This day in history...
Ah yes, the good old days. McCarthyism, segregation, the government killing people for something that they didn't do...Activists Mark 1953 Rosenberg Execution
By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press WriterOSSINING, N.Y. -- Pete Seeger was in New York City's Union Square in 1953 along with 5,000 other supporters of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as the hour of the couple's execution drew near.
"We were waiting and hoping Eisenhower would give a last-minute reprieve," says Seeger, now 84. "We learned that wouldn't happen, and then a great sigh, a great wail went up from the crowd when the time came and we knew they'd been executed."
On the 50th anniversary of the execution Thursday, Seeger, Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and other show business activists will appear at a benefit for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which assists children of people imprisoned, attacked or fired for taking a public stand.
Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs' younger son, who runs the fund, calls it his "constructive revenge."
The execution of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, ended one of the most sensational cases of the McCarthy era. It was the first execution of civilians for espionage in U.S. history.
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