Harold Fiske

Released
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1920s
State:Kansas
Support
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
No image available

Biography

Harold Fiske, a young IWW organizer recruiting farm workers in Kansas, was arrested in 1923 and convicted under the Kansas criminal-syndicalism act on no evidence beyond the preamble of the IWW constitution. In Fiske v. Kansas (1927) a unanimous Supreme Court reversed his conviction — the first time the Court set aside a state criminal-syndicalism conviction, and an early landmark in applying the Fourteenth Amendment to protect speech.

Case

Charges: Criminal syndicalism (Kansas criminal-syndicalism act; IWW recruiting, 1923)
Arrested: 1923
Sentence: One to ten years, vacated when the Supreme Court set the conviction aside. Verdict as recorded: Convicted, 1923; unanimously REVERSED in Fiske v. Kansas (1927)
Convicted: Yes

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