ocean, during her long exile in Europe.106
In the decade before World War I, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical
trade union, was organizing al workers—skil ed and unskil ed, men and women, native born
and foreign—into "One Big Union." IWW organizers, going to speak in cities in the far west to miners and lumberjacks and mil workers, were arrested again and again. They refused to
stop. They engaged in what they cal ed "Free Speech Fights": when one of them was put in
jail, hundreds of others would come into that town and speak and be arrested until the jails
could not hold them and they were released. But they refused to be silent.
This is always the price of liberty—taking the risk of going to jail, of being beaten and
perhaps being kil ed.
There is another risk for people speaking and organizing in the workplace: loss of one's job.
Historical y, the only way workers, subject to the power of a foreman or an employer, could
have freedom of expression, was to join with other workers and form a union so that they
could col ectively defend themselves against the power of the employer.
Freedom of the press depends on the energy and persistence of people in developing their
own newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets, to say things that wil not appear in the
mainstream press. Throughout American history, these little publications, pressed for
money, have managed to form a kind of underground press.
The Populist Movement of the late nineteenth century spread literature throughout the farm
country, north and south. The Socialist press of the early twentieth century was read by 2
mil ion people. Black people, taking a cue from the first abolitionist newspaper printed by a
black man in 1829, developed their own newspapers, because they knew they could not
depend on the orthodox press to tel the truth about the race situation in the United States.
181
When in the 1950s journalist I. F. Stone decided he could not count on having an outlet in the regular press, he published his own little four-page newspaper. /. F. Stone's Weekly
contained information unavailable elsewhere, which Stone, in Washington, D.C., put
together by reading obscure government documents and the Congressional Record; it soon
became a famous source of reliable facts. The first rule of journalism, Stone declared, is
that "governments lie," and so alternate sources of information are desperately needed if we are to have a democracy.
The movements of the sixties—the black movement, the antiwar movement, the women's
movement, and the prisoners' rights movement—produced an enormous underground
press. There were 500 underground high-school newspapers alone.
Soldiers against the Vietnam War put out their newspapers on military bases around the
country. By 1970 there were fifty of them: About Face in Los Angeles; Fed Up in Tacoma, Washington; Short Times at Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Last Harass at Fort Gordon, Georgia; Helping Hand at Mountain Home Air Base, Idaho.
Underground newspapers sprang up during the war in cities al over the country. In early
1969 J. Edgar Hoover instructed his field offices to target these publications. FBI agents
raided and ransacked the offices of newspapers in San Diego, Philadelphia, Phoenix,
Jackson, and other places. Advertisers were persuaded to withdraw. One landlord after
another agreed to evict newspapers from their offices. The Underground Press Syndicate
and Liberation News Service became targets of FBI infiltrators.107
By 1972 these attacks badly crippled the underground press. But slowly it made its way
back and today around the country community newspapers continue to print material not
found in the regular media.
In the past few years, a new form of free speech has become important: "whistle-blowing."
A whistle-blower is a person who risks his or her job with the government or with a large
corporation to expose truths that have been kept under wraps.
For instance, Pentagon employee A. Ernest Fitzgerald embarrassed his employer in 1969 by
tel ing Congress that a transport plane ordered by the air force would cost $2 bil ion more
than it expected to pay. Fitzgerald was dismissed from the Pentagon, then reinstated but
given lesser assignments.
Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, of the Bureau of Foods of the Food and Drug Administration, granted
an interview with a television reporter. She was told never to speak to the press again. She
was warned (in her words), "not to answer my phone but to get someone else to answer it
and say I wasn't there."
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald and Verrett continued to speak their minds.108 So did others. A
safety engineer with the Ford Motor Corporation exposed the fact that Ford, to save money,
had chosen a gas tank that was prone to rupture under stress. Peter Faulkner, an engineer,
exposed faults in a nuclear device made by General Electric. He was cal ed in to discover
why he had such "deep-seated hostility." Then he was fired. But he published a book about his experience.109
It takes courage to divulge information embarrassing to the government, especial y when
there are laws that can be used to imprison you for doing that. Daniel El sberg faced 130
years under the Espionage Act for photocopying the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers
and sending them to the newspapers, to expose the truth about the war in Vietnam. But he
went ahead.
182
It is impossible to judge the impact of those papers on the public, but it is reasonable to assume that the several mil ion people who read the Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe learned things about the war they had not known before. This, along with al
the other disclosures about the war going on at the time, helped turn public opinion against
the war. But El sberg, and codefendant Tony Russo, had to risk prison to make the First
Amendment come alive.
During the Vietnam War, with the government lying and with the press slow in getting past
official propaganda, a whole network of techniques was developed to spread information
about the war. There were teach-ins on col ege campuses, alternative newspapers, ral ies,
picket lines, demonstrations, petitions, ads in newspapers, and graffiti on wal s.
In Southeast Asia an alternative news organization was created— Dispatch News Service—
which sent out news items revealing what the government was keeping secret, like the
story of the My Lai massacre.
The thousands of acts of civil disobedience during the war were acts of communication,
smal works of art, appealing to the deepest feelings of people. Art plays a critical role in
any social movement, because it intensifies the movement's messages. It tries to make up
for the lack of money and resources by passion and wit. It communicates through music,
drama, speech, demonstrative action, drawings, posters, songs, surprise, sacrifice, and risk.
During the Vietnam War, a very successful commercial artist (Seymour Chwast) turned his
talents to the antiwar movement, and produced a poster with a simple design and eight
large words printed on it: WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS. INVEST YOUR SON.
It was chil ing and powerful. It was just part of the work of hundreds of thousands of people
al over the country, speaking to mil ions of people in many different ways, bringing life to
the First Amendment and an end to a war.
1 Much of my data o
n the Alien and Sedition Acts and the colorful accusations surrounding
them come from John C. Mil er, Crisis in Freedom (Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1952).
2 See Leonard Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History (Harper & Row, 1963).
3 James Morton Smith, "Political Suppression of Seditious Criticism: A Connecticut Case
Study," The Historian.
4 Mil er, Crisis in Freedom, 74.
5 Ibid., 104.
6 For an analysis of the early interpretations of the First Amendment, see Levy, Freedom of
Speech and Press.
7 Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press, 243-244.
8 Wil iam Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 4 (Beacon Press, 1962),
161.
9 New York Times v. U.S. 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
183
10 We should note that when Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, although the
Sedition Act had expired, prosecutions of critics of government for seditious libel continued.
Jefferson had written to Madison back in 1788 that he accepted the common law
interpretation of freedom of speech as meaning no prior restraint, and that people should be
held accountable for "false facts." For Jefferson's attitude to civil liberties, read Leonard Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties (Quadrangle, 1973), although Levy offended many lovers
of Jefferson by his critique.
11 Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The C.I.A. and the Cult of Intel igence (Knopf, 974).
12 Snepp pointed out that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former CIA head
Wil iam Colby, and other former CIA men of high rank were not prosecuted for failing to let
the CIA see their manuscripts in advance. Frank Snepp, Decent Interval (Vintage, 1978).
13 H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (University of
Washington Press, 1957), 17.
14 Schenck v. U.S., 249 U.S. 47 (1919). In a later case, Abrams v. U.S. (1919), Holmes and Justice Louis Brandeis dissented from the majority decision to uphold Abrams's conviction.
Holmes wrote in his opinion: "I think we should be eternal y vigilant against attempts to
check the expression of opinions that we loathe." Why Schenk's leaflets were a "clear and present danger," and Abrams's leaflets were not, remains a mystery.
15 See the biography of Debs by Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross (Rutgers University Press,
1949), 358.
16 Debs v. U.S., 249 U.S. 211 (1919).
17 Peterson & Fite, 34.
18 For an account of this case, see H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War
1917-1918 (University of Washington Press, 1957), 92-93.
19 The case was Dunne v. U.S., 138 and 137 (8th Circuit, 1943). See an account of the trial by a leader of the Socialist Workers party, James P. Cannon, Socialism on Trial (Pathfinder Press, 1970).
20 Ibid.
21 Dennis v. U.S., 341 U.S. 494 (1951). In later decisions, the Court seemed less ready to convict radicals for merely teaching and advocating doctrines of violent revolution. And ten
years later, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) the Court ruled that a state can
prosecute only for action that advocates immediate unlawful acts and when the advocacy is
likely to have an immediate effect. But, as Staughton Lynd pointed out in his article
"Brandenburg v. Ohio: A Speech Test for Al Seasons?" there was no assurance, knowing the erratic behavior of the Supreme Court, especial y in times of international tension, that
it would hold to this test of "imminent action." University of Chicago Law Review (Fal 1975).
22 See The Docket (May 1986), published by the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
23 New York Times, Sept. 20, 1089.
24 Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733.
25 John V. H. Dippel, "Getting Nowhere Through Channels," New Republic, May 22, 1971.
26 Brown v. Glines, 444 U.S. 348 (1980).
184
27 Huntington's essay, "The Democratic Distemper" appears in a volume by Nathan GIazer
and Irving Kristol, The American Commonwealth, 1976 (Basic Books, 1976).
28 Barren v. Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833).
29 Daws v. Massachusetts 167 U.S. 43 (1895). In Massachusetts it was Oliver Wendel
Holmes, sitting on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, who wrote the decision
against the man Davis, who wanted to speak on the Boston Common without having to get
permission from the mayor.
30 Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925).
31 Terminiel o v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).
32 Fewer v. New York, 310 U.S. 315 (1951).
33 Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U.S. 229 (1963).
34 Adderley v. Florida 385 U.S. 39 (1966).
35 Marsh v. Alabama 326 U.S. 501 (1946).
36 Amalgamated Food Employees Local 500 v. Logon Val ey Plaza, Inc. 391 U.S. 308 (1968).
37 Lloyd Corporation v. Tanner 407 U.S. 551 (1972).
38 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
39 Procunier v. Martinez 416 U.S. 396 (1974).
40 See David Ewing, Freedom inside the Organization (Dutton, 1977).
41 The Nation, June 15, 1974.
42 New York Times, Nov. 9, 1986.
43 Boston Globe, Oct. 6, 1986.
44 Howard Zinn, "Four Women of Courage," Boston Globe, Apr. 24, 1975.
45 Jonathan Kozol, Death at an Early Age (Bantam, 1970). The text of the Langston Hughes
poem is on page 235.
46 Helen Epstein, who wrote an article on Silber that appeared April 23, 1989, in the New
York Times Magazine, reported that faculty members were afraid to give their names in
speaking to her about Silber.
47 Boston Globe, Dec. 28, 1977.
48 This quotation and other material in this section is drawn from the Final Report of the
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intel igence Activities,
Book 3 (1976). (Hereafter cited as Church Committee report.) This was the Senate
committee sometimes known as the Church Committee, headed by Senator Frank Church.
Pages 1-78 deal with COINTELPRO.
49 Madison to Jefferson, May 13, 1798.
50 Church Committee report. Book 3, 289.
51 Church Committee report. Book 2.
52 David Caute, The Great Fear (Simon & Schuster, 1978), 281.
53 Associated Press dispatch Sept. 30, 1987.
185
54 The Emergency Detention Act was part of the 1950 Internal Security Act. Detention plans
actual y began before World War II. In 1938 J. Edgar Hoover had proposed keeping an
index of subversives, and Franklin D. Roosevelt approved this. They were first known as
Custodial Detention Cards, then as a Security Index, and after the Emergency Detention Act
was repealed in 1971 it was cal ed an Administrative Index. See Robert Goldstein, Political
Repression in Modem America (Schenkman, 1978).
55 Church Committee report, Book 2, 140.
56 Organizing Notes (a newsletter on the activities of the FBI and other national security
organizations), Sept. 10, 1979.
57 New York Times, Oct. 19, 1980.
58 Church Committee report, 223.
59 Boston Globe, Jan. 27, 1988.
60 New York Times, Dec. 16, 1980.
61 Howard Zinn, Albany: A Study in Federal Responsibility (Southern Regional Council, 1062) 62 The Church Committee report deals with the campaign against Martin Luther King on pp.
81-184.
63 See David Garrow, The F.B.I, and Martin Luther King (Penguin, 1981).
64 Ibid.
65 Quoted by Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and D
eath of the New York Herald-Tribune
(Knopf, 1986).
66 Much of this material on the monopolizing trend in the media comes from Ben Bagdikian,
The Media Monopoly (Beacon, 1988).
67 Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly. Also, "The Lords of the Global Vil age," The Nation, June 12, 1989.
68 First National Bank v. Bel otti 435 U.S. 765 (1978).
69 Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC 395 U.S. 367 (1969).
70 Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee (1973). Two
years later, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court struck down a Florida statute that
gave an attacked political candidate a right to reply in the press. Again, it was the laissez-
faire doctrine, keeping the power of government away from the newspaper business, but
al owing the power of a rich newspaper to decide whose views would be published. Miami
Herald v. Tomil o (1974).
71 A longtime student of free speech in this country. Franklin S. Haiman of Northwestern
University, pointing to the control of the mass media, suggested that
the freedom of speech we practice is a counterfeit enterprise … the debates in which we
engage are over means rather than ends, form rather than sustance, appearances rather
than essences, and that they are limited in scope, depth, and meaning by cultural
brainwashing… . We in the United States have our own ways of insuring that the variety of
opinions expressed and communicated to large numbers of people is kept within boundaries
that are tolerable to those who hold the reins of power.
Franklin Haiman, "How Much of Our Speech is Free?" Civil Liberties Review (Winter 1975).
186
72 Strategic Review (Summer 1983). This view by a private person was similar to that
expressed by Wil iam Westmoreland, who was commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam during
the war there and who on March 20,1982 (according to a UPI dispatch on that date) told a
col ege audience in Colorado that the armed forces could not win without public support and
therefore should control the news media in wartime.
73 Harrison Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor: The New York Times and Its Times (Times
Books, 1080), based on his many years as a correspondent for the Times, has a good deal