Photo By Alex Maness

The thought police are at it again. See: The Poster Police — A Durham student activist gets a visit from the Secret Service, by Jon Elliston for the Independent Online. (Thanks John)

Then: Knock, knock … unexpected guests at
Brown’s Duke Manor apartment. Opening
the
door, she found a casually dressed man,
and a
man and woman in what appeared to be business attire. Her
first
thought, she says, was, “Are these people going to sell
me
something?”

But then the man in the suit introduced himself and the
woman as
agents from the Raleigh office of the U.S. Secret
Service. The other
man was an investigator from the Durham Police
Department.

“Ma’am, we’ve gotten a report that you have anti-American
material,”
the male agent said, according to Brown. Could they come
in to have
a look around?

“Do you have a warrant?” Brown asked. They did not.

“Then
you’re
not coming in my apartment,” she said. And indeed, they
stayed
outside her doorway. But they stayed a while–40 minutes,
Brown
estimates–and gave her a taste of how dissenters can
come under
scrutiny in wartime.

And all because of a poster on her wall.