Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice DOUGLAS concur, dissenting.
The petitioner in this case, as is shown by the facts set forth in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, in which I concur, has for some time been at odds with strong sentiment favoring racial segregation in his home State of Kentucky. A white man himself, the petitioner has nonetheless spoken out strongly against that sentiment. This activity, which once before resulted in his being charged with a serious crime, seems also to have been the primary reason for his being called before the Un-American Activities Committee. For the occasion of that Committee's compelling petitioner to go from Rhode Island, where he was vacationing, to Atlanta for questioning appears from the record to have been the circulation of two letters, both in the nature of petitions to Congress, urging that certain legislative action be taken which, in the view of the signers of the petitions, would help those working against segregation. One of these petitions, signed by petitioner and his wife, asked those who read it to urge their representatives in Congress to vote against proposed legislation which would have empowered the States to enact antisedition statutes because, in the view of the signers, those statutes could too readily be used against citizens working for integration. The other petition, bearing the signature of 200 southern Negroes, was sent directly to the House of Representatives and requested that body not to allow the Un-American Activities Committee to conduct hearings in the South because, so the petition charged, 'all of its (the Committee's) activities in recent years suggest that it is much more interested in harassing and labeling as 'subversive' any citizen who is inclined to be liberal or an independent thinker.' The record shows that the Committee apparently believed that petitioner had drafted both of these petitions and that he had circulated them, not-as would appear from the face of the petitions-for the purpose of furthering the cause of integration, but for the purpose of furthering the interests of the Communist Party, of which the Committee claimed to have information that he was a member, by fomenting racial strife and interfering with the investigations of the Un-American Activities Committee.
When petitioner appeared in response to this subpoena, he was asked a number of questions regarding his personal beliefs and associations, culminating in the question of whether he was a member of the Communist Party at 'the instant' he affixed his signature to the petition urging defeat of the statute authorizing state antisedition laws. Petitioner refused to answer these questions on the grounds, first, that the Committee had no power to ask the questions it put to him, and, secondly, that he could properly refuse to answer such questions under the First Amendment. For this refusal to answer he, like Frank Wilkinson who followed him on the witness stand at the Atlanta hearing, was convicted under 2 U.S.C. § 192, 2 U.S.C.A. § 192 and sentenced to 12 months in jail. And, as was the case with the conviction of Wilkinson, the majority here affirms petitioner's conviction '(u)pon the reasoning and authority' of Barenblatt v. United States.