In 1962, the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted distinguished foreign correspondent William Worthy under an obscure Immigration and Nationality Act provision for returning from Cuba without a passport.
How Did William Worthy First Lose His Passport?
William Worthy’s passport troubles began on Christmas Eve in 1956, when he walked across a narrow bridge from Hong Kong into China. Wearing a borrowed possum fur coat, he became the first U.S. journalist to enter the country in seven years. The passport in his pocket bore a stamp declaring it invalid for travel to China and other communist-led nations, mirroring restrictions placed on all regular U.S. citizens at the time.
During his 41-day trip, Worthy delivered three television broadcasts from China—the first by an American since 1949—and interviewed Premier Zhou Enlai alongside a detained U.S. political prisoner. Two weeks after returning home, he applied for a renewal. After a month of silence, he testified at a Senate hearing on the right to travel, criticizing the State Department for mirroring the authoritarian tactics of nations it banned Americans from visiting. Hours later, officials tentatively rejected his passport application.
Why Did the Kennedy Administration Indict the Reporter in 1962?
For two years following the formal rejection of his passport in March 1958 and the subsequent failure of his legal challenges backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Worthy traveled exclusively to countries that did not require U.S. passports. His dispatches from Cuba became a persistent friction point for President John F. Kennedy’s administration. Months before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Worthy reported that Washington was winking at military training camps for mercenaries in Florida, and later urged Black Americans to oppose the overthrow of Fidel Castro.
Months after his fourth trip to Cuba, political pressure mounted on Kennedy to project strength against Castro. A Justice Department memo noted Worthy’s praise of Cuba as a model against dictatorship and his criticism of the U.S. embargo. Worthy was indicted four days later for reentering the United States without a passport under the Immigration and Nationality Act—a charge previously leveled against dozens of white Americans without consequence.
Who Rallied to Support Worthy’s Defense?
Following his surrender to a U.S. marshal in Manhattan, Worthy faced a bench trial in Miami federal court in August 1962. While his sister Myrtle launched a hunger strike, a prominent coalition of Black civil rights leaders, progressive politicians, and labor activists mobilized around his case. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter to the presiding judge warning of the tragic irony of convicting a man merely for coming home.
What Precedent Did the Appeals Court Set in 1964?
In February 1964, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Worthy’s conviction, declaring unconstitutional the specific section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that barred Americans from entering the country without a passport. Worthy promptly returned to overseas reporting, later scrutinizing CIA surveillance of domestic citizens and the recruitment of overseas correspondents.
Nearly six decades later, the legal frameworks surrounding travel restrictions, ideological exclusions, and government scrutiny of foreign influences continue to resonate. The Immigration and Nationality Act remains a legislative tool for screening out individuals deemed undesirable, while contemporary political rhetoric frequently mirrors the accusations leveled against independent journalists and critics of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War.
