JUDICIARY: Black Red Freed

One day in the bleak, jittery summer of 1932 a 19-year-old Negro communist organizer named Angelo Herndon led a hunger march of unemployed on Atlanta's courthouse. A few days later he was arrested, held for eleven days without charges. Then Atlanta prosecutors dusted off a Reconstruction law providing the death penalty for "any attempt ... to induce others to join in any combined resistance to the lawful authority of the State." In all its 66 years no one had ever been convicted under that statute. Chiefly on the evidence of communist pamphlets found in his possession, a Georgia jury found Red Herndon guilty of violating it, got him an 18-to-20 year sentence on Georgia's chain gangs.

Overnight, obscure Angelo Herndon became a front-page communist hero, his freedom a prime Red Cause. Released on $7,000 bail provided by the International Labor Defense, he marched up & down the land addressing Red rallies while I. L. D. lawyers fought his case through the courts. Twice Georgia's Supreme Court affirmed his sentence. The U. S. Supreme Court once sent the case back to Georgia because of improper presentation, then took jurisdiction.

This week Mr. Justice Roberts became something of a communist hero too when, siding again with the Court's liberal wing in another 5-to-4 decision for social justice, he read an opinion setting aside Angelo Herndon's conviction. Finding no evidence that the young Negro had attempted to incite an insurrection, he declared Georgia's application of its musty law a flat violation of the "guarantees of liberty embodied in the 14th Amendment."