A Kinder, Simpler Time: Your Rights

June 18, 1953: Irwin Edelman, Pershing Square orator, is enmeshed in the Rosenberg case. He was convicted in 1949 as a "vagrant dissolute person" in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1953, he sought refuge in the Biltmore coffee shop after a mob of several hundred people chased him out of Pershing Square. He provoked the crowd by saying: "If you are happy about the execution of the Rosenbergs, you are rotten to the core."