Cole et al. v. Arkansas (338 U.S. 345)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided December 5, 1949 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 338 U.S. 345 · 70 S. Ct. 172
- Decided
- December 5, 1949
- Term
- October Term 1949
- Vote
- 8–0
- Majority author
- Justice Jackson (R.H.)
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Me. Justice Jackson delivered the opinion of the Court. In December 1945, 112 of the 117 employees of an oil company, including petitioners, went out on strike. About five o’clock one afternoon, petitioners, with several other strikers, assembled near the plant’s entrance. Although a picket line was nearby, these men were not a part of it, and there is no suggestion that their acts were attributable either to the regular pickets or to the union representing them. As the five working employees left the plant for the day, the petitioner Jones called out to one named Williams to “wait a minute, he wanted to talk to him.” When Williams replied that “he didn’t have time, he was on his way home and he would see him another day,” petitioner Jones gave a signal and said, “Come on, boys.” Petitioner Cole, who was carrying a stick, told one of the other departing employees “to go ahead on, that they wasn’t after me.” Another striker named Campbell then attacked Williams and was killed in the ensuing struggle. It was further testified that these petitioners and others had that morning discussed talking to the men who were working “and they agreed that if they didn’t talk right, they were going to whip them.” While some of this was contradicted, such is the version which the jury could have found from the evidence. The present case has had a curiously involved history. Convicted in 1946…
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