Carolina Commie: the Legal Persecution of Junius Scales (2012)

Undergraduate: Gwendolyn Barlow

Faculty Advisor: James Leloudis
Department: History

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North Carolinian Junius Scales joined the Communist Party in 1939, convinced it was the only effective mechanism for social change in the South. As a member of the Party, Scales organized workers around the Carolinas and fought for the rights of African Americans. His activism led to harassment by the FBI and his eventual arrest in 1954. Charged with violating the Smith Act, which made membership in an organization that advocated the overthrow of the government illegal, he faced two trials and two Supreme Court hearings, all with the same outcome: conviction and prison. When President Kennedy commuted his sentence on Christmas Eve, 1962, Scales was the only individual ever jailed under the membership clause and the only Smith Act victim still in prison.
This project argues that the FBI and the Department of Justice used the national fear of communism, intensified by the threat communism posed to the southern Jim Crow power structure, to secure Junius Scales’ conviction. Through an exploration of Scales’ activism throughout North Carolina and the South, this project demonstrates his earnest intentions and the backlash against them due to anti-communist hysteria. By analyzing Scales v. United States from its beginning in 1955 through its conclusion in 1961, this project examines the role North Carolina played in his protracted legal battle.