Biography
Ira Silbar was the defense attorney for the three petition solicitors, himself jailed alongside his clients and who was jailed at Lewistown (Fulton County), Illinois in July 1940 and charged with two counts of 'treason' under the state's revived criminal-syndicalism law for canvassing Communist ballot-petition signatures — part of a sweep of over a hundred Communists across nineteen Illinois counties, with a combined $80,000 bail and penalties of one to ten years.
