James E. Jackson Jr., a civil rights activist, former official of the American Communist Party and defendant in a case that led the Supreme Court to rule that the Smith Act of 1940 did not prohibit the advocacy of violent revolution, died Sept. 1 in Manhattan. He was 92 and lived in Brooklyn.
The death was announced by his daughter Harriet Jackson.
Mr. Jackson was among 21 party members indicted in 1951, at the height of the McCarthy era, for, among other things, teaching classes on violent revolution. The case was front-page news around the country.
Most of the 21 defendants were convicted and imprisoned. But Mr. Jackson and five others went into hiding — “roaming the country like during the underground railroad,” his wife Esther said Wednesday. Mr. Jackson didn’t see his family until 1956, when he surrendered and, with his colleagues, was convicted of conspiracy.
The six defendants’ convictions under the Smith Act were unanimously reversed by a federal appeals court in 1958. The reversal was based on Yates vs. U.S., a 1957 Supreme Court ruling that the mere teaching or advocacy of an overthrow of the government did not constitute a “call to action.”
The Yates decision signaled a shift toward a legal principle that the advocacy of illegal conduct is usually constitutionally protected, said Eugene Volokh, a law professor and 1st Amendment scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Mr. Jackson held important positions in the Communist Party. He joined in 1947, and in 1952 became its Southern secretary and a staunch advocate of civil rights.
