Davis says bill is ‘fascist-like invasion of rights’: 1948

Benjamin Davis, the communist elect3ed councilmember on the New York City Council from Harlem, testifies before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in Washington, D.C. January 16, 1948 to oppose the Cole Bill that would outlaw communists running in elections.

 

Davis told the committee that the bill was a “Fascist-like invasion of the rights of the people” and that it and similar bills have fallen “like a plague upon the people.”

 

The January 29, 1948 Afro. American printed the following article:

 

“WASHINGTON, D.C. – (UNPA)—In testimony given recently, Georgia-born, Harvard-educated Benjamin J. Davis, New York City Councilman, taunted members of a House Administration subcommittee who questioned him about the tenets of the Communist party in the United States.

 

“A member of the National Committee of the Communist Party of the United States, Mr. Davis said the communist Party was unalterably opposed to the bill which would bar the communist party or any other party that directly or indirectly advocates the overthrow by violence or any other means from having the party name or the name of its candidates on the ballot.

 

:’I am extremely proud to be a member of the Communist Party, just as I am proud to be an American and proud to be Negro,’ Mr. Davis told the committee.

 

“He said he received the second highest vote for the New York City Council in the 1945 elation, “a higher vote than any Democrat in Manhattan County,” and he added that his record as a councilman would testify as to how far un-American the Communist party is.

 

“’I will put my record up against the record of anybody in Congress.’ He said, ‘I think that record is one that has been of benefit to the people of New York City, irrespective of their party, race, color or creed, and a benefit to the American democracy.’

 

“He said the bill to bar un-American parties from the election ballot, introduced by Representative William C. Cole, Republican of Missouri, ‘violates the Constitution and is un-American.’ He added that it denies to American citizens the right of free speech and free assembly.”

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Davis would face trial later in 1948 under the Smith Act with 10 other Communist Party leaders.

 

Davis was reelected twice to his city council seat. In 1949, he was expelled from the council upon being convicted of conspiring to overthrow the federal government under the Smith Act – a World War II-era charge that rested on Davis's association with the Communist Party.

 

His expulsion from the council was required under state law. His former colleagues passed a resolution celebrating his ouster. He appealed the conviction for two years, without success.

 

After serving three years and four months in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Davis was freed.

 

In the subsequent years, Davis engaged in a speaking tour of college campuses and remained politically active, promoting an agenda of civil rights and economic populism.

 

The City College of New York – in the New York council district he represented in the 1940s – barred Davis from speaking on its campus in this period.

 

After a student protest, Davis was allowed to speak outside, on the street. He was close to Communist Party chairman William Z. Foster.

 

In 1962 Davis was charged with violating the Internal Security Act He died shortly before the case came to trial.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk72YVXD

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is an Associated Press photograph housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.

 

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