It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America - Softcover

Schultz, Bud; Navasky, Victor; Schultz, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520071972 ISBN 13: 9780520071971

Verlag: University of California Press, 1990

Inhaltsangabe

In this moving book, two skilled oral historians collect the words of Americans who have been victims of political repression in their own country. Disturbing and provocative, It Did Happen Here is must-reading for everyone who cares about protecting the rights and liberties upon which this country has been built.

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Bud and Ruth Schultz, skilled oral historians, collect the words of Americans who have been victims of political repression in their own country. It Did Happen here is must reading for everyone who cares about protecting the rights and liberties upon which this country has been built.

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It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America

By Bud And Mrs. Ruth Schultz and Ruth Schultz

University of California Press

Copyright © 1990 Bud And Mrs. Ruth Schultz and Ruth Schultz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520071972
Introduction to Part I

Across this century the commandments of repression have been invoked against those who dared to think thoughts of dissent and then had the audacity to act on their thoughts. Legislatures, courts, investigating committees, loyalty programs, the FBI—all tried to silence rebellion, whether it took the form of speeches protesting child labor, songs condemning war, or sermons preaching coexistence. Education in the service of freedom and petitions for the right of Blacks to vote became targets for suppression. Nevertheless, rooted in the tradition of protest, Scott Nearing, Pete Seeger, Myles Horton, William Howard Melish, and Chuck McDew—each in his own way, time, and place—rose to stir the American conscience.

In each of their cases, cross-fertilization between government agencies and the press, employers, and vigilantes rendered the dissidents unemployable or incited racist or Cold War passions as a complement to and context for the denial of constitutional rights. But there was more to such experiences than the hardship and turmoil created. In reaction to the repression, these five and others resisted. As a result, the response to the firing of Scott Nearing established academic freedom as an honored principle; the blacklisting of Pete Seeger became symbolic of intolerable capitulation to injustice; the many-sided and sometimes life-threatening assaults on Myles Horton's school only strengthened his re-

solve to promote grassroots participation in the union and civil rights movements; the denial of the pulpit to Reverend Melish on transparent political grounds made similar denials less likely; and the violence of vigilantes against young Blacks like Chuck McDew betrayed the moral bankruptcy of brutal southern racism to the nation at large.

We begin with the recollections of these five because they epitomize the kinds of persons who have been under attack. Their stories, stretching from 1915 to 1969, show what repression was intended to repress, as well as the extraordinary stamina of its targets. All were prepared to accomplish their purposes against the force of established power. Scott Nearing, for example, viewed his trial under the Espionage Act as an opportunity to popularize the causes of peace and socialism. Chuck McDew said of his work in the South, "I felt that we were doing what we were doing because our fathers had not done it. The fact that the system had been in place for three hundred years was not all that impressive to us. We had the feeling that now is the time to change it and we will."

Continues...

Excerpted from It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in Americaby Bud And Mrs. Ruth Schultz and Ruth Schultz Copyright © 1990 by Bud And Mrs. Ruth Schultz and Ruth Schultz. Excerpted by permission.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1990
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520071972
• ISBN 13: 9780520071971
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar