Heywood
Broun
was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 7th
December, 1888. His father was an English
immigrant who had developed a successful printing business in
the city.
Broun entered Harvard University in 1906
where he became friends with Walter Lippmann,
John Reed and Alan
Seeger.
After leaving Harvard in 1910, Broun found work as a sports reporter
for the New York Morning Telegraph.
Two years later he joined the New York
Tribune and during the First World War
worked as a foreign correspondent in France.
In 1921 Broun moved to the New York World
where
he began writing a column entitled It Seems
To Me.
Over the next few years Broun campaigned against censorship and racial
discrimination and for academic freedom. He also supported those like
Margaret Sanger, John
T. Scopes and D. H. Lawrence who
were persecuted in the United States for their political and social
views.
Broun campaigned for the release of Tom
Mooney
and the Scottsboro
Nine.
However, his main preoccupation was with what he believed was the
injustice of the conviction of Bartolomeo
Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco.
When the editor of the New
York World
refused to print his articles on the case, he resigned with the comment
"that I am too ill-disciplined, too indiscreet to fit pleasantly
into the World's philosophy."
In 1930 Broun ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a socialist.
Three years later Broun was expelled from the Socialist
Party after appearing with members of the Communist
Party at a rally demanding the release of Tom
Mooney and the Scottsboro Nine.
Broun helped establish the American Newspaper Guild in 1933 and was
elected its first president. As well as writing for several newspapers
Broun was a regular contributor to the journals, The
Nation and The New Republic.
Heywood
Broun
died in Stamford, Connecticut, on 18th December, 1939.
(1)
Heywood Broun, Pieces of Hate, and Other Enthusiasms (1922)
The tragedy of life is not that man losses but that he almost wins.
(2)
Heywood Broun, New
York World
(26th January, 1923)
We must bring ourselves to realize that it is necessary to support
free speech for the things we hate in order to ensure it for the things
in which we believe with all our heart.
(3)
Heywood Broun, Sitting on the World (1924)
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.
(4)
Heywood Broun, New
York World
(26th August, 1926)
In a certain sense every creative person is a reformer, but this does
not mean that he must be in his work a propagandist for good roads,
shorter hours, and a low tariff. All these are excellent things, but
they need not be the concern of the artist.
(5)
Heywood Broun, The Miracle of Debs, New
York World
(23rd October, 1926)
Free speech is about as good as cause as the world has ever known.
But, like the poor, it is always with us and gets shoved aside in
favour of things which seem at some given moment more vital.
(6)
Heywood Broun, New
York World
(18th April, 1927)
The case against the men (Sacco and Vanzetti) is one of the flimsiest
on which conviction was ever obtained. That they are wholly innocent
of wrongdoing seems much the likeliest contingency. Obviously the
wholly extraneous issue of radicalism and opposition to the war entered
into the deliberation of the jury.
(7)
Heywood Broun, New
York World
(5th August, 1927)
When at last Judge Thayer in a tiny voice passed sentence upon Sacco
and Vanzetti, a woman in the courtroom said with terror: "It
is death condemning life!"
The men in Charlestown
Prison are shining spirits, and Vanzetti has spoken with an eloquence
not known elsewhere within our time. They are too bright, we shield
our eyes and kill them. We are the dead, and in us there is not feeling
nor imagination nor the terrible torment of lust for justice. And
in the city where we sleep, smug gardeners walk to keep the grass
above our little houses sleek and cut whatever blade thrusts up a
head above its fellows.
"The decision is
unbelievably brutal," said the Chairman of the Defense Committee,
and he was wrong. The thing is worthy to be believed. It has happened.
It will happen again, and the shame is wider than that which must
rest upon Massachusetts. I have never believed that the trial of Sacco
and Vanzetti was one set apart from many by reason of the passion
and prejudice which encrusted all the benches. Scratch through the
varnish of any judgment seat and what
will you strike but hate thick-clotted from centuries of angry verdicts?
Did any man ever find power within his hand except to use it as a
whip?
Governor Alvan T. Fuller
never had any intention in all his investigation but to put a new
and higher polish upon the proceedings. The justice of the business
was not his concern. He hoped to make it respectable. He called old
men from high places to stand behind his chair so that he might seem
to speak with all the authority of a high priest or a Pilate.
(8)
Heywood Broun, New
York World
(13th May, 1927)
The man who says, "I will not fight at all, no matter what the
issue may seem to be," may run the risk of missing one or two
righteous crusades, but he's almost sure to escape an even greater
number of bloody and useless shambles. The reasoning makes me pacifist.
(9)
In April, 1933, Heywood Broun was expelled from the Socialist
Party for sharing the lecture platform with members of the Communist
Party during a rally demanding the release of Tom
Mooney and the Scottsboro Nine.
He wrote about the event in the New York World-Telegram (29th
April, 1933)
I don't expect the Communists to love me, and I'm not going to love
them. I hope from time to time to say many things about them, and
I expect the same in return. But I think it would be a fine idea not
to fight until Tom Mooney is free and the Scottsboro boys are acquitted.
(10)
Heywood Broun, New York World-Telegram (9th December, 1939)
At 51 I'm a better fighter than at 21. Brotherhood is not just a Bible
world. Out of comradeship can come and will come the happy life for
all. The underdog can and will lick his weight in the wildcats of
the world.
(12)
William
Patterson,
The Man Who Cried Genocide (1971)
Heywood Broun, who was later to organize the Newspaper
Guild, was at that time very friendly with Paul. He declared
himself a socialist and tried to convince Paul that the Socialist
Party position was the one he should follow. I myself was not then
identified with any political party, but I had begun a study of the
Soviet Union. My studies naturally led me into the Marxist-Leninist
philosophy, and I found it harder and harder to argue against its
principal tenets. It seemed to me to have the support of historical
and objective truth - a truth that corresponded with the needs of
the great majority of the world's people and especially Black people.
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