Joseph P. Kamp

Released
Date of birth:03. 05. 1900
Date of death:07. 06. 1993
Age:93† Deceased
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1940s
State:New York
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Biography

Joseph P. Kamp was a right-wing pamphleteer who ran the Constitutional Educational League, a militantly anti-communist propaganda group. When a House committee investigating 1944 campaign expenditures demanded to know who had financed a League brochure it deemed political, Kamp refused to disclose the organization's contributors. Convicted of contempt of Congress, he was sentenced to four months and began serving on June 16, 1950 — his refusal to surrender a donor list mirroring, from the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee board members jailed for the same act of defiance.

Case

Charges: Contempt of Congress.
Incarcerated: Jun 16, 1950
Released: October 1950
Sentence: Four months in federal prison, beginning June 16, 1950; released about October 1950. (Sources differ on the start date — the American Jewish Year Book gives June 9 and the New York Times June 16 — so his release fell in mid-October 1950, on or about October 9–16.) Verdict as recorded: Yes — convicted of contempt of Congress; conviction upheld on appeal. Charges as recorded: Contempt of Congress — for refusing to tell the House Campaign Expenditures Committee who had financed the Constitutional Educational League's 1944 political literature.
Convicted: Yes

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