"I became a member of the Party in January, 1933, in the heat of battle. At the time, I was serving as defense attorney for Angelo Herndon in Atlanta, Georgia, where Herndon, an eighteen-year-old Negro youth, had been framed on a charge of inciting to insurrection. ... Of what was Herndon "guilty"? He had led a demonstration of unemployed Negro and white workers to City Hall, had been found with a couple of Communist pamphlets in his possession, and possessed a firm and inspiringly defiant advocacy of the freedom of Negroes and of the liberation of the white masses from exploitation. The "dangerous" policy he then espoused as a Communist, was the unity of the Negroes in the South with the impoverished white workers and poor farmers."
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Civil rights activistsLawyers from the United StatesAfrican AmericansPoliticians from New York CityCommunists from the United States
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Benjamin J. Davis Jr.
Benjamin Jefferson "Ben" Davis Jr. (September 8, 1903 – August 22, 1964), was an African-American lawyer and communist who was elected to the city council of New York City, representing Harlem, in 1943.
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