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Vol. 71/No. 46      December 10, 2007

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
December 10, 1982
Throughout the morning of November 27, hundreds of D.C. police protected a handful of Ku Klux Klanners. Throughout the afternoon, hurling tear-gas grenades and swinging clubs, they attacked thousands of anti-Klan demonstrators and onlookers. They arrested 38 people and injured an undetermined number.

The Klan had vowed to march in its hoods and robes through the streets of the capital. But they didn’t march; and as they wandered around the Capitol grounds, intimidated by thousands of protesters nearby, they carried their robes in paper bags.

The Alabama-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan tried to organize the first KKK march in Washington since 1925. However in response to the Klan’s threats, 1,500 to 2,000 anti-Klan demonstrators did march.  
 
December 9, 1957
The government’s use of the Smith Act as a weapon for punishing dissident political thought received a crippling new blow today when a federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed “conspiracy” indictments under the act against ten California Communist Party members. The dismissal came on the “reluctant” request of an Assistant United States Attorney who said that the Justice Department could not “satisfy the evidentiary requirements laid down by the Supreme Court in its opinion reversing the conviction in this matter.”

Those released were among 15 defendants convicted in 1952. On June 17 the Supreme Court freed five of the defendants and ordered a new trial for the others, declaring that the government must prove something more than abstract advocacy of ideas.  
 
December 3, 1932
SHANGHAI—From the Reuters News Agency you have probably heard some news about the Chinese Opposition. But while some of it is right, there is a good deal of untruth in the reports.

Since the organization of the Blue Shirt Society, nearly all the students from the Moscow Sun Yat Sen University have concentrated in it. They learned many things in the USSR, especially from the GPU, and they are using it faithfully, especially to strengthen Chiang Kai-Shek. According to an official report, the students miseducated by the Stalinists number about 500. Their only task is to arrest Communists and destroy the Communist organizations.

The prisoners number nearly 30. The first wave of arrests is over but the second and more extensive wave of persecution is being prepared.  
 
 
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