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Thank you for visiting www.hrcr.org. This website is no longer
being updated. March 26, 2008 |
"WASN'T THAT A TIME?"
A Century of Struggle. A Century of Repression.
Photographs by Bud Shultz
Interviews by Ruth and Bud Shultz
| In times of intense political hysteria, in times of great struggles for economic and
political rights, and in times of actual or impending wars, the government has responded
to dissent by suppressing it in violation of the very principle that defines us--the right
of free expression. Police have attacked peaceful protesters with deadly force. Courts and
congressional inquisitions have pilloried persons guilty of no offense but harboring
unpopular beliefs. Secret police have spied upon citizens and wreaked havoc upon their
personal and political lives. Loyalty boards and other government agencies have destroyed
the reputations and livelihoods of "undesirables", interned them in
concentration camps, and expelled or sought to expel them from the country. Political
repression in America has been brutal and doggedly persistent. Yet, during the course of a century of struggle, seemingly impossible victories have been won: The absolute control of the workplace was wrested from employers; the overt system of white supremacy was dismantled; and the hand of warmakers was stayed. Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, gays, women, environmentalists, too, have fought for some measure of economic and social justice. By insisting on their right to dissent despite the personal price they paid, they all have made democracy more secure for those who will continue their struggles into the next century. The title, "Wasn't That A Time," was
taken from a song by that name by Lee Hayes and Walter Lowenfels. The statements
accompanying each portrait were excerpted from It Did Happen Here: Recollections of
Political Repression in America, and from a companion volume in progress to be
entitled, The Price of Dissent. |
