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The Mississippi Black Code (1865)

The Mississippi Black Code is an example of the manner by which the southern states strove to maintain

the old order while limiting the newly acquired rights of African Americans. Many people in the North as

well as the Republicans in Congress were alarmed by the Black Codes. Reaction to the codes helped to

radicalize Congress and catalyzed its attempt to seize control of Reconstruction from the President AndrewJohnson, ultimately leading to the presidents impeachment.

1. CIVIL RIGHTS OF FREEDMEN IN MISSISSIPPI

Sec.1. Be it enacted,... That all freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes may sue and be sued, implead and

be impleaded, in all the courts of law and equity of this State, and may acquire personal property, and

choses in action, by descent or purchase, and may dispose of the same in the same manner and to the

same extent that white persons may: Provided, That the provisions of this section shall not be so construed

as to allow any freedman, free negro, or mulatto to rent or lease any lands or tenements except in

incorporated cities or towns, in which places the corporate authorities shall control the same....

Sec. 3....All freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes who do now and have herebefore lived and cohabited

together as husband and wife shall be taken and held in law as legally married, and the issue shall be

taken and held as legitimate for all purposes; that it shall not be lawful for any freedman, free negro, ormulatto to intermarry with any white person; nor for any white person to intermarry with any freedman,

free negro, or mulatto; and any person who shall so intermarry, shall be deemed guilty of felony, and on

conviction thereof shall be confined in the State penitentiary for life; and those shall be deemed freedmen,

free negroes, and mulattoes who are of pure negro blood, and those descended from a negro to the third

generation, inclusive, though one ancestor in each generation may have been a white person.

Sec. 4....In addition to cases in which freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes are now by law competent

witnesses, freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes shall be competent in civil cases, when a party or parties

to the suit, either plaintiff or plaintiffs, defendant or defendants, and a white person or white persons, is or

are the opposing party or parties, plaintiff or plaintiffs, defendant or defendants. They shall also be

competent witnesses in all criminal prosecutions where the crime charged is alleged to have been

committed by a white person upon or against the person or property of a freedman, free negro, or mulatto:

Provided, that in all cases said witnesses shall be examined in open court, on the stand; except, however,

they may be examined before the grand jury, and shall in all cases be subject to the rules and tests of the

common law as to competency and credibility....

Sec. 6....All contracts for labor made with freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes for a longer period than

one month shall be in writing, and in duplicate, attested and read to said freedman, free negro, or mulatto

by a beat, city or county officer, or two disinterested white persons of the county in which the labor is to be

performed, of which each party shall have one; and said contracts shall be taken and held as entire

contracts, and if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of

service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting.

Sec. 7....Every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer

any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the

expiration of his or her term of service without good cause; and said officer and person shall be entitled to

receive for arresting and carrying back every deserting employe aforesaid the sum of five dollars, and ten

cents per mile from the place of arrest to the place of delivery; and the same shall be paid by the

employer, and held as a set-off for so much against the wages of said deserting employe: Provided, that

said arrested party, after being so returned, may appeal to the justice of the peace or member of the boardof police of the county, who, on notice to the alleged employer, shall try summarily whether said appellant

is legally employed by the alleged employer, and has good cause to quit said employer; either party shall

have the right of appeal to the county court, pending which the alleged deserter shall be remanded to the

alleged employer or otherwise disposed of, as shall be right and just; and the decision of the county court

shall be final....

Sec. 9....If any person shall persuade or attempt to persuade, entice, or cause any freedman, free negro,

or mulatto to desert from the legal employment of any person before the expiration of his or her term of

service, or shall knowingly employ any such deserting freedman, free negro, or mulatto, or shall knowingly

give or sell to any such deserting freedman, free negro, or mulatto, any food, raiment, or other thing, he or

she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be fined not less than twenty-five dollars

and not more than two hundred dollars and the costs; and if said fine and costs shall not be immediately

The Mississippi Black Code (1865) http://wps.ablongman.com/long_longman_lahdemo_1/0,825

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paid, the court shall sentence said convict to not exceeding two months imprisonment in the county jail,

and he or she shall moreover be liable to the party injured in damages: Provided, if any person shall, or

shall attempt to, persuade, entice, or cause any freedman, free negro, or mulatto to desert from any legal

employment of any person, with the view to employ said freedman, free negro, or mulatto without the

limits of this State, such person, on conviction, shall be fined not less than fifty dollars, and not more than

five hundred dollars and costs; and if said fine and costs shall not be immediately paid, the court shall

sentence said convict to not exceeding six months imprisonment in the county jail....

2. MISSISSIPPI APPRENTICE LAW

Sec. 1....It shall be the duty of all sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other civil officers of the severalcounties in this State, to report to the probate courts of their respective counties semi-annually, at the

January and July terms of said courts, all freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes, under the age of

eighteen, in their respective counties, beats or districts, who are orphans, or whose parent or parents have

not the means or who refuse to provide for and support said minors; and thereupon it shall be the duty of

said probate court to order the clerk of said court to apprentice said minors to some competent and

suitable person, on such terms as the court may direct, having a particular care to the interest of said

minor: Provided, that the former owner of said minors shall have the preference when, in the opinion of the

court, he or she shall be a suitable person for that purpose.

Sec. 2....The said court shall be fully satisfied that the person or persons to whom said minor shall be

apprenticed shall be a suitable person to have the charge and care of said minor, and fully to protect the

interest of said minor. The said court shall require the said master or mistress to execute bond and

security, payable to the State of Mississippi, conditioned that he or she shall furnish said minor with

sufficient food and clothing; to treat said minor humanely; furnish medical attention in case of sickness;

teach, or cause to be taught, him or her to read and write, if under fifteen years old, and will conform to

any law that may be hereafter passed for the regulation of the duties and relation of master and

apprentice....

Sec. 3....In the management and control of said apprentice, said master or mistress shall have the power

to inflict such moderate corporal chastisement as a father or guardian is allowed to inflict on his or her child

or ward at common law: Provided, that in no case shall cruel or inhuman punishment be inflicted.

Sec. 4....If any apprentice shall leave the employment of his or her master or mistress, without his or her

consent, said master or mistress may pursue and recapture said apprentice, and bring him or her before

any justice of the peace of the county, whose duty it shall be to remand said apprentice to the service of

his or her master or mistress; and in the event of a refusal on the part of said apprentice so to return, then

said justice shall commit said apprentice to the jail of said county, on failure to give bond, to the next term

of the county court; and it shall be the duty of said court at the first term thereafter to investigate said

case, and if the court shall be of opinion that said apprentice left the employment of his or her master or

mistress without good cause, to order him or her to be punished, as provided for the punishment of hiredfreedmen, as may be from time to time provided for by law for desertion, until he or she shall agree to

return to the service of his or her master or mistress: ...if the court shall believe that said apprentice had

good cause to quit his said master or mistress, the court shall discharge said apprentice from said

indenture, and also enter a judgment against the master or mistress for not more than one hundred

dollars, for the use and benefit of said apprentice....

3. MISSISSIPPI VAGRANT LAW

Sec. 1. Be it enacted, etc.,...That all rogues and vagabonds, idle and dissipated persons, beggars, jugglers,

or persons practicing unlawful games or plays, runaways, common drunkards, common night-walkers,

pilferers, lewd, wanton, or lascivious persons, in speech or behavior, common railers and brawlers, persons

who neglect their calling or employment, misspend what they earn, or do not provide for the support of

themselves or their families, or dependents, and all other idle and disorderly persons, including all who

neglect all lawful business, habitually misspend their time by frequenting houses of ill-fame, gaming-

houses, or tippling shops, shall be deemed and considered vagrants, under the provisions of this act, andupon conviction thereof shall be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars, with all accruing costs, and be

imprisoned at the discretion of the court, not exceeding ten days.

Sec. 2....All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found on

the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found

unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so

assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen,

free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of equality, or living in adultery or fornication with a freed woman,

free negro or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in a sum not

exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free negro or mulatto, fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred

dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and the white

man not exceeding six months....


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Sec. 7....If any freedman, free negro, or mulatto shall fail or refuse to pay any tax levied according to the

provisions of the sixth section of this act, it shall be prima facie evidence of vagrancy, and it shall be the

duty of the sheriff to arrest such freedman, free negro, or mulatto or such person refusing or neglecting to

pay such tax, and proceed at once to hire for the shortest time such delinquent tax-payer to any one who

will pay the said tax, with accruing costs, giving preference to the employer, if there be one....

4. PENAL LAWS OF MISSISSIPPI

Sec. 1. Be it enacted,...That no freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United

States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or

carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife, and on conviction thereof in the countycourt shall be punished by fine, not exceeding ten dollars, and pay the costs of such proceedings, and all

such arms or ammunition shall be forfeited to the informer; and it shall be the duty of every civil and

military officer to arrest any freedman, free negro, or mulatto found with any such arms or ammunition,

and cause him or her to be committed to trial in default of bail.

2....Any freedman, free negro, or mulatto committing riots, routs, affrays, trespasses, malicious mischief,

cruel treatment to animals, seditious speeches, insulting gestures, language, or acts, or assaults on any

person, disturbance of the peace, exercising the function of a minister of the Gospel without a license from

some regularly organized church, vending spirituous or intoxicating liquors, or committing any other

misdemeanor, the punishment of which is not specifically provided for by law, shall, upon conviction

thereof in the county court, be fined not less than ten dollars, and not more than one hundred dollars, and

may be imprisoned at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty days.

Sec. 3....If any white person shall sell, lend, or give to any freedman, free negro, or mulatto any fire-arms,

dirk or bowie knife, or ammunition, or any spirituous or intoxicating liquors, such person or persons sooffending, upon conviction thereof in the county court of his or her county, shall be fined not exceeding

fifty dollars, and may be imprisoned, at the discretion of the court, not exceeding thirty days....

Sec. 5....If any freedman, free negro, or mulatto, convicted of any of the misdemeanors provided against

in this act, shall fail or refuse for the space of five days, after conviction, to pay the fine and costs imposed,

such person shall be hired out by the sheriff or other officer, at public outcry, to any white person who will

pay said fine and all costs, and take said convict for the shortest time.

Document Analysis

How did the Black Codes define the relationship between white and black societies?1.

What privileges did freedmen gain in the Black Codes? What rights did they lose?2.

How would life under the Black Codes be similar to life under slavery? How would it be different?3.

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George E. McNeill on the Labor Movement in the Gilded Age (1887)

Source: George E. McNeill, ed, The Labor Movement: The Problem of Today (Boston, 1887),

pp. 454-62.

[Foners introduction]: Not all Americans accepted the Social Darwinist definition ofliberty as frank acceptance of social inequality in an unregulated market. During the Gilded Age,

the labor movement offered a very different understanding of freedom. During the 1880s, theKnights of Labor became the first group to try to organize unskilled workers as well as skilled,

women alongside men, and blacks as well as whites (although even the Knights excluded thedespised Asian immigrants on the West Coast). The organization reached a peak membership of

nearly 800,000 in 1886 and involved millions of workers in strikes, boycotts, political action, andeducational and social activities.

The Knights put forward an array of programs, from the eight hour day to publicemployment in hard times, currency reform, and the creation of a vaguely defined cooperative

commonwealth. All these ideas arose from the conviction that the social conditions of the 1880sneeded drastic change. Because of unrestrained economic growth and political corruption, the

Knights charged, ordinary Americans had lost control of their economic livelihoods and theirown government. Reaching back across the divide of the Civil War, George E. McNeill, a

shoemaker and factory worker who became one of the movements most eloquent writers,warned that a new irrepressible conflict had arisen, between the wage-system of labor and the

republican system of government. Extremes of wealth and poverty, he warned, threatenedthe very existence of democratic government. The remedy was for the government to guarantee

a basic set of economic rights for all Americans.

The problem of to-day, as of yesterday and to-morrow, is, how to establish equity between men.

The laborer who is forced to sell his days labor to-day, or starve tomorrow, is not in equitable

relations with the employer, who can wait to buy labor until starvation fixes the rates of wages

and hours of time. The labor movement is the natural effort of readjustment, - an ever-continued

attempt of organized laborers, so that they may withhold their labor until the diminished interest

or profit or capital of the employer shall compel him to agree to such terms as shall be for the

time immeasurably equitable. These are the forceful methods of all time, and may continue to

develop manhood and womanhood by peaceful revolution, as laborers advance their line, or may

cause a social earthquake, and become destructive by the organized repression of labors right.

Before the solution of the labor problem can be reached, the nature of the complaint must be

understood.

!


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The extremes of wealth and poverty are threatening the existence of the government. In

light of these facts, we declare that there is an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the

wage-system of labor and the republican system of government, - the wage-laborer attempting to

save the government, and the capitalist class ignorantly attempting to subvert it.

The strike of the trainmen on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was the serving of a notice

upon the people of this nation that wages could not be further reduced, - a protest against

robbery, a rebellion against starvation. The trainmen were under despotic control. To leave their

employ was to become tramps, outlaws; to submit was to starve in serfdom. They knew that the

power of the railroad oligarchy exceeded and superseded that of the national and State

governments. The railroad president is a railroad king, whose whim is law. He collects tithes by

reducing wages as remorselessly as the Shah of Persia or the Sultan of Turkey, and, like them, is

not amenable to any human power. He can discharge (banish) any employee without cause. He

can prevent laborers from following their usual vocations. He can withhold their lawful wages.

He can delay trial on a suit at law, and postpone judgment indefinitely. He can control legislative

bodies, dictate legislation, subsidize the press, and corrupt the moral sense of the community. He

can fix the price of freights, and thus command the food and fuel-supplies of the nation. In his

right hand he holds the government; in his left hand, the people. And this is called law and order,

- from which there is no appeal. It is war, - war against the divine rights of humanity; war against

the principles of our government. There is no mutuality of interests, no co-operative union of

labor and capital. It is the iron heel of a soulless monopoly, crushing the manhood out of

sovereign citizens.

!

The crisis that we are rapidly approaching is not local. No Mason and Dixons line, no

color-rests divide North, South, East and West; wherever laborers congregate, whether in the

factories of New England, or the sunless mines of Pennsylvania, one chord of sympathy unites

them all.

No demagogues cant of race or creed will hold them from their purpose to be free. In

that coming time, woman will teach her children the lesson of her hate and wrong. Already a

generation has arisen, schooled in the great moral agitation for public good.

Justice demands that those who earn shall receive; that no one has a right to add cost

without adding value.


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Recognizing that the steps toward the attaining of the end must be slow, we demand, first,

legislative interference between capital and labor; restraining capital in its usurpations, and

enlarging the boundaries of labors opportunity.

The Constitution of the United States demands that each of the sovereign States shall

have a republican form of government. A greater power than that of the State has arisen a

State within a State, a power that is quietly yet quickly sapping the foundations of the

majority-rule. The law of self-protection is greater than constitutions, and legislative bodies are

bound to interfere to protect the sovereign citizen against the insidious inroads of the usurping

power.

Monarchal governments rest upon their ability of the ruler to maintain order by physical

force. Republican institutions are sustained by the ability of the people to rule. The government

has the right, and is bound in self-defence to protect the ability of the people to rule. It has the

right to interfere against any organize or unorganized power that imperils or impairs this ability.

Upon no other argument can the free-school system be maintained, institutions of learning, of

science, and art be endowed by the State or exempt from taxation. It is the policy of the

government to protect, not only her domain from monarchal interference, as set forth in the

Monroe Doctrine, but to protect her citizens from the influence of cheap labor and over-work.

For cheap labor means a cheap people, and dear labor a dear people. The foundation of the

Republic is equality.

Questions

1. How does McNeill define freedom for working men and women?

2. Why does he consider the wage-system of labor incompatible with republican

government?


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New York: Charles Scribner's Sons

Originally Published in 1890


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Tragedy at Wounded Knee (1890)

In the aftermath of the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Lakota chief Red Cloud

summed up the reasons for Native American discontent. He stressed the

disappearance of the Native American lifestyle and the failure of the federal

government to keep its promises.

RED CLOUD'S SPEECH

I will tell you the reason for the trouble. When we first made treaties with the

Government, our old life and our old customs were about to end; the game on which we lived

was disappearing; the whites were closing around us, and nothing remained for us but to adopt

their ways,-the Government promised us all the means necessary to make our living out of the

land, and to instruct us how to do it, and with abundant food to support us until we could take

care of ourselves. We looked forward with hope to the time we could be as independent as the

whites, and have a voice in the Government.

The army officers could have helped better than anyone else but we were not left to them. An

Indian Department was made with a large number of agents and other officials drawing largesalaries-then came the beginning of trouble; these men took care of themselves but not of us. It

was very hard to deal with the government through them-they could make more for themselves

by keeping us back than by helping us forward.

We did not get the means for working our lands; the few things they gave us did little good. Our

rations began to be reduced; they said we were lazy. That is false. How does any man of sense

suppose that so great a number of people could get work at once unless they were at once

supplied with the means to work and instructors enough to teach them?

Our ponies were taken away from us under the promise that they would be replaced by oxen and

large horses; it was long before we saw any, and then we got very few. We tried with the means

we had, but on one pretext or another, we were shifted from one place to another, or were told


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that such a transfer was coming. Great efforts were made to break up our customs, but nothing

was done to introduce us to customs of the whites. Everything was done to break up the power of

the real chiefs. Those old men really wished their people to improve, but little men, so-called

chiefs, were made to act as disturbers and agitators. Spotted Tail wanted the ways of the whites,

but an assassin was found to remove him. This was charged to the Indians because an Indian did

it, but who set on the Indian? I was abused and slandered, to weaken my influence for good. This

was done by men paid by the government to teach us the ways of the whites. I have visited many

other tribes and found that the same things were done amongst them; all was done to discourage

us and nothing to encourage us. I saw men paid by the government to help us, all very busy

making money for themselves, but doing nothing for us. . . .

The men who counted (census) told all around that we were feasting and wasting food. Where

did he see it? How could we waste what we did not have? We felt we were mocked in our

misery; we had no newspaper and no one to speak for us. Our rations were again reduced. You

who eat three times a day and see your children well and happy around you cannot understand

what a starving Indian feels! We were faint with hunger and maddened by despair. We held our

dying children and felt their little bodies tremble as their soul went out and left only a dead

weight in our hands. They were not very heavy but we were faint and the dead weighed us down.

There was no hope on earth. God seemed to have forgotten. Some one had been talking of the

Son of God and said He had come. The people did not know; they did not care; they snatched at

hope; they screamed like crazy people to Him for mercy they caught at the promise they heard

He had made.

The white men were frightened and called for soldiers. We begged for life and the white men

thought we wanted theirs; we heard the soldiers were coming. We did not fear. We hoped we

could tell them our suffering and could get help. The white men told us the soldiers meant to kill

us; we did not believe it but some were frightened and ran away to the Bad Lands. The soldiers

came. They said: "don't be afraid-we come to make peace, not war." It was true; they brought us

food. But the hunger-crazed who had taken fright at the soldiers' coming and went to the Bad

Lands could not be induced to return to the horrors of reservation life. They were called Hostiles

and the Government sent the army to force them back to their reservation prison.


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FLYING HAWK'S RECOLLECTIONS OF WOUNDED KNEE (1936)

This was the last big trouble with the Indians and soldiers and was in the winter in 1890. When

the Indians would not come in from the Bad Lands, they got a big army together with plenty of

clothing and supplies and camp-and-wagon equipment for a big campaign; they had enough

soldiers to make a round-up of all the Indians they called hostiles. The Government army, after

many fights and loss of lives, succeeded in driving these starving Indians, with their families of

women and gaunt-faced children, into a trap, where they could be forced to surrender their arms.

This was on Wounded Knee creek, northeast of Pine Ridge, and here the Indians were

surrounded by the soldiers, who had Hotchkiss machine guns along with them. There were about

four thousand Indians in this big camp, and the soldiers had the machine guns pointed at them

from all around the village as the soldiers formed a ring about the tepees so that Indians could

not escape.

The Indians were hungry and weak and they suffered from lack of clothing and furs because the

whites had driven away all the game. When the soldiers had them all surrounded and they had

their tepees set up, the officers sent troopers to each of them to search for guns and take them

from the owners. If the Indians in the tepees did not at once hand over a gun, the soldier tore

open their parfleech trunks and bundles and bags of robes or clothes,-looking for pistols and

knives and ammunition. It was an ugly business, and brutal; they treated the Indians like they

would torment a wolf with one foot in a strong trap; they could do this because the Indians were

now in the white man's trap,-and they were helpless.

Then a shot was heard from among the Indian tepees. An Indian was blamed; the excitement

began; soldiers ran to their stations; officers gave orders to open fire with the machine guns into

the crowds of innocent men, women and children, and in a few minutes more than two hundred

and twenty of them lay in the snow dead and dying. A terrible blizzard raged for two days

covering the bodies with Nature's great white blanket; some lay in piles of four or five; others in

twos or threes or singly, where they fell until the storm subsided. When a trench had been dug of

sufficient length and depth to contain the frozen corpses, they were collected and piled, like


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cord-wood, in one vast icy tomb. While separating several stiffened forms which had fallen in a

heap, two of them proved to be women, and hugged closely to their breasts were infant babes

still alive after lying in the storm for two days in 20 below zero weather. I was there and saw the

trouble,-but after the shooting was over; it was all bad.


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Justice John Marshall Harlans dissent inPlessy v. Ferguson (1896)

In Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court held that the state of Louisiana did not

violate the Fourteenth Amendment by establishing and enforcing a policy of racial

segregation in its railway system.

In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, Ithink permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the

enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstanceswhich the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to

express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny thatany legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens which the civil

rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in question isinconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state

but with the personal liberty enjoyed by everyone within the United States....

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race but

prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meetthe difficulty. Everyone knows that the statues in question had its origin in the purpose, not so

much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude coloredpeople from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of

Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation fortravellers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodations for

whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while travelling in railroadpassenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. The

fundamental objection, therefore, to the statues is that it interferes with the personal freedom ofcitizens....If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a

public highway, it is their right to do so, and no government, proceeding alone on grounds ofrace, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each....

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in

achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for alltime, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional

liberty. But in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country nosuperior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution in color-

blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, allcitizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law

regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rightsas guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved....

The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is abadge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law

established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established forthe benefit of all, they will infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation


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regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyedby our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with the state of

the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of ourfellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for

passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done....

I do not deems it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was madein argument. Some, and the most important to them are wholly inapplicable, because rendered

prior to the adoption of the last amendments of the Constitution, when colored people had veryfew rights which the dominant race felt obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when

public opinion, in many localities was dominated by the institution of slavery, when it would nothave been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far as the rights of blacks were

concerned, race guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the supreme law,which established universal freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the Untied

States and residing here, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national andstate, and placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all

men before the law....

For the reasons state, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment ofthe majority.

Source: McKenna, George, ed. A Guide to the Constitution That Delicate Balance

(New York, 1984), pp. 384-386.


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Eugene V. Debs, Outlook for Socialism in the United StatesSource:International Socialist Review, September, 1900

Eugene V. Debs was the leader of the socialist movement in the United States in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He ran for president three times. Debs and other

socialists saw conditions in the United States and American foreign policy as proving thebankruptcy of capitalism and the ushering in of socialism.

The sun of the passing century is setting upon scenes of extraordinary activity in almost everypart of our capitalistic old planet. Wars and rumors of wars are of universal prevalence. In thePhilippines our soldiers are civilizing and Christianizing the natives in the latest and mostapproved styles of the art, and at prices ($13 per month) which command the blessing to theprayerful consideration of the lowly and oppressed everywhere.

In South Africa the British legions are overwhelming the Boers with volleys of benedictionsinspired by the same beautiful philanthropy in the name of the meek and lowly Nazarene; while

in China the heathen hordes, fanned into frenzy by the sordid spirit of modern commercialconquest, are presenting to the world a carnival of crime almost equaling the refinedexhibitions of the worlds civilized nations.

And through all the flame and furor of the fray can be heard the savage snarlings of the Christiandogs of war as they fiercely glare about them, and with jealous fury threaten to fly at oneanothers throats to settle the question of supremacy and the spoil and plunder of conquest.

The picture, lurid as a chamber of horrors, becomes complete in its gruesome ghastliness whenrobed ministers of Christ solemnly declare that it is all for the glory of God and the advancement

of Christian civilization.

This, then, is the closing scene of the century as the curtain slowly descends upon the blood-stained stagethe central figure, the pious Wilhelm, Germanys sceptered savage, issuing hisimperial spare none decree in the snag froid of an Apache chiefa fitting climax to therapacious regime of the capitalist system.

Cheerless indeed would be the contemplation of such sanguinary scenes were the light ofSocialism not breaking upon mankind. The skies of the East are even now aglow with the dawn;its coming is heralded by the dispelling of shadows, of darkness and gloom. From the firsttremulous scintillation that guilds the horizon to the sublime march to meridian splendor the lighincreases till in mighty flood it pours upon the world.

From out of the midnight of superstition, ignorance and slavery the disenthralling, emancipatingsun is rising. I am not gifted with prophetic vision, and yet I see the shadows vanishing. I beholdnear and far prostrate men lifting their bowed forms from the dust. I see thrones in the grasp ofdecay; despots relaxing their hold upon scepters, and shackles falling, not only from the limbs,but from the souls of men.


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It is therefore with pleasure that I respond to the invitation of the editor of the International

Socialist Review to present my views upon the Outlook for Socialism in the United States.

Socialists generally will agree that the past year has been marked with a propaganda of

unprecedented activity and that the sentiment of the American people in respect to Socialism has

undergone a most remarkable change. It should be difficult to imagine a more ignorant, bitter

and unreasoning prejudice than that of the American people against Socialism during the earlyyears of its introduction by the propagandists from the other side.

I never think of these despised and persecuted foreign invaders without a feeling of profound

obligation, akin to reverence, for their noble work in laying the foundations deep and strong,

under the most trying conditions, of the American movement. The ignorant mass, wholly

incapable of grasping their splendid teachings or appreciating their lofty motives, reviled against

them. The press inoculated the public sentiment with intolerance and malice which not

infrequently found expression through the policemans club when a few of the pioneers gathered

to engraft the class-conscious doctrine upon their inhospitable free-born American fellow

citizens.

Socialism was cunningly associated with anarchy and bloodshed and denounced as a foul

foreign importation to pollute the fair, free soil of America, and every outrage to which the early

agitators were subjected won the plaudits of the people. But they persevered in their task; they

could not be silenced or suppressed. Slowly they increased in number and gradually the

movement began to take root and spread over the country. The industrial conditions consequent

upon the development of capitalist production were now making themselves felt and Socialism

became a fixed and increasing factor in the economic and political affairs of the nation.

The same difficulties which other countries had experienced in the process of party organization

have attended the development of the movement here, but these differences, which relate mainly

to tactics and methods of propaganda, are bound to disappear as the friction of the jarringfactions smoothens out the rough edges and adjusts them to a concrete bodya powerful section

in the great international army of militant Socialism.

In the general elections of 1898 upwards of 91,000 votes were cast for the Socialist candidate of

the United States, an increase in this off year of almost two hundred per cent over the general

elections of two years previous, the presidential year of 1896. Since the congressional elections

of 1898, and more particularly since the municipal and state elections following, which resulted

in such signal victories in Massachusetts, two members of the legislature and a mayor, the first in

America, being elected by decided majoritiessince then Socialism has made rapid strides in all

directions and the old politicians no longer reckon it as a negative quantity in making their

forecasts and calculating their pluralities and majorities.

The subject has passed entirely beyond the domain of sneer and ridicule and now commands

serious treatment. Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all

the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that

the advance of Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon

the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and

despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.


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In school and college and church, in clubs and public halls everywhere, Socialism is the central

theme of discussion, and its advocates, inspired by its noble principles, are to be found here,

there and in all places ready to give or accept challenge to battle. In the cities the corner meetings

are popular and effective. But rarely is such a gathering now molested by the authorities, and

then only where they have just been inaugurated. They are too numerously attended by serious,

intelligent and self-reliant men and women to invite interference.

Agitation is followed by organization, and the increase of branches, sections and clubs goes

forward with extraordinary activity in every part of the land.

In New England the agitation has resulted in quite a general organization among the states, with

Massachusetts in the lead; and the indications are that, with the vigorous prosecution of the

campaign already inaugurated, a tremendous increase in the vote will be polled in the

approaching national elections. New York and Pennsylvania will show surprising socialist

returns, while Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky will all round up with a

large vote. Wisconsin has already a great vote to her credit and will increase it largely this year.

In the west and northwest, Kansas, Iowa and Minnesota will forge to the front, and so also willNebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Colorado. California is

expected to show an immense increase, and the returns from there will not disappoint the most

sanguine. In the southwest, Texas is making a stirring campaign, and several papers, heretofore

Populist, will support our candidates and swell the socialist vote, which will be an eye-opener

when announced.

On the whole, the situation could scarcely be more favorable and the final returns will more than

justify our sanguine expectations.

It must not be overlooked, however, when calculations are made, that this is a presidential year

and that the general results will not be so favorable as if the elections were in an off year. Boththe Republican and Democratic parties will, as usual, strain every nerve to whip the voting

kings into line and every conceivable influence will be exerted to that end. These vast machines

operate with marvelous precision and the wheels are already in motion. Corruption funds,

national, state and municipal, will flow out like lava tides; promises will be as plentiful as

autumn leaves; from ten thousand platforms the Columbian orator will agitate the atmosphere,

while brass bands, torchlight processions, glittering uniforms and free whisky, dispensed by the

ward-heeler, will lend their combined influence to steer the patriots to the capitalist chute

that empties into the ballot box.

The campaign this year will be unusually spectacular. The Republican party points with pride

to the prosperity and the war record of the administration. The Democratic party declares thatimperialism is the paramount issue, and that the country is certain to go to the demnition

bow-wows if Democratic officeholders are not elected instead of the Republicans. The

Democratic slogan is The Republican vs. the Empire, accompanied in a very minor key by 16

to 1 and direct legislation where practical.

Both these capitalist parties are fiercely opposed to trusts, though what they propose to do with

them is not of sufficient importance to require even a hint in their platforms.


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Needless is it for me to say to the thinking workingman that he has no choice between these two

capitalist parties, that they are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the

other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working slave he is today.

What but meaningless phrases are imperialism, expansion, free silver, gold standard, etc.,

to the wage-worker? The large capitalists represented by Mr. McKinley and the small capitalistsrepresented by Mr. Bryan are interested in these issues, but they do not concern the working

class.

What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the

means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they

toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they

protestthis is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party

platforms has a word or even a hint about it.

As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen

must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer largeones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the

capitalist class.

Whether the means of productionthat is to say, the land, mines, factories, machinery, etc.are

owned by a few large Republican capitalists, who organize a trust, or whether they be owned by

a lot of small Democratic capitalists, who are opposed to the trust, is all the same to the working

class. Let the capitalists, large and small, fight this out among themselves.

The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves

in possession and control of the means of production, that they may have steady employment

without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small, and that they may get the wealth theirlabor produces, all of it, and enjoy with their families the fruits of their industry in comfortable

and happy homes, abundant and wholesome food, proper clothing and all other things necessary

to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore a question not of reform, the mask

of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and

wage-slavery supplanted by the coperative industry.

We hear it frequently urged that the Democratic party is the poor mans party, the friend of

labor. There is but one way to relieve poverty and to free labor, and that is by making common

property of the tools of labor.

Is the Democratic party, which we are assured has strong socialistic tendencies, in favor ofcollective ownership of the means of production? Is it opposed tot the wage-system, from which

flows in a ceaseless stream the poverty, misery and wretchedness of the children of toil? If the

Democratic party is the friend of labor any more than the Republican party, why is its platform

dumb in the presence of Cur dAlene? It knows the truth about these shocking outrages

crimes upon workingmen, their wives and children, which would blacken the pages of Siberia

why does it not speak out?


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John Mitchell, The Workingmans Conception of Industrial

Liberty, American Federationist, May 1910, pp. 405-10.

Source: Eric Foner, Voices of Freedom, Vol 2, Second edition (pp. 72-77).

[Foners introduction]:During the Progressive era, the ideas of industrial freedom andindustrial democracy, which had entered the political vocabulary in the Gilded Age, moved to

the center of political discussion. Lack of industrial freedom was widely believed to lie at the

root of the widely discussed labor problem. Many Progressives believed that the key to

increasing industrial freedom lay in empowering workers to participate in economic decision

making via strong unions. Louis D. Brandeis, an active ally of the labor movement whom

President Woodrow Wilson appointed to the Supreme Court in 1916, maintained that unions

embodied an essential principle of freedom the right of people to govern themselves. Workersdeserved a voice not only in establishing wages and working conditions, but in such managerial

decisions as the relocation of factories, layoffs, and the distribution of profits.

In the article below, John Mitchell, head of the United Mine Workers Union, pointedly

contrasts workers understanding of industrial liberty with prevailing laissez-faire definitions

of freedom inherited from the Gilded Age and enforced by the courts during the Progressive era.

For Mitchell, to enjoy freedom a man must be free from the harrowing fear of hunger and want

and be in a position to provide for his family. But, he continued, when legislatures tried to

regulate working conditions in order to improve the status of labor, courts overturned laws as

violations of freedom freedom not only of the employers but of workers themselves. Workers,

he observed, feel that they are being guaranteed the liberties they do not want and denied the

liberty that is of real value to them.

While the Declaration of Independence established civil and political liberty, it did not, as

you all know, establish industrial liberty. For nearly one hundred years following the Declaration

of Independence, chattel slavery was a recognized and legal institution in our civilization. And

real industrial liberty was not even established with the abolition of chattel slavery; because

liberty means more than the right to choose the field of ones employment. He is not a free man

whose family must buy food today with the money that is earned tomorrow. He is not really free

who is forced to work unduly long hours and for wages so low that he can not provide the

necessaries of life for himself and his family; who must live in a crowded tenement and see his

children go to work in the mills, the mines, and the factories before their bodies are developed

and their minds trained. To have freedom a man must be free from the harrowing fear of hunger

and want; he must be in such a position that by the exercise of reasonable frugality he can


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provide his family with all the necessities and the reasonable comforts of life. He must be able to

educate his children and to provide against sickness, accident, and old age.

!

In carrying on this contest for new liberties and new laws and broader concepts of old

laws, we may seem at times to be running counter to established authority, but closer

investigation will demonstrate that we are defending and not violating the organic laws upon

which the Government is founded. It is not my wish to introduce matters controversial in

character, but events in the recent past upon which there is much misinformation and no small

public sentiment, may, I hope, justify brief allusion to these concrete problems, because they

illustrate most forcefully the workingmans conception of industrial liberty.

Some time ago, the legislature of the State of Illinois enacted a law prohibiting the

employment of women in factories for more than sixty hours in any one week or more than ten

hours in any one day. It was the judgment of the members of this legislature that society was

directly interested in the health and happiness of its women wage-earners. Physicians and

scientific men of the highest possible standing had testified that more than ten hours work in a

mill or factory was detrimental to the health of the woman and dangerous to the generations that

were to follow. Shortly thereafter, at the instigation of her employer, a woman working in

Chicago box factory brought suit in the courts to have the law declared unconstitutional, setting

up the claim that she was unable in ten hours work to earn sufficient wages to maintain herself,and that therefore this act limiting her hours of labor in effect deprived her of liberty and

property without due process of law. The court agreed with her and declared the law to be

unconstitutional; and the consequences is that thousands upon thousands of wage-earning

women in the State of Illinois who demanded the passage of this act are now required to work

from eleven to fourteen hours per day in order that this one woman acting for her employer her

lawsuit financed by him might have the liberty of working more than ten hours per day. The

very ground upon which this woman made her complaint namely, that she could not earn

enough money in ten hours to maintain herself renders ridiculous and absurd her plea that her

liberty had been abridged.

!

A number of years ago the legislatures of several coal producing States enacted laws

requiring employers to pay the wages of their workmen in lawful money of the United States and


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to cease the practice of paying wages in merchandise. From time immemorial it had been the

custom of coal companies to conduct general supply stores, and the workingmen were required,

as a condition of employment, to accept products in lieu of money in return for services

rendered. This system was a great hardship to the workmen, as by it competition was eliminated

entirely and the prices charged for supplies sold from these company stores were much higher

than goods could be purchased for in the open market. The question of the constitutionality of

this legislation was carried into the courts and by the highest tribunal it was declared to be an

invasion of the workmans liberty to deny him the right to accept merchandise in lieu of money

as payment of his wages.

These cases are selected because they illustrate the general policy of the organized labor

movement. We are trying constantly to secure laws that will protect those in our social life who

are least able to protect themselves. There is scarcely a law on the statute books of any State or

of the Nation, throwing the protecting arm of the Government about the weak and the

defenseless, that has not had its inspiration in the minds of the organized workmen. True, they

have had the assistance of good men and good women from other walks of life, but the burden of

these efforts has fallen upon the much-maligned organizations of labor. Surely it will not be

denied that in seeking laws for the protection of women and children, the workingmen are

rendering a real service to the Nation and to society and that they are promoting in the best sense

the liberty and the happiness of the people.The cases I have cited, however, are typical of hundreds of instances in which laws that

have been enacted for the protection of the workingmen have been declared by the courts to be

unconstitutional, on the grounds that they invaded the liberty of the working-people. To

understand the attitude of the workingmen in matters of this kind, it is necessary to bear in mind

that all this legislation was championed by them and was enacted at their solicitation, and when

the courts declare such laws unconstitutional basing their decisions upon the hypothesis that

the liberty of the workman is invaded is it not natural that the workingmen should feel that they

are being guaranteed the liberties they do not want and denied the liberty that is of real value to

them? May they not exclaim, with Madame Roland, O Liberty! Liberty! How many crimes are

committed in thy name!

!


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I have tried in this brief address to present at least one phase of the workingmans

conception of industrial liberty, but my chief purpose has been to convey to you the spirit of

patriotism which underlies the whole movement for better conditions of life and labor. The labor

movement is primarily and fundamentally a moral movement. While attention is attracted to it by

its strikes and its struggles yet the battles it fights in defense of the poor and the helpless are but

phases of the great movement which is making for the physical, the mental, and the moral uplift

of the people. Behind and above the demand for higher wages and shorter hours stands the

greater movement for better men, for happier women, and for joyous children; for homes, for

books, for pictures and music, for the things that make for culture and refinement. The labor

movement stands for the essential principles of religion and morality; for temperance; for

decency and dignity.

Questions

1. What does Mitchell see as the purposes of the labor movement?

2. What would be necessary to establish real industrial liberty as understood by Mitchell?


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Justice Robert A. Jackson, Dissenting Opinion inKorematsu v.

United States

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

323 U.S. 214

Decided: December 18, 1944

Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen

of the United States by nativity, and a citizen of California by [p243] residence. No claim is

made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that, apart from the matter

involved here, he is not law-abiding and well disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted

of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a

citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.

Even more unusual is the series of military orders which made this conduct a crime. They forbid

such a one to remain, and they also forbid him to leave. They were so drawn that the only way

Korematsu could avoid violation was to give himself up to the military authority. This meant

submission to custody, examination, and transportation out of the territory, to be followed by

indeterminate confinement in detention camps.

A citizen's presence in the locality, however, was made a crime only if his parents were of

Japanese birth. Had Korematsu been one of four -- the others being, say, a German alien enemy,

an Italian alien enemy, and a citizen of American-born ancestors, convicted of treason but out on

parole -- only Korematsu's presence would have violated the order. The difference between their

innocence and his crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought, different than

they, but only in that he was born of different racial stock.

Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not

inheritable. Even if all of one's antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution

forbids its penalties to be visited upon him, for it provides that "no attainder of treason shall

work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted." But here is


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an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of

parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign.

If Congress, in peacetime legislation, should [p244] enact such a criminal law, I should suppose

this Court would refuse to enforce it.

But the "law" which this prisoner is convicted of disregarding is not found in an act of Congress,

but in a military order. Neither the Act of Congress nor the Executive Order of the President, nor

both together, would afford a basis for this conviction. It rests on the orders of General DeWitt.

And it is said that, if the military commander had reasonable military grounds for promulgating

the orders, they are constitutional, and become law, and the Court is required to enforce them.

There are several reasons why I cannot subscribe to this doctrine.

It would be impracticable and dangerous idealism to expect or insist that each specific military

command in an area of probable operations will conform to conventional tests of

constitutionality. When an area is so beset that it must be put under military control at all, the

paramount consideration is that its measures be successful, rather than legal. The armed services

must protect a society, not merely its Constitution. The very essence of the military job is to

marshal physical force, to remove every obstacle to its effectiveness, to give it every strategic

advantage. Defense measures will not, and often should not, be held within the limits that bindcivil authority in peace. No court can require such a commander in such circumstances to act as a

reasonable man; he may be unreasonably cautious and exacting. Perhaps he should be. But a

commander, in temporarily focusing the life of a community on defense, is carrying out a

military program; he is not making law in the sense the courts know the term. He issues orders,

and they may have a certain authority as military commands, although they may be very bad as

constitutional law.

But if we cannot confine military expedients by the Constitution, neither would I distort the

Constitution to approve all that the military may deem expedient. That is [p245] what the Court

appears to be doing, whether consciously or not. I cannot say, from any evidence before me, that

the orders of General DeWitt were not reasonably expedient military precautions, nor could I say

that they were. But even if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that


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they are constitutional. If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any

military order will be constitutional, and have done with it.

!

A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency.

Even during that period, a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion

rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the

Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has

validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting

American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any

authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that

principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes. All who observe

the work of courts are familiar with what Judge Cardozo described as "the tendency of a

principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic." [*] A military commander may overstep the

bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing

incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution. There it has a generative power of its own, and

all that it creates will be in its own image. Nothing better illustrates this danger than does the

Court's opinion in this case.

!

I should hold that a civil court cannot be made to enforce an order which violates constitutionallimitations even if it is a reasonable exercise of military authority. The courts can exercise only

the judicial power, can apply only law, and must abide by the Constitution, or they cease to be

civil courts and become instruments of military policy. (323 U.S. 214, 248) Of course the

existence of a military power resting on force, so vagrant, so centralized, so necessarily heedless

of the individual, is an inherent threat to liberty. But I would not lead people to rely on this Court

for a review that seems to me wholly delusive. The military reasonableness of these orders can

only be determined by military superiors. If the people ever let command of the war power fall

into irresponsible and unscrupulous hands, the courts wield no power equal to its restraint. The

chief restraint upon those who command the physical forces of the country, in the future as in the

past, must be their responsibility to the political judgments of their contemporaries and to the

moral judgments of history.


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My duties as a justice as I see them do not require me to make a military judgment as to whether

General DeWitts evacuation and detention program was a reasonable military necessity. I do not

suggest that the courts should have attempted to interfere with the Army in carrying out its task.

But I do not think they may be asked to execute a military expedient that has no place in law

under the Constitution. I would reverse the judgment and discharge the prisoner.


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Army-McCarthy Hearing (1954)

This excerpt is from the transcript of the Army-McCarthy hearings. During the

hearings, Senator McCarthy showed a growing disregard for the rights of the

people who he accused of having communist sympathies. His increasinglyludicrous charges and public callousness led to his loss of support from members

of the Senate and the Eisenhower administration. Eventually, he was rejected by

most all of the socially accepted anti-communist circles. After the hearings ended,

government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, remained

preoccupied with secret communist plots. During the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights

leaders, student activists, and anti-war protesters suffered frequent violations of

their rights to privacy and free speech at the hands of federal agencies. But,

McCarthy and his theatrical brand of denunciations were largely retired from the

anti-communist arsenal.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Cohn, tell me once more: Every time you learn of a Communist or a spy anywhere, is it your

policy to get them out as fast as possible?

Mr. COHN. Surely, we want them out as fast as possible, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And whenever you learn of one from now on, Mr. Cohn, I beg of you, will you tell somebody about

them quick?

Mr. COHN. Mr. Welch, with great respect, I work for the committee here. They know how we go about handling

situations of Communist infiltration and failure to act on FBI information about Communist infiltration. If they are

displeased with the speed with which I and the group of men who work with me proceed, if they are displeased withthe order in which we move, I am sure they will give me appropriate instructions along those lines, and I will follow

any which they give me.

Mr. WELCH. May I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a Communist spy,

please hurry. Will you remember those words?

Senator MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. COHN. Mr. Welch, I can assure you, sir, as far as I am concerned, and certainly as far as the chairman of this

committee and the members, and the members of the staff, are concerned, we are a small group, but we proceed as

expeditiously as is humanly possible to get out Communists and traitors and to bring to light the mechanism by

which they have been permitted to remain where they were for so long a period of time.

Senator MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman, in view of that question -

Senator MUNDT. Have you a point of order?

Senator MCCARTHY. Not exactly, Mr. Chairman, but in view of Mr. Welch's request that the information be given

once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him

that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do work on this

committee, who has been for a number of years a member of an organization which was named, oh, years and years

ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party, an organization which always swings to the defense of anyone


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who dares to expose Communists. I certainly assume that Mr. Welch did not know of this young man at the time he

recommended him as the assistant counsel for this committee, but he has such terror and such a great desire to know

where anyone is located who may be serving the Communist cause, Mr. Welch, that I thought we should just call to

your attention the fact that your Mr. Fisher, who is still in your law firm today, whom you asked to have down here

looking over the secret and classified material, is a member of an organization, not named by me but named by

various committees, named by the Attorney General, as I recall, and I think I quote this verbatim, as "the legal

bulwark of the Communist Party." He belonged to that for a sizable number of years, according to his ownadmission, and he belonged to it long after it had been exposed as the legal arm of the Communist Party.

Knowing that, Mr. Welch, I just felt that I had a duty to respond to your urgent request that before sundown, when

we know of anyone serving the Communist cause, we let the agency know. We are now letting you know that your

man did belong to this organization for, either 3 or 4 years, belonged to it long after he was out of law school.

I don't think you can find anyplace, anywhere, an organization which has done more to defend Communists - I am

again quoting the report - to defend Communists, to defend espionage agents, and to aid the Communist cause, than

the man whom you originally wanted down here at your right hand instead of Mr. St. Clair.

I have hesitated bringing that up, but I have been rather bored with your phony requests to Mr. Cohn here that he

personally get every Communist out of government before sundown. Therefore, we will give you information about

the young man in your own organization.

I am not asking you at this time to explain why you tried to foist him on this committee. Whether you knew he was a

member of that Communist organization or not, I don't know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the

impression that, while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don't think you have any conception of the

danger of the Communist Party. I don't think you yourself would ever knowingly aid the Communist cause. I think

you are unknowingly aiding it when you try to burlesque this hearing in which we are attempting to bring out the

facts, however.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman.

Senator MUNDT. Mr. Welch, the Chair should say he has no recognition or no memory of Mr. Welch's

recommending either Mr. Fisher or anybody else as counsel for this committee.

I will recognize Mr. Welch.

Senator MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman, I will give you the news story on that.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, under these circumstances I must have something approaching a personal privilege.

Senator MUNDT. You may have it, sir. It will not be taken out of your time.

Mr. WELCH. Senator McCarthy, I did not know - Senator, sometimes you say "May I have your attention?"

Senator MCCARTHY. I am listening to you. I can listen with one ear.

Mr. WELCH. This time I want you to listen with both.

Senator MCCARTHY. Yes.

Mr. WELCH. Senator McCarthy, I think until this moment -

Senator MCCARTHY. Jim, will you get the news story to the effect that this man belonged to this Communist-front

organization? Will you get the citations showing that this was the legal arm of the Communist Party, and the length

of time that he belonged, and the fact that he was recommended by Mr. Welch? I think that should be in the record.

Mr. WELCH. You won't need anything in the record when I have finished telling you this.


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Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young

man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career

with us.

When I decided to work for this committee I asked Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said

to Jim, "Pick somebody in the firm who works under you that you would like." He chose Fred Fisher and they camedown on an afternoon plane. That night, when he had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about,

Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, "Boys, I don't know

anything about you except I have always liked you, but if there is anything funny in the life of either one of you that

would hurt anybody in this case you speak up quick."

Fred Fisher said, "Mr. Welch, when I was in law school and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers

Guild," as you have suggested, Senator. He went on to say, "I am secretary of the Young Republicans League in

Newton with the son of Massachusetts' Governor, and I have the respect and admiration of the 25 lawyers or so in

Hale & Dorr."

I said, "Fred, I just don't think I am going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come

out and go over national television and it will just hurt like the dickens."

So, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston.

Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. I t is true he is still with Hale &

Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall

always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will

do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.

Senator MCCARTHY. Mr. Chairman.

Senator MUNDT. Senator McCarthy?

Senator MCCARTHY. May I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless. He was just baiting; he

has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours, requesting that Mr. Cohn, before sundown, get out of any department of

Government anyone who is serving the Communist cause.

I just give this man's record, and I want to say, Mr. Welch, that it has been labeled long before he became a member,

as early as 1944 -

Mr. WELCH. Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild, and Mr. Cohn nods his

head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn.

Mr. COHN. No, sir.

Mr. WELCH. I meant to do you no personal injury, and if I did, beg your pardon.

Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long

last? Have you left no sense of decency?

Senator MCCARTHY. I know this hurts you, Mr. Welch. But I may say, Mr. Chairman, on a point of personal

privilege, and I would like to finish it -

Mr. WELCH. Senator, I think it hurts you, too, sir.

Senator MCCARTHY. I would like to finish this.

Mr. Welch has been filibustering this hearing, he has been talking day after day about how he wants to get anyone


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tainted with communism out before sundown. I know Mr. Cohn would rather not have me go into this. I intend to,

however, Mr. Welch talks about any sense of decency. If I say anything which is not the truth, then I would like to

know about it.

The foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, its front organizations, and controlled unions, and which, since

its inception, has never failed to rally to the legal defense of the Communist Party, and individual members thereof,

including known espionage agents.

Now, that is not the language of Senator McCarthy. That is the language of the Un-American Activities Committee.

And I can go on with many more citations. It seems that Mr. Welch is pained so deeply he thinks it is improper for

me to give the record, the Communist front record, of the man whom he wanted to foist upon this committee. But it

doesn't pain him at all - there is no pain in his chest about the unfounded charges against Mr. Frank Carr; there is no

pain there about the attempt to destroy the reputation and take the jobs away from the young men who were working

in my committee.

And, Mr. Welch, if I have said anything here which is untrue, then tell me. I have heard you and every one else talk

so much about laying the truth upon the table that when I hear - and it is completely phony, Mr. Welch, I have

listened to you for a long time - when you say "Now, before sundown, you must get these people out of

Government," I want to have it very clear, very clear that you were not so serious about that when you tried to

recommend this man for this committee.

And may I say, Mr. Welch, in fairness to you, I have reason to believe that you did not know about his Communist-

front record at the time you recommended him. I don't think you would have recommended him to the committee, if

you knew that.

I think it is entirely possible you learned that after you recommended him.

Senator MUNDT. The Chair would like to say again that he does not believe that Mr. Welch recommended Mr.

Fisher as counsel for this committee, because he has through his office all the recommendations that were made. He

does not recall any that came from Mr. Welch, and that would include Mr. Fisher.

Senator MCCARTHY. Let me ask Mr. Welch. You brought him down, did you not, to act as your assistant?

Mr. WELCH. Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this with you further. You have sat within 6 feet of me, and couldhave asked me about Fred Fisher. You have brought it out. If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor

your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask Mr. Cohn any more questions. You, Mr. Chairman,

may, if you will, call the next witness.


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"!

Artist: Bob Dylan

Song: "Masters Of War,"

Album: The Freewheelin Bob Dylan

Year: 1963

Come you masters of war

You that build all the gunsYou that build the death planes

You that build all the bombsYou that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desksI just want you to know

I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'

But build to destroyYou play with my worldLike it's your little toy

You put a gun in my handAnd you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run fartherWhen the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceiveA world war can be won

You want me to believeBut I see through your eyes

And I see through your brainLike I see through the water

That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggersFor the others to fireThen you set back and watch

When the death count gets higherYou hide in your mansion'

As young people's bloodFlows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud.

You've thrown the worst fearThat can ever be hurled

Fear to bring childrenInto the world


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For threatening my babyUnborn and unnamed

You ain't worth the bloodThat runs in your veins.

How much do I knowTo talk out of turnYou might say that I'm young

You might say I'm unlearnedBut there's one thing I know

Though I'm younger than youThat even Jesus would never

Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one questionIs your money that good

Will it buy you forgivenessDo you think that it could

I think you will findWhen your death takes its toll

All the money you madeWill never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die

And your death'll come soonI will follow your casket

In the pale afternoon

And I'll watch while you're loweredDown to your deathbedAnd I'll stand over your grave

'Til I'm sure that you're dead.

Questions for Consideration:

How does Dylan use imagery?Are there any literary techniques that stand out to you?

Who is the intended audience?Why do you think Dylan wrote this song?


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The National Organization for Women's 1966 Statement of Purpose

First National Conference in Washington, D.C.

adopted October 29, 1966.

written by Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique

We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women,

believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in

America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution

of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.

The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstreamof American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal

partnership with men.

We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and symposia

over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the time

has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women fromenjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual

Americans, and as human beings.

NOW is dedicated to the proposition that women, first and foremost, are human beings, who,

like all other people in our society, must have the chance to develop their fullest human potential.

We believe that women can achieve such equality only by accepting to the full the challenges

and responsibilities they share with all other people in our society, as part of the decision-makingmainstream of American political, economic and social life.

We organize to initiate or support action, nationally, or in any part of this nation, by individuals

or organizations, to break through the silken curtain of prejudice and discrimination against

women in government, industry, the professions, the churches, the political parties, the judiciary,

the labor unions, in education, scien

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