# Your Liberty
Is Imprisoned
With William
L. Patterson

THE GOVERNMENT HAS TAKEN ANOTHER STEP TO TRY TO
imprison you in a police state. It is demanding that bona-
fide, responsible leaders of organizations, who have never
concealed their democratic objectives, turn into informers
against you, or else face the penalty of prison.

That is the meaning of the arrest of William L. Patterson, one of America's outstanding fighters for Negro rights and for constitutional liberties, and the National Executive Secretary of Civil Rights Congress, the people's defense organization. An illegal charge of contempt of court has put him in federal prison for three months. But actually he sits in prison because over the years, no less than today, Mr. Patterson has refused to betray his responsibilities to you and the American people as a whole. Nor will the organization he heads, the Civil Rights Congress, play the role of stoolpigeon against the democratic forces of our country.

## STEPS THAT LED TO A FRAME-UP

In the spring of 1954, the Internal Revenue Bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department asked to examine the books of CRC for 1950, 1951 and 1952 in order to check the organization's income tax returns for those years.

Mr. Patterson, as custodian of the books, gave all materials upon which the income tax returns were based to Bureau representatives. They spent twenty days examining these records. Apparently everything was found in good order, since there was no tax challenge subsequent to inspection.

But a short while later, on the pretext of checking whether sums listed as contributions were actually so, agents of the Treasury Department demanded the original receipt books containing the names and addresses of contributors to CRC. Mr. Patterson held that the

names of contributors were not germaine to the issue. But the Treasury Department insisted upon names and addresses, it would be satisfied with nothing less, and moved with great rapidity to force the CRC and Mr. Patterson to produce them.

## TAXES ARE NOT THE ISSUE

Is it really a matter of taxes as the government tries to make it out to be? Was CRC tax-delinquent? Did it submit government has never dared fraudulent reports? The claim any of this.

The whole issue of taxes is a fraud deliberately perpetrated by the government. If taxes were involved, the government could have taken CRC to tax court, and sued for the entire amount it thought CRC should pay. For this the government did not need names and addresses of contributors. The burden of proof that no taxes were payable would have fallen on CRC. As a matter of fact, CRC urged the Revenue Department to go to tax court, but the Department refused to do so.

Furthermore, after examining CRC's books for 20 days, the government knew that expenses for each of the three years involved so far exceeded income, that CRC had no taxes to pay. And this was true no matter from what sources CRC derived its income. So that in this regard also the names and addresses of CRC contributors were wholly irrevelant and immaterial.

Here, then, is clear proof that the government wasn't

CHARLES WHITE '58

FROM DR. W. E. B. DU BOIS,

Eminent Historian and Scholar:

The injustice of the United States has again struck at William Patterson of the Civil Rights Congress, because he refused to be a stoolpigeon. He joins now that group of courageous men who rather go to jail than surrender to government persecution the names of those persons who have contributed to the work of the organization which they served. In the recent past, Howard Fast, Richard Morford, Frederick Fields, Edward

Barsky and Alpheus Hunton have preferred imprisonment to betrayal of trust. There will be others who yet will join this band. But William Patterson has drawn on himself especial persecution. He has persisted in fighting injustice even in court. He published "Genocide," that stinging arraignment of the United States for killing, mobbing and lynching Negroes. This American fascism will never forgive.

Write and fight to secure Patterson's release.
The punishment you stop may yet be your own.

really concerned about straightening out a tax matter. No tax matter was involved. Its objective was a menacing attack against everyone daring to support this organization with its democratic program.

TAXES COVER UP
A FRAME-UP

There is nothing far-fetched in this. The government has a long record of using the Tax Department to get indictments when it is unable to get them on the charges it originally announced. In previous cases, the government used the Tax Department to "get" individuals who had committed crimes. In this instance, however, it is using taxes to muddy waters. It is trying to establish an appearance of crime against an individual and an organization, where no crime has been committed. In other words, it is trying to use taxes and the Tax Department to cover up a crass frame-up.

The entire action of the government and the court in arresting and sentencing William L. Patterson is completely illegal. The receipt books demanded by the government are not even in existence. This was so stated by Mr. Patterson in a sworn affidavit in court. Since Mr. Patterson is unable to produce the books required, he cannot be in contempt. Hence his imprisonment is based solely on the prejudice of Judge F. X. McGohey, and is illegal.

Furthermore, the speed with which the government tried to rush this through the courts, the refusal to grant a stay pending appeal, which is automatic in such cases, merely reveal the vindictiveness of the government and court. This further exposes the main purpose of the government—to harass the democratic forces, and to eliminate, if possible, Mr. Patterson and CRC from the field

of struggle for constitutional rights, Negro rights and Labor's rights.

MAIN OBJECT OF
THE FRAME-UP

The main issue is the government's demand for names and addresses of contributors. By its demand for names, the government sought to turn Mr. Patterson and the CRC into informers for the McCarthy-Brownell anti-democratic junta. In this manner it sought to discredit Mr. Patterson and the CRC in the eyes of its democratic supporters. Through the use of the names it sought to terrorize and persecute the supporters of CRC, to drive them away from support of this people's defense organization. In this manner it sought to destroy the CRC, and remove from the field Mr. Patterson, an experienced and skillful fighter for the preservation of the Bill of Rights and the 14th and 15th Amendments. Victory for the government in this plot, would deal a major blow to the democratic props of our country.

But this is not all the McCarthy-Brownell forces in the government seek to achieve at this time. Their objective is much more inclusive. If the government gets away with its claim to the right to demand names and addresses—a right it never had, but which it is stealing from the people—the government will have a very dangerous precedent against any and all organizations that might disagree with any point of the McCarthy-Brownell-fascist policies. It will have a means of attacking trade unions that persist in fighting in the interests of its membership. It will be able to attack organizations that fight for Negro rights and against segregation and jimcrow. How serious this is can be seen when the Democratic Party, and even the first year of the Eisenhower administration, have been smeared with the charge of "treason" by the McCarthyites.

Furthermore, the government's ability to get names and addresses through the use of the Tax Department, would endanger every individual American, would make everyone easy game for paid informers used by the FBI, and would create a Roman holiday for stoolpigeons. The right of the government to demand names and addresses of supporters of democratic organizations, would be a body blow against the political and moral fabric of our country.

WHY THE
FRAME-UP NOW?

As a result of the Army-McCarthy television hearings, additional millions of Americans have begun to understand better, and to take action against, the danger of McCarthyism, the American brand of fascism.

What frightens the McCarthy-Brownell forces in the government is that as a result of the better understand-

FROM HON. NORVAL K. HARRIS,

Circuit Court Judge:

Kindly send me Bill Patterson's jail address, so I can send him a letter of congratulation because he has upheld the true traditions of our democracy by refusing to become an informer. Thanks. Yours for justice.

FROM ROCKWELL KENT,

Distinguished Artist:

> It is needless to say that I was deeply shocked by the ruthless treatment accorded to William L. Patterson. That a man of his high character and endearing personality should be given such ruthless treatment was utterly disgraceful, and there appears to be no mercy in present-day administration of what is termed "justice."

ing and the democratic activity, the people will suddenly grasp the fact that what McCarthy tries to achieve in his roughhouse manner, Brownell is trying to achieve in the manner of a "Philadelphia" lawyer. Fascism is the goal of both!

Despite official harassment, Civil Rights Congress, under the leadership of William L. Patterson, was making an important contribution to the fight against McCarthyism. It fought against Smith Act and McCarran Act prosecutions and in defense of the victims. It organized mass national and international campaigns in defense of Negro rights, expressed in the struggles around the Trenton Six, the Martinsville Seven, Willie McGee, Mrs. Rosa Lee Ingram, Wesley Robert Wells. It conducted the first defense against Taft-Hartley persecution of militant labor leaders in the case of Harold Christoffel. It fought against the government's original efforts to jail people on the contempt gimmick. It presented an historic petition to the United Nations, "We Charge Genocide," charging the United States Government with this crime against the Negro people. It exposed the situation in our country to the inter-American conference at Caracas in a document, "Six Years of Retrogression of Civil Liberties in the United States."

For this deep concern for the people's interests, CRC has to be destroyed, according to the plans of the McCarthy-Brownell-fascist cabal. The Attorney General declared CRC a "subversive" and "communist-front" organization. The Big Lie was put to work.

CRC is a people's *defense* organization, bending its energies to defend the victims of government police-state persecution. Such an action against a *defense* organization exposes the low-blow tactics of the FBI and the Attorney General, who are trying to take away the defender from the victim. Now the McCarthy-Brownell forces are spreading this tax hoax as a further means of depriving the people of their defender. This is the same policy that led the Attorney General to try to intimidate defense lawyers for victims of persecution by threatening these lawyers with, and actually carrying out against them, contempt citations, by threatening to revoke their right to practice law.

WHO IS WILLIAM L. PATTERSON?

William L. Patterson has been active in defense of Negro and constitutional rights for almost 30 years. He was the courageous leader of all the campaigns of CRC listed above. But his persistent activity in the interests of constitutional liberties goes back to the struggles for the defense of Tom Mooney, of Sacco and Vanzetti, and of the Scottsboro Boys. Mr. Patterson is a recognized leader

of the Negro people. No major democratic struggle in our country of the last generation has been without the creative participation of Mr. Patterson.

Mr. Patterson has known government persecution before as a result of his activity on behalf of the people's rights. The most recent was in the summer of 1950, when he and the CRC were fighting to save the lives of sixteen different Negro victims of "rape" and "murder" frame-ups. At that time he was subpoenaed by theLOBying Committee of the House of Representatives and asked to bring lists of contributors to these campaigns, and other struggles against legal lynchings.

His courageous stand in refusing then to give names so enraged Rep. Lanham of Georgia that he screamed, "You god-damned black son-of-a-bitch!" at Mr. Patterson. Negro bishops, speaking for a total of 11,000,000 Negro communicants, called for his acquittal when Mr. Patterson was indicted for contempt. After two trials, Federal Judge Luther Youngdahl, former Governor of Minnesota, dismissed the case.

Now again Mr. Patterson faces persecution, for he constitutes a clear and present danger to the enemies of American democracy.

CRC STANDS ON ITS RECORD

In his final statement before going off to prison, Mr. Patterson said: "I call upon friends of CRC, those who are aware of our efforts to maintain, and those who are concerned with, the integrity of the Bill of Rights and the

FROM D. N. PRITT,

Internationally Prominent Attorney:

> I learned with great sorrow—though, alas, no longer with shocked surprise—of the action taken against William L. Patterson for alleged contempt of court.

> If he had complied with the requirement to produce records, many innocent people would have been the victims of that persecution which seems to be the national pursuit of certain circles in the United States today.

> I know that his friends will take every possible step to assist him and to carry on the great work of defending the victims of persecution, including himself, while he himself is under jail sentence. In that work you have the sympathy of all progressive individuals and movements everywhere. We can only hope, with you, that as a result of the contempt with which the ruling circles of the United States are now regarded in every civilized country, the ordinary people of America will assert themselves and put an end to such persecutions.