Alan Barth

Background

He was born on October 21, 1906, in New York City, the son of Jacob Lauchheimer, who owned a small department store, and Flora Barth.

Education

He was educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachussets After graduating in 1924, he traveled around the world and then entered Yale University, from which he graduated in 1929 with a Ph. B.

Career

Barth then worked as both a free-lance writer and a salesman until he became a reporter and editorial writer for the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal in 1936 and 1937. From 1938 to 1941 he was the Washington, D. C. , correspondent of the McClure Newspaper Syndicate. He served as a speechwriter for Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, and on the staff of the Office of War Information, from 1941 to 1943, when he became an editorial writer for the Washington Post. Although already well known for his editorials in the Washington Post, Barth's reputation was secured by the first of his five books, The Loyalty of Free Men (1951). In it, Barth attacked what he called the "cult of loyalty, " then at its most intense. In separate chapters he exposed the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), the government's loyalty program, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as special violations of human rights involving government-sponsored research and academic freedom. Although some who defended the Bill of Rights did so for partisan reasons, Barth was not in any way sympathetic to Communism or to the Communist party of the United States. He argued, rather, that individual freedom "is the supreme end which the government of the United States was instituted to secure. " However, it is also "a source of strength if it is used wisely. It cannot provide a guarantee against ruinous mistakes; but it can provide a means of correcting mistakes, a means denied to those who live in a society where dissent is silenced. " This book was widely praised for the clarity and strength of its reasoning, which did not keep it from being unfairly attacked. Conservative anti-Communists detested it. So also did Irving Kristol, then managing editor of Commentary, a monthly journal of opinion on political and cultural matters of special interest to Jews. Kristol had not yet become a conservative, but he believed that American Communism was dangerous. Barth aroused his anger by maintaining that it did not threaten national security, and Kristol attributed Communist sympathies to Barth that he did not have. Time was on Barth's side, and the facts as well.

Unlike academic critics of the "red scare, " Barth lacked the protection of tenure. His outspoken editorials exposed the Washington Post to many attacks and once nearly cost him his job. To Philip L. Graham, his publisher, a 1950 editorial by Barth on the right of Communist party chairman Earl Browder not to give names to a congressional committee was the last straw. Only the intervention of Supreme Court associate justice Felix Frankfurter saved Barth from being fired and the Post from making what would have proved to be a most embarrassing mistake. Fortunately, Barth had no compromising associations in his past and could not be effectively smeared by red-baiters. His only loss occurred after the Republicans came to power, when The Loyalty of Free Men was removed from government-sponsored libraries overseas.

Although Barth was not a lawyer, his explication of cases and clarity of analysis was admired by reviewers, including Abe Fortas, later an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Barth anticipated a direction the Supreme Court would soon take in an important series of decisions expanding the rights of criminal defendants. He would subsequently write other books as well as numerous magazine articles. Barth, who once saw a man shot to death on the streets of Washington, was an ardent supporter of gun control. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he declared war on the National Rifle Association, writing more than one thousand editorials in favor of gun control, seventy-seven of them on consecutive days. This was a losing cause, unlike school desegregation and home rule for the District of Columbia, both of which he supported long before they became law. He was instrumental in changing the editorial position of the Washington Post on racial issues. It was in his words that the paper came out in 1945 against a threatened strike by white transit workers to prevent blacks from being hired.

Achievements

• During his distinguished career as journalist, editorial writer, and explicator of constitutional law to laymen, Barth received many honors: the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished service to American journalism in 1947, the Sidney Hillman Award of the American Newspaper Guild for distinguished editorial writing in 1948, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Bill of Rights Award in 1964, and the Florence Lasker Civil Liberties Award in 1967, among others.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Rights of Free Men

    (A collection of essays examines aspects of civil rights, ...)

  • Prophets With Honor: Great Dissents and Great Dissenters in the Supreme Court

    (Dessent's in the courts.)

  • Loyalty of Free Men

Politics

Barth elaborated on the threat to freedom in Government by Investigation (1955), a long and detailed inquiry into the use of Congress's investigative power to achieve political ends. He discussed what he called "legislative trials, " hearings in which committees investigated persons punitively, to ruin their good names and otherwise punish them for opinions and activities that were not illegal. This prerogative of Congress was being so abused at the time that Barth feared that the balance of power between government's branches had become adversely affected. He warned against the danger of a "legislative tyranny" that would subvert the Constitution itself. With the passing of the McCarthy era, Barth turned his attention to the abuse of individual rights in criminal cases. The Price of Liberty (1961) argued that American society as a whole had much at stake in protecting accused persons against summary seizures, unwarranted searches, forced confessions, denial of counsel, and other violations of constitutionally protected rights.

Membership

He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1952.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• When Barth retired from the Washington Post in 1973, the columnist Roger Wilkins said Barth was considered "the liberal conscience of Washington by those who knew his work. "

Connections

On July 1, 1939, Barth married Adrienne Mayer; they had two children.

Father:

Jacob Lauchheimer

department store owner

Mother:

Flora Barth

Wife:

Adrienne Mayer

References

• The Powers That Be