Hoffman's speech "History and Political Science – The Foundation of Freedom"

Edwin D. Hoffman in 1960
University of North Carolina at Pembroke Yearbook The Indianhead [1960]

The following text is a March 14, 1958 "Chapel Address" that Edwin D. Hoffman delivered at Allen University in Columbia, SC. Hoffman had moved to Allen in 1954. That year the U.S. Supreme Court announced its Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating education. When the decision was announced, Hoffman was teaching at Long Island University in New York City. He left New York to teach at Allen because he thought teaching at a southern HBCU was a good way to get involved in the nascent civil rights movement.

Hoffman delivered his speech during a difficult time for Allen. The state government had been pressuring the university to dismiss Hoffman and two other faculty members. The governor had publicly accused the faculty members of being Communist workers in his annual address, and Board of Education (which was controlled by the governor) was withholding teaching certification of Allen graduates until the faculty were dismissed. The university president responded to this by vacillating between trying to force the faculty out and defending their continued employment. 

At the time of his speech, Hoffman had been fighting to retain his position for about a year, and he'd been in the public spotlight for a month-and-a-half. In delivering his speech, Hoffman appears to have been trying to rally the university community to continue to their resistance to the governor's attacks.

The object of this talk is to increase your interest in the social sciences.  Most particularly in history and political science.  I hope to show the study of these subjects equips you to meet the problems we face today and how the mind is stimulated to the point of passionate concern for great ideals.

In the social science we deal with the real world.  We face up to real problems with frankness and boldness.

I intend to speak frankly – to call a spade a spade

Last September the State Board of Education took from Allen students the right to teach in the South Carolina public schools.

In January, Governor Timmerman attacked Allen for employing three professors.

In February bills were introduced in the General Assembly establish a legislative committee to investigate so-called "communist activities" in education.

Those are the facts – frankly stated. I could have made vague reference to "troubled times" and "ill winds" and "difficulties we are now going through." But that is not the method of the social scientist. If you want to understand problems – if you want people to help you solve problems – you put them right out on the table in the clearest possible manner.

How can history and political science help us to understand and meet such problems?

Let us begin by labeling the problems for what they are. These are problems in civil liberties. We must speak of such basic democratic rights as freedom of speech, academic freedom, due process of law and equal protection of the laws. We speak of the rights of man, the inalienable rights, to use the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The question we must ask is whether the State of South Carolina is not doing violence to our constitutional liberties, and if it is abusing our democratic liberties, what must be our attitude and action.

Living in South Carolina, we are accustomed to think more in terms of civil rights than civil liberties. We want an end to Jim Crow and our efforts have been centered on achieving equality of opportunity. Equal pay for Negro teachers, an end to the white primary, and school integration have been the big campaigns in recent South Carolina history.

We sometimes forget that question[s] like freedom of speech are intimately tied to the winning of such rights. Yet it is a glaring fact that one of the biggest problems that the NAACP faces is the denial of freedom of speech. I need only mention how unfree Negro teachers feel in the public schools of South Carolina today.

Indeed, the issues of civil rights and civil liberties have always been intertwined in our history. Recall the threats to opponents of slavery made by William C. Preston, Senator from South Carolina, before the Civil War. "Let an Abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina. If we catch him, and not standing all the governments on earth, including the Federal government, we will hang him." Surely here was a grave problem of free speech. 

What exactly is freedom of speech? We usually define it as the right of every man to say and write what he thinks. Many men have called it the queen of freedom. The great English poet, John Milton, said, "Above all liberties, give me liberty to know, utter, and to argue freely according to conscience."

We enjoy that freedom most moments of our lives. When we would talk about the weather, or about the date we had last night or the new shoes we plan to buy we are perfectly free to speak our minds. It is only when we would express unpopular views, when we would criticize the "powers that be," that our right to speak is challenged. If every South Carolina Negro were an Uncle Tom, if all of us here at Allen said only what the White Citizens Council would like to hear, no one would try to silence us. We would enjoy perfect freedom of speech. And what an empty freedom it would be!

Louis Blane, in Letter on England, tells a story of such a freedom. 

    "A sailor related that he was once on board a vessel with a passenger who had frequently made the same voyage. The passenger told the captain about a rock ahead which was hidden beneath the waves, but the captain would not listen to him. On his insisting on it, the captain had him thrown into the sea. The energetic measure out an end to all remonstrances, and nothing could be more touching than the unanimity which reigned an [sic on] board. Suddenly the vessel hit the reef and was wrecked. They had got rid of the giver of the warning, but the rock remained."

The rock remained! you may silence men, but the truth remains. And since we need know the truth to act with wisdom, we need the brave voices of dissent to dare always to point to the rock ahead. As an [sic a] historian I cannot help but remark that the independent, non-conforming mind has been one of the glories of human history.

Where would Christianity be without the non-conformity of Jesus and Paul? Where would Judaism be without its Moses and Jeremiah?

Where would science be without the dissent of Copernicus and Galileo?

Where would American democracy be without Roger Williams and Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass and John Brown?

Each os [sic of] these had to speak at the risk of displeasing the rulers of their day – and how much poorer the world would have been if they had not excercised [sic excercised] their right of free speech.

Freedom is not safety. It is the opportunity to say something meaningful.

In times like ours, in South Carolina today, it is our courage that shows we are alive. In the words of Edward Arlington Robinson "Because we move and breath, and say a few complacent words with tongues that are afraid to say our thoughts, we think we are alive. But we are dead."

It is because our forefathers would be alive, would know the truth, that freedom of speech was proclaimed in Article I of our Bill of Rights. That First Amendment, as we call it, erects a fence inside which man can talk. Lawmakers and government officials are told to stay outside that fence.

Unfortunately some men in authority feel impelled to climb over the fence, and even at times to break the fence down. They identify their own policies with truth and punish those who disagree with them. I suspect these men in power have no confidence in their own ideas, and seek to silence others because they fear they will not win in a fair and square debate. I say with Milton, "Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever know [sic knew] Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

I remarked that some men in authority feel impelled to silence those who disagree with them. Some, but not all. Listen to this quotation, as as [sic] you do, guess who might have said the words.

"Here in American we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrines. Without exhaustive debate, even heated debate, of ideas and programs, free government would weaken and wither. But if we allow ourselves to be persuaded that every individual or party that takes issue with our convictions is necessarily wicked and treasonable, then, indeed, we are approaching the end of freedom's road.

Is this the voice of some harried liberal or radical? No. The speaker is Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States.

Sometimes we forget that democracy means that public officials are to be the people's servants and not the people's master. We allow government to be dominating and hesitate to challenge it when it goes beyond its powers. We would be better off if we kept in mind the injunction of Justice Black of the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Public Officials cannot be constitutionally vested with powers to select the ideas people can think about, censor the public views they can express, or choose persons or groups people can associate with. Public officials with such power are not public servants, they are public masters."

Most important of all, we must insist that our government allow the free encounter between truth and falsehood to go on unhampered in our schools and colleges. This is the meaning of the term academic freedom.

Do we have the right to insist that our schools be free? Do we have the right to tell the government of South Carolina, for example, to leave education alone?

The story of Galileo tells us that we must insit [sic insist] on freedom to study, to learn and to teach. This great scientist and professor – as a result of his scholarly research – was convinced that the earth moved around the sun. But the rulers of 1630 condemned his teaching as dangerous lies and threatened him with death unless he admitted he was wrong. They called him up before the investigating committee of his day, called the Inquisition, tortured him and forced him to confess his errors. So Galileo said the earth stood still.

In our day we still have the investigating committees that call teachers before them to force them to conform or lose their jobs. Indeed, some committees have sought to jail teachers who would not answer their questions. But today education has a firm ally in the United States Supreme Court. Let be quote briefly from the Supreme Court decision in the Sweezy case in 1957.

"The essentiality of freedom in the community of American Universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any straitjacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation. No field of education is so thoroughtly [sic thoroughly] comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot function in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding, otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die."

Thus speaks the Supreme Court. There is the case for academic freedom. There are those in South Carolina who are terribly angry with the Supreme Court of late. It speaks for free speech, for academic freedom, and it has spoken for integration. But we at Allen respect the Court and praise its good judgement in our day. 

In 1954, before the Sweezy decision, Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago and then head of the Funds for Republic said, "The entire teaching profession of the United States is now intimidated." I suspect, as McCarthyism is gradually vanishing today, that Dr. Hutchins would not make as sweeping a statement now. And I trust that the spirist [sic spirit] of independence shown at Allen will further encourage teachers to stand on their own hind legs and be men

What does a scholar do when called before one of today's investigation committees? Must he prostrate himself before it as Galileo was forced to do? What are his obligations as citizen and teacher?

Let us start by saying that investigation is a proper stop in lawmaking and all of us should assist a legislature in getting the facts it needs to create intelligent laws.

But we must say, as the Supreme Court says, in its Watkins decision, that investigation is only justified as a stop in lawmaking. A committee no right to investigate in areas where it can make no law, and it has no right to investigate merely to expose the ideas and private lives of witnesses. The Supreme Court emphatically states that investigating committees may not encroach upon an individual's right to privacy nor abridge his liberty of speech.

The Court has also held that no man need be a witness against himself. He may properly plead the Fifth Amendment to our constitution. Keep in mind that the Fifth Amendment is for the innocent as well as the guilty and that every man is innocent until proven guilty. Indeed, some prominent Americans well known to be utterly innocent, have chosen to take the Fifth Amendment for the very purpose of protecting the civil liberties of all Americans. Dean Griswold of Harvard Law School calls the Fifth Amendment a good friend and an old friend of freedom – a shield for freedom of thought and "a hindrance to any government which might wish to prosecute for thoughts and opinions alone."

In the idea of freedom of speech is the right not to speak, the right to be silent. For how can a man hold whatever ideas he wishes, how can he save a free conscience, if government has the power to pry thoughts out of his mind. This, too, is the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. 

To really appreciate the value of the Fifth Amendment – to recognize it as a protector of men's liberties, it is helpful to recall the history of why it was put into our constitution. We go back to English history to the time the Stuart Kings and the persecution of men for their religious ideas.

The first men to refuse to answer the questions of investigating committees are Protestants – Puritans. Let us recall for a moment the ordeals of John Udall and John Lilburn in 17th century England.

Udall was a distinguished minister who was hounded to tell who wrote unsigned pamphlets criticizing the King's bishops.

"Will you take the oath" (to tell us all we want to know), he was asked when called before the Privy Council.

"I dare not take it" replied Udall.

"Then you must got to prison, and it will go hard with you, for you must remain there until you be glad to take it."

"God's will be done" said Udall. I had rather to go to prison with a good conscience than be at liberty with an ill one."

He went to prison – under sentence of death.

John Lilburn was no distinguished man. Rather he was a humble apprentice persecuted for refusing to name Protestants who had brought banned books into England from Holland. Like Udall he refused to tell the investigators what they wanted.

Lilburn was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped as he was dragged through the streets of London. He was put in the pillory and gagged when he spoke for freedom. He was put in jail, chained, and refused food for ten days. Thirty months latter [sic later] he was freed from jail when a new government came to power.

Americans know the story of Udall and Lilburn and other [sic others] like them. They were determined that such cruel treatment not happen in America. So they put the Fifth Amendment into our National Constitution. South Carolinians knew the stories too, and the same words are found in the South Carolina Constitution.

These are our liberties – these are our rights. Brave men established them at great risk. Today it still takes courage to exercise them. But when we lack that courage we become helpless tools of tyrants – we cease to be men and we betray our country's precious heritage of freedom.

A college student gets a sorry education when he does not learn of his rights and does not develop the will to defend them. In college they are learned most in the student of history and government. Come on in and learn. The water is fine. It is the fountain of freedom.

Text from a document in the William D. Workman, Jr. Papers at the South Carolina Political Collections Repository.