The Press: Sedition on the Copy Desk

On the news desk of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Carl Braden, 40, was a quiet, efficient copyreader whose work in the office never gave his employers any cause for complaint. But his work outside the office was another matter. Braden, a veteran newsman and former labor reporter for the Courier-Journal’s afternoon sister, the Times, devoted most of his spare time to Communist causes. He gathered signatures for the phony Communist Stockholm “Peace Petition,” helped direct strikes for the Red-led Farm Equipment Workers Union, wrote stories that ran in the Communist Daily Worker.

Last week Braden’s outside interests landed him in jail. In a Louisville criminal court, he was sentenced under Kentucky’s sedition law to 15 years in prison and fined $5,000 for “advocating sedition.” The case resulted from what the state prosecutor called a “Communist-inspired plot to stir up racial trouble between whites and Negroes.”

Shock Treatment. The plot began to unfold last spring when Braden bought a ranch-style house in a quiet, all-white suburban section outside Louisville, then transferred title to Andrew Wade, a Negro electrical contractor. In Louisville, where the hard lines of segregation are disappearing slowly, Braden’s Communist-style “shock treatment” brought the expected results. First a flaming cross was burned on a lot adjoining Wade’s property, then a volley of shots was fired into the house. Finally a bomb exploded.

Before a grand jury investigating the violence, Braden refused to answer any questions about his past political activities. Police who descended on Braden’s own house seized more than a hundred Communist pamphlets and books (sample title: “How To Be a Good Communist”). After he was indicted, the Courier-Journal did not fire Braden but gave him a “leave of absence” with pay on the “American principle that a man is innocent until proved guilty.”

Surprise Witness. While the Courier-Journal “deplored” Braden’s race-relations tactics, it defended his refusal to answer questions about his political beliefs as “quite correct.” Many a reader disagreed. Communism, they pointed out, has long been recognized as a criminal conspiracy, not simply a political belief.

At his trial, Braden denied that he was a Communist. Then last week Alberta Ahearn, 44, a Louisville seamstress who had been an undercover FBI agent, testified that she had not only attended a party-cell meeting in Braden’s home, but had paid her party dues to him. With that clinching evidence of Braden’s Communist activity and his conviction, the Courier-Journal at long last came around to agreeing with its critics, fired Braden.