Books on trial2007
Red Scare in the Heartland
by Shirley A. Wiegand
"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...