The Case of Ira Latimer

Ira H. Latimer wanted to be a lawyer. He took a law degree, struggled through his bar examination (made it, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on his fourth attempt), then applied to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Character and Fitness Committee for admission to the bar. His application—action on such applications is usually a routine matter—was filed in September 1954. Two years and more later, after a long series of explosive hearings, the application was rejected. And a good many people, in Illinois and out over the country as well, have yet to hear a sensible answer to the question: Why?

Some, in attempting somewhere to answer that question, point to Latimer’s rather involved past. He was once, by his own admission, a Communist. He has for twenty years been executive secretary of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, and that committee was, undoubtedly, one of the first of Chicago’s Communist-front action groups (it was organized in the thirties). Moreover, Latimer admits that he ran the CCLC with an exclusive eye to Communist objectives until 1947—when, however, he broke with the Party over issues relating to the Communist-controlled Civil Rights Congress. (Most of the Communist membership, according to Latimer, promptly joined the American Civil Liberties Union, and the CCLC became a mere paper organization.)

Ira H. Latimer wanted to be a lawyer. He took a law degree, struggled through his bar examination (made it, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on his fourth attempt), then applied to the Illinois Supreme Court’s Character and Fitness Committee for admission to the bar. His application—action on such applications is usually a routine matter—was filed in September 1954. Two years and more later, after a long series of explosive hearings, the application was rejected. And a good many people, in Illinois and out over the country as well, have yet to hear a sensible answer to the question: Why?

Some, in attempting somewhere to answer that question, point to Latimer’s rather involved past. He was once, by his own admission, a Communist. He has for twenty years been executive secretary of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, and that committee was, undoubtedly, one of the first of Chicago’s Communist-front action groups (it was organized in the thirties). Moreover, Latimer admits that he ran the CCLC with an exclusive eye to Communist objectives until 1947—when, however, he broke with the Party over issues relating to the Communist-controlled Civil Rights Congress. (Most of the Communist membership, according to Latimer, promptly joined the American Civil Liberties Union, and the CCLC became a mere paper organization.)