Biography
Civil-rights organizer arrested with her husband Al on sedition charges after organizing in eastern Kentucky; home raided, papers seized, and house bombed. The Black Panther Vol. 18 no.7 (1978); their case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), v18 no.7; digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
Margaret McSurely and her husband Al, field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund, were arrested at their Pike County home on August 11, 1967 and charged under Kentucky’s sedition statute after a nighttime raid seized their books and papers. Within weeks a three-judge federal court in McSurely v. Ratliff held the statute unconstitutional and blocked the prosecution. Their seized papers were nonetheless passed to a U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee, launching the decade-long McSurely v. McClellan litigation over the raid and their subsequent contempt-of-Congress convictions (reversed on appeal); in December 1968 their home was dynamited. In 1983 a jury awarded the McSurelys $1.6 million in damages against the former Pike County prosecutor and federal officials.
