Biography
Leon Josephson was a New York attorney and Communist Party activist — an anti-fascist who in the 1930s had been involved in efforts to obtain passports for agents working against Nazi Germany. Summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, he refused even to be sworn in, telling the committee, “I refuse to be sworn,” and declaring that he would not testify until the courts had ruled on the committee’s legality. He was cited and convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in federal prison, one of the first defendants jailed in HUAC’s postwar drive.
