Biography
Leon Josephson was a New York attorney and Communist Party activist — an anti-fascist who in the 1930s had been involved in efforts to obtain passports for agents working against Nazi Germany. Summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he refused even to be sworn in, telling the committee, “I refuse to be sworn,” and declaring that he would not testify until the courts had ruled on the committee’s legality. He was cited and convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in federal prison, one of the first defendants jailed in HUAC’s postwar drive.
The March 5, 1947 hearing records Josephson appearing with attorney Samuel A. Newburger and maintaining that he would not take the oath or testify until the courts determined the committee’s authority. His February 5 telegram objected that the original February 6 subpoena afforded less than forty-eight hours’ notice. At its March 21 continuation, the committee unanimously adopted a subcommittee recommendation for contempt proceedings; that recommendation was a procedural step, not itself a conviction or a new period in custody. Investigator Louis James Russell’s biographical testimony also gives Josephson’s New York University law graduation as June 1919, admission to the New Jersey bar in 1921, and naturalization at Newark on April 25, 1921. HUAC, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities (regarding Leon Josephson and Samuel Liptzen), March 5 and 21, 1947; physical PDF pages 31,32,33,34,37,38,39. Source SHA256 5ba99a9dcf44209a81a6206303a54a4df94dcf6fc0fd9787293073c82665b8f7.
