The Price of Dissent - Testimonies to Political Repression in America

1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-0-520-22402-5
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 479 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 757 g

Bud and Ruth Schultz's vivid oral history presents the extraordinary testimony of people who experienced government repression and persecution firsthand. Drawn from three of the most significant social movements of our time--the labor, Black freedom, and antiwar movements--these engrossing interviews bring to life the experiences of Americans who acted upon their beliefs despite the price they paid for their dissent. In doing so, they--and the movements they were part of--helped shape the political and social landscape of the United States from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century.

The majority of the voices in this book belong to everyday people--workers, priests, teachers, students--but more well-known figures such as Congressman John Lewis, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Abbie Hoffman, and Daniel Ellsberg are also included. There are firsthand accounts by leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, active early in the century; Southern Tenant Farmers Union of the 1930s; Women's Strike for Peace, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Berkeley's Free Speech Movement of the 1950s and 1960s; and the Hormel meatpackers' Local P-9 in the 1980s. Lively introductions by the authors contextualize these personal statements.

Those who tell their stories in The Price of Dissent, and others like them, faced surveillance and disruption from police agencies, such as the FBI; brutalization by local police; local ordinances and court injunctions limiting protest; inquisitions into beliefs and associations by congressional committees; prosecution under laws that curbed dissent; denaturalization and deportation; and purges under government loyalty programs. Agree with them or not, by dissenting when it was unpopular or dangerous to do so, they insisted on exercising the precious American right of free expression and preserved it for a new century's dissenters.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schultz, Bud

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Interessengruppen, Lobbyismus und Protestbewegungen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Politische Unterdrückung & Verfolgung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Targets of Political Repression in Twentieth-Century America

1. Part One: Subverting the Organization of Labor
Prologue: Attacks on Labor Before the Triumph of Industrial Unions
The Unrelenting Campaign Against the Industrial Workers of the World

Fred Thompson
African American Sharecroppers: Repression as a Way of Life

George Stith
Ideological Assaults: Labor at Mid-Century
Prewar Red Scare: Holding Militant Teamsters at Bay

Harry DeBoer and Jake Cooper
Postwar Tests of Loyalty: Attempts to Silence an Auto Workers' Spokesman

Stanley Nowak
Imposing Cold War Orthodoxy: A Teachers Union Under Attack

Mildred Grossman
The Purge of the Left: Expelling International Unions from the CIO

Ernest DeMaio
A Pittsburgh Story: Two Rank-and-File Labor Leaders and a Labor Priest

Margaret (Peg) Stasik
Monsignor Charles Owen Rice
Joseph (Sonny) Robinson
Epilogue: Cracking Down on New Voices of Union Militancy
The Local P-9 Meatpackers Strike, Austin, Minnesota

Local P-9 Strikers and Supporters: Cecil Cain, Pete Winkels, Jim Guyette, Denny Mealy, Ray Rogers, Carol Kough, and Emily Bass

2. Part Two: Suppressing the Black Freedom Struggle

Prologue: Cold War Constraints on African Americans' Demands for Freedom
Eradicating a Powerful, Defiant Voice from the American Consciousness

Paul Robeson Jr.
The Black Freedom Movement Under Siege
Facing Up to Southern Terror

Walter Bergman
John Lewis
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
In the Midst of the Storm

Anne Braden
The Crucible of Lowndes County, Alabama, and Emergent Black Power

Johnny Jackson
Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael)
The Assault on the Black Panther Party: The Murder of Fred Hampton

Ron Satchel
Akua Njeri (Deborah Johnson)
Flint Taylor
Epilogue: Voter Rights Revisited
Undercutting African American Elected Officials

Mervyn Dymally

3. Part Three: Silencing Opponents of War

Prologue: Tainting the Antinuclear Movement
HUAC and the Irrepressible Women Strike for Peace

Dagmar Wilson
The Vietnam Era: The War Against the Peacemakers
Berkeley's Free Speech Movement: A Prelude
Jackie Goldberg
Harassing Antiwar Demonstrators

Norma Becker
HUAC, the Police, the FBI, the Courts: Containing an Extraordinary Generation

Abbie Hoffman
Retribution for Acts of Conscience

Daniel Ellsberg
Samuel Popkin
The Shootings at Kent State

Roseann (Chic) Canfora and Alan Canfora
Epilogue: The Heresy of a Modern-Day Social Gospel
The FBI and the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

Jack Ryan and Peggy Ryan
Linda Hajek and Jose Rinaldi-Jovet

4. Part Four: Preserving the Right to Dissent

A Notable Reversal: Holding the Chicago Red Squad Accountable

Chicago Red Squad Targets: Richard (Rick) Gutman, John Hill, Jack Spiegel, Janet Nolan, and Father Donald Headley

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Bud Schultz is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Trinity College, and Ruth Schultz is an independent scholar. They are the authors of It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America (California, 1989).