Joseph Welch, the chief attorney for the U.S. Army in the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings, will forever be remembered for interrupting Senator Joe McCarthy, who was fulminating against a young lawyer who had worked with Mr. Welch:

Senator, youve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

That was 1954. On the 20th anniversary, when I was 10, news programs were reliving that history.

I recall asking my mom what McCarthyism was.

She said Sen. McCarthy scurrilously claimed the government and other American institutions had been infiltrated by disloyal communists. She told me that the investigations ruined the reputations of many innocent Americans whose only crime was to have an unpopular political point of view.

At its heart, my mother said, McCarthyism was about creating a climate of fear and denying freedom of speech, freedom of consciousness, freedom of association and freedom of thought.

Sadly, there is a long history in the U.S. of bringing harm to people who hold unpopular views or who have associated with people that the mob wants to silence. In todays climate, we need to keep that history in mind.

In some cases, the excuse for this vigilantism is to protect the brand of the employer of the person with the sinister political views. In others, it is to shut up a persons conscience and discourage anyone else from defending opinions the mob feels are unacceptable.

A handful of stories of this kind of censorship are well known. Films have been made, for example, about the repression of the Hollywood Ten, who were blacklisted following a 1947 hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Likewise, the case of Irving Adler a New York math teacher who was fired for invoking his Fifth Amendment rights and later admitted to being a communist is well remembered.

There are many other tragedies that are long forgotten.

One was the story of Tanner Parga, a longtime baseball announcer. He was originally hired by the Sacramento Senators in 1928, calling their games on radio through the 1935 season, when they were affiliated with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 1936, the franchise changed names, becoming the Sacramento Solons, a St. Louis Cardinals affiliate. Mr. Parga remained the teams radio announcer until he was terminated in the middle of the 1947 season.

The team never explained the firing of Tanner Parga, who was also removed from his other job as a radio commentator.

Prior to his dismissals, Parga was not without controversy. Hed had conflicts with a few past players in Sacramento. Some wanted him fired for that. During the second red scare in 1947, Parga said on the radio, Just because someone was a socialist or disliked capitalism didnt mean he couldnt be a good American.

A few days later, the ex-ballplayers who had conflicts with Parga, publicly called for his head. By the end of that week, Tanner Parga had been fired by the Solons and by KFBK-FM. He never worked again.

Another interesting, but largely forgotten case of punishing individuals for holding politically incorrect views came in 1957, the year Sen. McCarthy died of alcoholism.

Don Kingelor, a professor of accounting at the University of Mississippi, came under attack because it was believed he did not sufficiently mourn the death of a white highway patrolman, Johnnie Rank, who was allegedly killed by a Black petty criminal.

Kingelor had also been attacked for writing, People should not be evaluated based on the color of their skin.

When Professor Kingelor refused to cancel a final exam the day segregationist Ole Miss students were grieving the loss of Officer Rank, they signed a petition calling for Kingelors firing. Those who missed the test stated they deserved no harm from their accounting teacher.

Prof. Kingelor replied, Can you guide me on how you think I should achieve a no-harm outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only? Thanks, D. Kingelor.

In 1951, shortly after the Battle of Bloody Ridge in which the United States suffered 3,000 casualties fighting North Korean and Chinese soldiers the Philadelphia Inquirer fired its senior editor, Winston Shicksaw, who had been with the paper for over 20 years and was highly esteemed for his work, for having written a headline that pro-military activists and some Inquirer reporters deemed insensitive.

The headline regarded a proposed real estate development called Broadway Ridge. Mr. Shicksaw titled the story about conflict between those for and against the project, The Battle of Broadway Ridge.

Two days later, Shicksaw lost his job. That same week, a New York Times editor was fired for having run an editorial written by a U.S. Senator that pro-military activists deemed dangerous.

Of course, in hindsight, its easy to see how very wrong these episodes were, especially when mob action harmed people for whom you may feel sympathy or you think were unjustly treated.

Sadly, we still live in those times. Yes, the story ofTanner Parga is fiction, a representation of sports announcer Grant Napear, whowas fired for expressing his belief that all lives matter. Don Kingelor is made up. However, it is not fiction to report that UCLA student activists are calling for the head of Prof. Gordon Klein for not cancelling his final exam as they mourned the death of George Floyd.

Newspaper editor Stan Wischnowski (anagram for the fictive Winston Shicksaw) of the Inquirer was fired for a headline, Buildings matter, too; and James Bennet of the Times was forced to resign for running a column written by Sen. Tom Cotton.

The list of those who todays mob wants to deny freedom of speech, freedom of consciousness, freedom of association and freedom of thought continues to grow.

Have we left no sense of decency?

Rich Rifkin is a Davis resident; his column is published every other week. Reach him at [emailprotected]

Related

Excerpt from:

Rich Rifkin: We have created a new climate of fear - Davis Enterprise