Elizabeth Dilling

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Elizabeth Dilling Stokes (April 19, 1894 - May 26, 1966), was a well-known American anti-communist and anti-war activist and writer in the 1930s and '40s, which led to charges of antisemitism and sedition in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944, [1] [2]

She was born Elizabeth Kirkpatrick in Chicago, Illinois. Her father was Dr. L. Kirkpatrick, physician and surgeon of Virginian, Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian ancestry, and her mother, Elizabeth Harding, descended from a long line of Anglican bishops. She attended the University of Chicago where she studied music and languages, but did not graduate. She was a concert harpist after having been a pupil of renowned harp virtuoso Alberto Salvi. In 1918, she married Albert Dilling, an engineer and lawyer of Norwegian Lutheran ancestry. The marriage produced two children, Kirkpatrick (1920-2003) and Elizabeth Jane. The couple traveled globally, and in the early 1930s they visited the Soviet Union. They spent a long time there, and filmed what they saw of the atrocious conditions. Especially alarming to her was their Soviet guide's proclaiming, "Our world revolution will start with China and end with the United States!" [3]

When the Dillings returned home to Illinois, Elizabeth went on tour showing her movies and describing the "workers' paradise" as anything but. She wrote The Red Network -- A Who's Who of Radicalism for Patriots (1934), the well-known exposé of communist and communist front activity in the U.S., which had several printings and was widely circulated (100,000 copies are claimed). As an example of her technique, in the entry for Albert Einstein, which links him to various communist organizations, Dilling notes: "married to Russian; his much press-agented Relativity theory is supposedly beyond the intelligence of almost everyone except himself." She offers an apologia for the Nazi confiscation of Einstein's property in Germany, saying it was because he was a Communist. The entry for Eleanor Roosevelt reads "Socialist sympathizer and associate, pacifist.[4]

She then wrote The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background (1936), condemning the New Deal, FDR and officials in his administration for their alleged strong links to communists. In The Octopus (1940), she attacked the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and linked Jews to communism. Her obsession with what she saw as "Jewish conspiracies" would last until her death in May 1966.

As debate raged about whether the U.S. should get involved in World War II, she became an activist in two organizations inspired by the anti-semitic radio priest Father Coughlin: Mothers' Peace Movement, which she co-founded with Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, and the group We the Mothers Mobilize for America, based in Chicago. She was also involved with the America First Committee, famously associated with Charles Lindbergh and other prominent opponents of the war. After the Pearl Harbor attack forced Congress to declare war, Mrs. Dilling was indicted, along with 28 others, which led to the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 ([5]. The case finally ended in a mistrial after the death of the presiding judge, Edward C. Eicher. The Chicago Tribune editorialized on the trial as "one of the blackest marks on the record of American jurisprudence." [6] Another judge in the trial court, Bolitha J. Laws, described the case as "a travesty of justice." [7]. The Smith Act under which the prosecution took place was later found to be unconstitutional in several rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States.

In the 1950s, she was a frequent contributor to Conde McGinley's paper Common Sense, and her name often joined his in joint-letters to congressmen.

Her second husband Jeremiah Stokes (1877-1954) was a lawyer and author of religious and patriotic works named. She published the virulently anti-semitic The Plot Against Christianity in 1964, which included over 200 pages of photocopies from the Soncino edition of the Talmud, with her underlines added. After her death, this was republished as The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today, which includes the photocopies by means of hot links [8]