227:, having fought off an attempt to expel him from the typographers union on the basis of his conviction in 1961. A play, "The Limits of Dissent", by University of North Carolina Professor Lou Lipsitz, based on his trial transcript, was produced in collaboration with the Winston-Salem School of the Arts and toured the stated courthouses in collaboration with the ACLU. His memoirs, "Cause At Heart: A Former Communist Remembers", written with his closest friend, Richard Nickson, published by the University of Georgia Press, appeared in 1987. A paperback edition with new introductions by scholars Vernon Burton and James R. Barrett appeared in 2005. "Cause At Heart" was issued as an e-book by Plunkett Lake Press in 2018. A book based on interviews conducted in 1971, by Mickey Friedman, was published as "A Red Family" in 2007.
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unannounced visits to small party clubs meeting in private homes where he would collect dues, reregister members, settle disputes and explain the latest shifts in the party line. His wife moved back to New York, where she lived under an alias in the Bronx with her mother and their infant daughter, with Junius making carefully guarded visits to his family only at infrequent intervals. The FBI periodically caught up to him and trailed him during these years, but did not arrest him until 1954. He was not charged with any overt acts, but was indicted under the provisions of the Smith Act as a member of an organization which advocated violence. He became the only party member to serve in prison on these charges, similar charges against
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1948, he became state chairman of the party. At this time he openly and publicly identified himself as the
Communist Party leader in North Carolina, leading to newspaper stories which embarrassed his wealthy family and led to his forced resignation from his post on the state committee of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare. The strain on his marriage led to his divorce. He married his second wife, Gladys, a New Yorker, in 1950. Their only child, Barbara, was born in Durham in April 1951.
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and known to locals simply as Ab's), a barnlike off campus watering hole for local intellectuals and bohemians which had a clandestine
Communist Party printing press in a back room. He was soon hired as a clerk in the store, and spent more time reading the books than working. He started attending the
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from 1942 to 1946, he returned to Chapel Hill. While completing work on his bachelor's degree and starting work on his master's, he became the local party organizer, supervising five local
Communist clubs and hosting weekly salons at his home that were open to both party and non-party members. In
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Scales went semi-underground ("unavailable", in party parlance, but not in the "deep freeze") in 1951, traveling from city to city under a variety of assumed names as a circuit riding district organizer for the CP in North and South
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and northern Mississippi, making
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the following year, at the age of 16, and three years later on his birthday in 1939, he secretly joined the
Communist Party and, soon afterward, married his first wife, Vera, and quit school to become a union organizer in the textile mills. The
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having been dropped on appeal. While free on bail while appealing his conviction, Scales remained as state chairman of the CP until 1956, when he denounced the Soviet invasion of
Hungary. After a brief association with the dissident
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on a 5–4 decision. He served 15 months of a six-year sentence at
Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania before President John F. Kennedy commuted his sentence on Christmas Eve, 1962, after a vigorous campaign for clemency led by
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on a street corner in
Memphis in 1954 was the beginning of a seven-year legal ordeal, in which he was represented by prominent lawyer
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brought a sudden end to his union organizing efforts, and he volunteered for military service.
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His papers are archived at the library of the
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
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After his release, he settled in New York and was hired as a proofreader at
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114:, in 1920. In 1935, he began hanging around 'The Intimate Bookshop' in
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by Junius Scales and
Richard Nickson (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987).
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Junius Irving Scales was born into a socially prominent family in
24:(March 26, 1920 – August 5, 2002) was an American leader of the
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were among the notables who signed a petition on his behalf.
254:"Junius Scales, Communist Sent to US Prison, Dies at 82"
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faction he quit the Communist Party in 1957, following
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364:United States Army personnel of World War II
270:Cause at Heart: A Former Communist Remembers
125:University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
44:commuted his sentence and he was released.
177:and North Carolina civil rights attorney
98:Learn how and when to remove this message
40:in October 1961. On Christmas Eve 1962,
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48:Early life and career
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