[Snickersnee]

I remember walking home in front of the White House with my father on the evening the Rosenbergs were executed. It was a cool and drizzly day. A bunch of CPUSA members had been bused down from NYC to walk a long, oval picket-line in front of the WH carrying "Save the Rosenbergs" signs, chanting, etc.

As we drew near the gate on West Exec. Ave, a tall, well-dressed black man broke out of the pack and attempted to press a leaflet on my father. "Save the Rosenbergs, Sir? Save the Rosenbergs?" My USMC-vet father gave him a wicked Gunny-sergeant glare, and the guy sheepishly spun around and tried to hit some other passers-by.

We got up to the corner of 17th St. and my father stopped and looked back. "Mm. That was Paul Robeson," he said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Never mind," he explained.

[crazykatz]

I was a young girl in Atlanta at the time. My grandfather worked in the office at the Fischer Body plant across the street from the Federal Pen, as we all called it, where the traitors were executed.

On the day, after they were executed my grandfather, who was not the type to swear, said a friend of his, in my presence,

" I stood across the street from the gates at the Pen and said I was glad the BASTURDS were dead."

I have remembered this comment all my life. That was the only time I had ever heard him swear... and, I never heard it again. He passed away in 1965.