Scales, Junius Irving
SCALES, JUNIUS IRVING (1920-2002). Born into a wealthy southern family with a distinguished history, Junius Irving Scales received an early tutorial education before entering the University of North Carolina in 1936. There he became a member, then state chairman of the American Student Union. He joined the Communist Party (CP) in March 1939, and the following year he attended the national Party training school. He then became an organizer in the textile and hosiery industries. After Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for the army and served four years while being harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and army intelligence. He returned to Chapel Hill in 1946 and was active in veterans’ affairs and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. He was also vice president of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, its only elected white official. As district chair of the CP in the Carolinas, he held many public meetings. Soon named to the Southern Regional Committee of the CP, Scales became responsible for activities in the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi. He shifted to the “underground” methods of operation adopted by the CP to resist oppression, but was arrested in 1954 under the Smith Act. His six-year sentence was reversed by the Supreme Court in 1957. Although he had resigned from the CP, Scales was again tried and this conviction and a new six-year sentence were upheld by a five-to-four decision in the Supreme Court. Shortly after he was imprisoned, the deputy attorney general offered him immediate freedom if he would “name names.” He refused and served fifteen months in Lewisburg Penitentiary until released by a presidential commutation that followed an international protest movement. Upon his release, Scales became a union proofreader, a job he held until his retirement twenty-five years later.
Further reading
Friedman, Mickey. A Red Family: Junius, Gladys, and Barbara Scales. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Scales, Junius Irving, and Richard Nickson. Cause at Heart: A Former Communist Remembers. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
Junius Irving Scales Papers, 1940-1978. The Southern Collection at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, #04879. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/04879/