I.  The Free-Speech Story of Charles Ruthenberg & Anita Whitney

     Charles Emil Ruthenberg and Charlotte Anita Whitney both castigated the abuses of American capitalism and imperialism, and demanded that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and association protect their right to do so.  Both suffered the indignities and penalties of social intolerance, police harassment, criminal prosecution, and judicial sanction for advocating dissident beliefs and associating with communist groups.  And both asked the United States Supreme Court to safeguard their expressions of defiance, and were rebuffed.

     Their similarities notwithstanding, the differences between them were stark and significant.  Ruthenberg was a commoner from an immigrant family; Whitney was upper-middle class and from a distinguished bloodline.  Ruthenberg found his radical roots early on in life – preaching on street corners, supporting labor strikes, organizing anti-war demonstrations, recruiting and training party workers, and campaigning for office as a socialist candidate; Whitney came to her dissident beliefs much later, after devoting years of service as a social worker, probation officer, political lobbyist, suffragette, civil rights activist, and civic league president.  As national executive secretary of the Communist Party, Ruthenberg gained a reputation as the “most arrested red in America,”^[16] reportedly with more than sixty indictments pending against him at one time; Whitney was arrested only once, on charges of aiding and abetting criminal syndicalism as a member of the Communist Labor Party of California, and that after having delivered an address to the Women’s Civic Center of Oakland about the economic and political disenfranchisement of African-Americans and the nation’s abhorrent practices of lynching.  And, more central to our purposes, Justice Brandeis raised a First Amendment sword in Ruthenberg’s defense against criminal syndicalism charges, but raised a shield in the state’s defense when Whitney was similarly charged.  The free-speech story of Charles Ruthenberg and Anita Whitney is a study in contrasts, and an ironic tale of how a notorious dissident was lost to legal history whereas a minor figure was catapulted into it.