here is where I'm coming from: I've written several FA quality articles, including this one. It is a HUGE amount of labor to get them to FA status - 4 to 6 months of my life for each. This article I did back in 2012, I think. After an article is certified as FA, as the years go by, other well-meaning editors (unaware of the FA status, or FA criteria) add material. That happens to all FA article.s At first, I didn't care, but after several years go by, the articles become very poor quality, and risk get demoted from FA status (the WP:FAR process). So in the past year or two, I've starting trying to "nip it in the bud" and speak up if the added material is not consistent with FA requirements.

The new paragraph on Labovitz sticks out like a sore thumb :-) That material is far less significant than other material in the article ... because it is not discussed by secondary sources (see WP:RS and WP:PRIMARY and WP:SECONDARY).

I'm particularly sensitive about this article because in Nov 2023 another editor severely damaged the top two sections. It was not until March 2024 that I noticed the damage. So I'm very wary now.

Let me propose this:

1. We move the Labovitz material out from this article into a new Sherman Labovitz article
2. You continue to work on it there; and continue to find sources, etc
3. In a couple of months, if you've found reliable, 2ndary sources that discuss Labovitz in relation to the Smith trials, we can add some material back into this article
4. Any material added on Labovitz in this article has to be proportional (WP:PROPORTION) ... that means the article cannot devote more words to him than to other more significant persons (as determined by amount of coverage they get in academic 2ndary sources).

Does that sound okay? Noleander (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't fully agree with your characterization of Labovitz as a primary source. Despite being a participant in the events he writes about, I think that with respect to the material I added he is taking on the role of a historian analyzing the primary and secondary sources he lists in the quoted section of my previous reply. WP:SECONDARY addresses this kind of situation explicitly:

A book by a military historian about the Second World War might be a secondary source about the war, but where it includes details of the author's own war experiences, it would be a primary source about those experiences.

However, I don't see any harm in improving the material with additional sourcing and more rigorous inline citations. I will take your suggestion and review the literature, then write a Philadelphia Smith Act trial article, then return here with material summarizing that page. I've never written an article about a court case before. Do you have any perspective on whether the official name of the case, United States v. Kuzma would be a better title than the informal title? Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 00:44, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

@Monk of Monk Hall - Thanks for working on the Philadelphia material in a new location.

Regarding article title: an informal title such as Philadelphia Smith Act trial is better than United States v. Kuzma because its scope is broader, and gives you more flexibility to include any tangential material you encounter (e.g. biographical data; context; multiple court cases, etc). Using the trial name will constrain the content (but, every US Supreme Court case is permitted to have its own, dedicated WP article).

When the times comes to add material into this article, you should familiarize yourself with the WP:SUMMARY STYLE guideline. That covers the process we use when an article reaches the maximum size limit, which is about 9,000 words (see WP:SIZERULE). The Summary Style guideline says that editors must begin creating sub-articles, and put the new/detailed information in sub-articles (so the main article stays within the size limit).

This "put detailed material into sub-articles" process has already started for this top-level article. Consider the 132 second-tier defendants: this article mentions several cities & defendants by name. Many of those 2nd tier defendants have sub-articles already:

• Dorothy Healey
• James E. Jackson
• Claudia Jones
• Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

This article links to more 2nd-tier in an image caption. And it links to other sub-articles in a footnote ( Robert Klonsky (Philadelphia); and Alexander Bittelman, Alexander Trachtenberg, V. J. Jerome.

Given that there are over 100 2nd-tier defendants, in over 12 cities, this article - Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders - can only briefly mention each of those 2nd-tier persons. Giving a full sentence or two to each person would make this article too large. The very famous Elizabeth Gurley Flynn not discussed at all in this article ... instead, the article gives readers a wikillink to follow to read more about her.

It might be possible to add a sentence or two about each of the 2nd tier cities: e.g. 12 cities x 2 sentences per city x 15 words per sentence = 360 added words.

Also, consider creating a new article named Smith Act trials of second tier defendants and put the dozen 2nd tier trials all in that article: that way you wouldn't be continually bumping into size issues.

If you want me to look at your new article(s) and give suggestions, I'd be happy to do so at any time. You should consider nominating it for a WP:GOOD ARTICLE award when it is completed, that is a fun process to go thru. Noleander (talk) 15:09, 4 December 2025 (UTC)