Biography
Frank Wilkinson was a Los Angeles public-housing official turned civil-liberties organizer who devoted his life to abolishing the House Un-American Activities Committee, founding the National Committee to Abolish HUAC (later the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation). Subpoenaed by HUAC in Atlanta in 1958, he refused to answer its questions, invoking the First Amendment. Convicted of contempt of Congress, he lost his appeal when the Supreme Court affirmed 5–4 in Wilkinson v. United States (365 U.S. 399, 1961) — decided alongside Carl Braden's case — and served nine months in federal prison. The FBI kept a file on him that grew to some 132,000 pages.
National Guardian, April 3, 1961: The paper reports Wilkinson addressing an overflow crowd of about five thousand at the University of California, Berkeley, on March 22, 1961 despite an effort to prevent the speech. Governor Pat Brown and Chancellor Clark Kerr defended the speaking right. The report says a petition for Supreme Court rehearing concerning the HUAC contempt conviction was pending. The speech and petition do not establish new imprisonment or completion of the prospective one-year sentence. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1961-04-03-13-25-nat-guardian.pdf#page=4
The April 17, 1961 National Guardian describes Braden and Wilkinson on a speaking tour before beginning their HUAC-contempt prison terms in Atlanta, then anticipated for late April or early May. An April 21 New York abolition rally was to support their families during imprisonment. This explicitly prospective report is not used as proof of an admission day or time already served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-guardian/1961-04-17-13-27-nat-guardian.pdf#page=1
