“America was not founded by cowards, and it will not be saved by cowards.”
High Point: The successful outcome of Faulk’s libel suit against the social vigilantes who blatantly violated his civil liberties to achieve their parochial objectives.
Low Point: The heavy reliance on court transcripts can be rather tedious.
Author: John Henry Faulk
Publication Date: 1963
Genre: Social Sciences
Project Gutenberg: Not available
LibriVox: Not available
Movie/TV Adaptation: Fear On Trial (1975)
“America was not founded by cowards, and it will not be saved by cowards.”
In Fear On Trial, John Henry Faulk offers this paraphrase of a quote by American journalist Elmer Davis as part of his motivation to fight back against social vigilantes during the McCarthy era.
Faulk was developing as a New York radio and television personality until false accusations by a radical right organization resulted in his termination from CBS. Because he was subsequently blacklisted, he was unable to find employment for several years during what should have been the prime of his career.
This book offers Faulk’s perspective of his struggles during the blacklist period and then his successful libel suit against his accusers.
Faulk has an easy writing style, but he relies heavily on transcripts from the trial. Although they certainly tell his story, the transcripts often come across as dry and impersonal.
Regardless, Fear On Trial is a positive story about the value of truth and the culpability of those who deliberately abandon truth to achieve their own ends.
Quotes
| “American was not founded by cowards, and it will not be saved by cowards.” |
| …[Daddy] knew that many forces in our society made it possible for him to come from the life of a sharecropper to that of a comfortable and enlightened citizen, and he felt because he had been successful in his climb, that he had a lifelong obligation to assist others who were less fortunate than himself. One of his favorite themes was: “Jesus said, ‘As you do unto the least of these, ye do unto Me,’ and in a democracy like America, Johnny, as we do unto our least privileged citizen, whether he’s Catholic, Jew, or Protestant, Native or foreign born, Negro or white, you do unto America.” |
