A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America

By Michael Parks, AlterNet. Posted June 21, 2007.

Ninety years ago, the U.S. government used the Espionage Act to jail hundreds of Americans for speaking out against World War I. Shortly after the war, during America's first Red Scare, U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer authorized arrests of thousands of citizens, primarily immigrants, suspected of being Communists. These First Amendment abuses led to the foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and set the stage for what has been a nearly century-long struggle for the realization of every American's right to freedom of speech.

In his book From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America, Christopher A. Finan chronicles how far we have come since World War I and how far we have yet to go. As the chair of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the president of the American Booksellers' Foundation for Free Expression, which has played an active role in lobbying against the USA Patriot Act since 9/11, Finan has over two decades of personal experience with his subject.

From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act is an engaging read and tells a story that is as relevant to Americans today as it ever has been. As Finan writes, it is "the story of our triumph over government censors. But, as any librarian will tell you, the battle will never be won. The fight continues."

AlterNet spoke with Finan via telephone.

Michael Parks: Your book begins in 1919, with the Palmer Raids. Why did you decide to start where you did?

Christopher Finan: Well, it's not because there hadn't been censorship fights before. In fact, there was even a group called the Free Speech League that was set up early in the 20th century to make the civil libertarian argument. But it went out of business, and there was no sustained or organized opposition to censorship before World War I with that one exception. Then World War I is just this civil liberties meltdown. Up until World War I, the federal government is really very weak, and doesn't do much. [...] During World War I, the federal government expands rapidly to meet the needs of the war and Congress passes the Espionage Act, which, although on the face of it was really only supposed to apply to spies and saboteurs, was quickly turned against any critic of the war, and used to try over 2,000 American citizens. It never did, so far as I know, result in the conviction of any spies or saboteurs, but it was used to prosecute more than 2,000 Americans and to convict more than 1,000 -- some for prison terms of as long as 20 years.

Eugene Debs, the head of the socialist party, ... said, "You need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder." That's what gets him convicted [under the Espionage Act] and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He serves two and a half years in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta before he's finally released after the war.

Parks: That's when Debs ran for president again from inside prison?

Finan: Right. Right. In fact, maybe that was the year when he got the 900,000 votes. But [his imprisonment] was an outrage. The courts didn't stand up to the Justice Department; on the contrary, they were unanimously supportive of the government repression of free speech. The symbol of that was that the Supreme Court justice who upheld the conviction of Debs was the country's most distinguished jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes. The American people in general are also very supportive of all this -- they're the ones who are demanding these prosecutions. Their kids are fighting in foreign lands and in danger, and so they are ruthless in their efforts to strike out at anybody who might not agree with the war.

So it's just a handful of people, really, mostly judges and lawyers -- although also some social workers -- who are initially appalled at what the country has done and how far it has fallen from the purpose of the First Amendment. And they begin to write articles and to agitate, and a couple of them start working on Holmes. And within six months of the Debs case, Holmes completely turns around on the free speech argument, and issues one of the classic dissenting opinions the next time an espionage act case gets to the court.

It's in that case, Abrams vs. U.S., where [Holmes] uses the famous words: "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Because if democracy means anything, it means that people have to be able to make up their own minds about what to believe. [Holmes' opinion] becomes kind of the clarion call for the birth of the civil liberties movement, which is launched formally just a few months later when the ACLU opens in New York City.

Parks: Throughout your book there are examples, as in World War I, of small groups fighting against repression by the majority. I was struck by the number of instances in which major First Amendment victories came out of the struggles of groups that are still extremely unpopular -- from outrageous journalists to pornographers to the KKK. As Americans, do we owe a certain debt to some of those groups history despises most?

Finan: Often battles for civil liberties or free speech are battles for the right of people to express radical ideas. And radical ideas are by their nature offensive to the majority. In the beginning, the ACLU really is a handful of liberals and radicals who are trying to make room in the country for discussion of the ideas they support. But [the leaders of the ACLU] also recognize from the beginning that they have to protect the right of people like the Klan to make statements that they themselves find deeply offensive.

See more stories tagged with: 9/11, patriot act, free speech, civil liberties, first amendment, palmer raids

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