Biography
Marcus A. Murphy was a Black Communist Party defendant indicted in St. Louis in 1953 under the Smith Act. The Smith Act made it a crime to advocate overthrowing the government.
Marcus Alphonse Murphy was indicted on September 24, 1952 with the four other St. Louis defendants — UE district president William Sentner, James Frederick Forest, Dorothy Rose Forest and Robert Manewitz. All five were convicted and sentenced on June 4, 1954; the Eighth Circuit reversed the convictions in 1958 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Yates decision, and the prosecution was abandoned.
