Biography
Gus Swift appears in the National Civil Liberties Bureau's March 1919 compilation "War-Time Prosecutions and Mob Violence" among people convicted and jailed under World War I–era free-speech statutes — chiefly the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, draft-obstruction charges, or wartime state and local laws. Per that record, on February 20, 1917 in Grass Valley, California, he was sentenced: 60 days for disturbing the peace by making seditious remarks. The NCLB — the direct predecessor of the American Civil Liberties Union — compiled these cases from April 1, 1917 to March 1, 1919 as a public record of the wartime suppression of free speech, a free press, and peaceful assembly.
