FRANK WILKINSON

RICK LYMAN, NY TIMES - Frank Wilkinson, a Los Angeles housing official
who lost his job in the Red Scare of the early 1950's and later became
one of the last two people jailed for refusing to tell the House
Un-American Activities Committee whether he was a Communist, died Monday
in Los Angeles. He was 91. . .

In 1952, when Mr. Wilkinson was head of the Housing Authority of the
City of Los Angeles, he spearheaded a project to replace the sprawling
Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, home to 300 families and
roamed by goats and other livestock, with thousands of public-housing
units. Real estate interests that viewed public housing as a form of
socialism accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a Communist. When asked about
this, under oath, he declined to answer, causing a furor.

After a City Council hearing, in which Mayor Fletcher Bowron punched a
man in the audience who had called him a "servant of Stalin," Mr.
Wilkinson was questioned by the California Anti-Subversive Committee.
Mr. Wilkinson was fired along with four other housing officials and five
schools employees, including his first wife, Jean. The housing project
was scuttled and much of the land eventually turned over to the city,
after which it became the site of Dodger Stadium, new home to the former
Brooklyn Dodgers. . .

Mr. Wilkinson consistently refused to testify about his political
beliefs. He had, in fact, joined the Communist Party in 1942, according
to "First Amendment Felon," a 2005 biography by Robert Sherrill. He left
the party in 1975.

Mr. Wilkinson continued his antipoverty activities and, in 1955, was
called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which wanted
to know whether he was a Communist. This time, Mr. Wilkinson used what
he believed was a novel approach. Instead of claiming his Fifth
Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, he refused to
answer on First Amendment grounds, saying the committee had no right to
ask him.

The committee requested that Congress cite Mr. Wilkinson for contempt,
but it was not until 1958 that he and a co-worker, Carl Braden, became
the last men ordered to prison at the committee's behest. Mr. Wilkinson
fought the contempt citation in the courts, but the Supreme Court, by a
vote of 5 to 4, affirmed it.

At a press conference after the decision, Mr. Wilkinson said: "We will
not save free speech if we are not prepared to go to jail in its
defense. I am prepared to pay that price."

In 1961, the year construction began on Dodger Stadium, Mr. Wilkinson
spent nine months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. He came out of
prison, he said, determined to fight for the committee's abolition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/04/national/04wilkinson.html