Biography
Civil-rights organizer arrested with her husband Al on sedition charges after organizing in eastern Kentucky; home raided, papers seized, and house bombed. The Black Panther Vol. 18 no.7 (1978); their case reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Margaret McSurely and her husband Al, field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund, were arrested at their Pike County home on August 11, 1967 and charged under Kentucky’s sedition statute after a nighttime raid seized their books and papers. Within weeks a three-judge federal court in McSurely v. Ratliff held the statute unconstitutional and blocked the prosecution. Their seized papers were nonetheless passed to a U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee, launching the decade-long McSurely v. McClellan litigation over the raid and their subsequent contempt-of-Congress convictions (reversed on appeal); in December 1968 their home was dynamited. In 1983 a jury awarded the McSurelys $1.6 million in damages against the former Pike County prosecutor and federal officials. The subsequent contempt-of-Congress prosecution resulted in a three-month sentence for Margaret before U.S. District Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. The convictions were reversed on appeal in December 1972. They did not serve these contempt sentences.
The subsequent contempt-of-Congress prosecution resulted in a three-month sentence for Margaret before U.S. District Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. The convictions were reversed on appeal in December 1972. They did not serve these contempt sentences.
A Southern Conference Educational Fund release dated May 7, 1970 identifies Davis Bress as special government prosecutor in the separate contempt-of-Congress prosecution. It names defense attorneys Morton Stavis and Nancy Stearns and reports their effort to question Senator John McClellan about access to the papers seized in Kentucky. The release reports that Bress acknowledged officials would admit the papers had been seen illegally, and that Judge John L. Smith denied a dismissal request and set a future trial date. These statements are attributed to SCEF’s contemporary release; they do not establish new actual custody or alter the distinct 1967 sedition case. The announced trial date is a schedule, not proof of an executed hearing.
