Biography
Edwin Berry Burgum, a professor of English at New York University and a literary critic who sat on the JAFRC board was one of the officers and executive-board members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee (JAFRC) — the New York relief organization that aided refugees of the Spanish Civil War and survivors of Nazi concentration camps — who were jailed for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee. Subpoenaed in 1946, the board refused to hand over the committee’s records and lists of donors, and in June 1947 a federal jury convicted all of them of contempt of Congress. Their appeal, Barsky v. United States, was rejected, and after the Supreme Court declined to intervene they surrendered in 1950 to serve their sentences. His stand cost him more than his liberty: NYU suspended and ultimately dismissed him for invoking the Fifth Amendment before a later Senate inquiry.
