Chris Finan’s blog

Beacon Press

Beacon Press, an independent publisher of serious non-fiction and fiction for over 150 years, announced today that it will publish a series of books about the history of freedom of speech in the United States. The Beacon series will explore the widespread denial of free speech during the first 150 years of our history; the emergence of an organized fight for free speech in the years after World War I, and the many battles that have been fought over free speech in recent years. “Beacon Press publishes books that try to change the way that people think about fundamental issues. We believe that exploring the history of free speech is essential to ensuring that our understanding and respect for the First Amendment continue to grow,” Beacon Director Helene Atwan said.

            The new series will consist of books of approximately 65,000 words and is intended mainly for a popular audience. Potential authors include historians, journalists, and people who work for the growing number of organizations that defend free speech.

            The series will be edited by Christopher Finan, a free speech activist and historian, and Brian Halley of Beacon Press. Finan is the president of the American Booksellers Foundation of Free Expression and the author of Beacon’s From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (2007). Finan will have primary responsibility for soliciting and reviewing proposals. Halley will acquire and edit the books.
            Beacon has played a distinguished role in the fight for free speech. It published the first full-edition of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, just months after the Nixon administration tried unsuccessfully to block the publication of excerpts by the New York Times and Washington Post. Nixon retaliated by subpoenaing the bank records of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the owner of Beacon Press. Beacon has also published many fiercely independent authors, including Howard Zinn, Paul Robeson, Herbert Marcuse, James Baldwin, Ben Bagdikian, Lani Guinier, Leslie Feinberg, Cornell West, and more recently, Stacy Mitchell.

            Authors interested in submitting proposals for the new free speech series should contact Chris Finan, finan@mindspring.com.
 

The Happy Warrior: Alfred E. Smith

    David A. Paterson is not the first governor of New York who could tell a joke.

    In 1918, New Yorkers narrowly elected Alfred E. Smith as governor.  Smith had learned to crack “wise” growing up on the streets of the Lower East Side.  His humor helped him win political office and rise quickly to the leadership of the New York Assembly.

    On the floor of the Assembly one day, an upstate Republican made the mistake of interrupting Smith with an irrelevant question as he pressed for a law to compensate workers who were injured on the job.  He answered:

    “As I was walking down Park Row this morning, a friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Al, which would you rather be, a cellar full of stepladders, a basketful of doorknobs or a piece of cracked ice?’ and I replied that I would rather be a fish because you can always break a pane of glass with a hammer.”

    “Mr. Speaker,” objected the Republican.  “I certainly do not get the point to the gentleman’s answer.”

    Smith sprang the trap.  “You don’t get the point to my answer?  Well let me say to you that there is just as much
point to my answer as there is to your question.”

    Like Governor Paterson, Al Smith took the oath of office at a difficult time.  Paterson faces a faltering economy and a budget that is billions in the red.  Smith was elected just as World War I came to an end and the nation entered a sharp recession coupled with high inflation.

    Like Paterson, Smith did not have a strong electoral mandate.  He had won only because the deadly flu epidemic kept Republicans away from the polls upstate.

    Yet Smith would become one of New York’s greatest governors, and his success offers some hope for Paterson’s chances.

    Some observers have noted that Paterson’s service in the legislature could be a plus.  Certainly it was for Smith, who served in the Assembly for 11 years.  His humor and warm personality won many Republican friends for a Tammany Democrat who would be in the minority throughout his career.

    Of course, once the inaugural glow had faded, the Republicans had no intention of doing any favors for their friend.  They fully expected to regain the governorship two years later.

    But Smith never acted liked his election was an accident.   He immediately appointed a bi-partisan Reconstruction Commission made up of the state’s leading citizens to address both the economic emergency and the long-term problems of reorganizing state government and improving the lives of workers.

    In fighting for these reforms, Smith showed that he was capable of applying the lash.  When the legislature threw his first legislative program back in his face, he attacked.  “The entire program of reconstruction not only met defeat, but nothing was suggested in its place,” he said.  “The great forum for public discussion was darkened, and the decisions that meant so much to the people of the State were made in a side room behind closed doors.”

    Yet Smith never lost his sense of humor.  Following another frustrating legislative session, he was in New York City trying to forget his troubles at the circus when a reporter approached.  How would he compare the circus animals and the legislature, the reporter asked.  “No comparison,” growled the gravel-voiced governor.  “The animals are very intelligent.”

    Smith captured the hearts of New Yorkers by developing constructive policies, taming the legislature, and keeping people laughing.   Although he was narrowly defeated for reelection in the historic Harding landslide of 1920, he ran again in 1922 and received one of the biggest pluralities in state history.  He went on to serve three more terms during which he achieved his ambitious plan for government reorganization.  Franklin D. Roosevelt was only telling New Yorkers what they already knew when he called Smith “the Happy Warrior.”

    While it is too soon to tell whether Governor Paterson will be a success, getting us laughing was a good first step.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

February 22

In 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Michigan obscenity law that made it a crime to publish, print or sell any work containing " obscene, immoral, lewd or lascivious language....tending to incite minors to violent or depraved or immoral acts." Lawyers for Michigan argued that the state must have the power to ban works that were harmful to children, even if the law violated the First Amendments rights of adults. Speaking for a unanimous court, Justice Felix Frankfurter disagreed: "Surely, this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. It thereby arbitrarily curtails one of those liberties of the individual....that history has attested as the indispensable conditions for the maintenance and progress of a free society."

James Joyce in 1926

February 21st

In 1921, Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap are convicted of obscenity in New York for publishing an excerpt from James Joyce's novel Ulysses in their magazine, Little Review. The excerpt described indirectly but clearly a middle-aged man's thoughts as he secretly masturbated while observing a young girl. When a lawyer claimed that the language was too veiled to be obscene, the judge scoffed. "The man went off in his pants," he said. Anderson and Heap were fined $50, but not before Anderson tried to put the prosecutors on trial, including John Sumner, who had succeeded Anthony Comstock as the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. "It was the poet, the artist, who discovered love, created the lover, made sex everything that it is beyond a function," she said. "It is the Mr. Sumners who have made obscenity."

Senator Joseph McCarthy

February 8

In 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy charged in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that the State Department was full of Communists and Communist sympathizers who were shaping American policy in ways that aided an international Communist conspiracy. "I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party but who are nevertheless still helping to shape our foreign policy," McCarthy claimed.  The speech was a sensation and soon made McCarthy the leader in the growing Red Scare.

Woolworth's, Greensboro, NC

February 1

In 1960, four African-American students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College sat down at a segregated lunch counter at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Black students were soon staging "sit-ins" at segregated restaurants throughout the South.

I thought you might like to see the face of the Westhampton Beach, N.Y., bookseller who defended the use of "salacious" books at the local high school.  Terry Lucas is the woman in white.

Terry Lucas, Open Book

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression takes tremendous satisfaction in defending Mrs. Claus!  

We lost a battle last week.  Approximately 75 parents of students at the Westhampton Beach High School on Long Island, New York, had complained to the school board about the inclusion of two books on a list of 300 titles that students can select for reading assignments.  They argued that James Patterson's Cradle and All and Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle should be banned because of their sexual content.

The first thing to note is that these parents were not complaining about books that their children were being forced to read.  Students could choose any of the titles on the list of 300, and parents were free to veto books they thought were inappropriate.

This fight was not about parental rights.  It trampled the rights of the parents who wanted their kids to be able to use these books.  No, this was your average power play by a group of conservative parents who want the school board to rein in the educators who put the books on the list.

And it worked.  The school board voted 4-3 last week to ban the books.

But the news was not all bad from Westhampton Beach.  The censors met strong opposition from community members who rallied behind the leadership of bookseller Terry Lucas, the owner of The Open Book.  Terry was one of four people who spoke at the initial school board meeting.  She circulated a petition and held a read-in at her store, which attracted 60 students, teachers, and librarians as well as a couple of local authors.

If your morale needs a boost, you can watch kids reading their favorite banned books in a video of the read-in on the Web site of the Library Club.   Or you can look at the smiling faces of those who participated. 

Freadom Fighters

Independent booksellers have long been leaders in the fight for free speech.  If we want them to keep fighting, we have to help them survive.

Pat Conroy

Author Pat Conroy has sent a scathing response to censors in Charleston, West Virginia, who are trying to ban his novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music.  His letter to the editor appeared in the Charleston Gazette on October 24.

The books have already been pulled out of the hands of students at Nitro High School.  The school board is meeting tonight to decide whether to make the ban permanent.