The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
General
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years
Social justice; Social problems
After so many years the passions and prejudices of the
half-forgotten struggle ought to have died away, and men may
now speak candidly and without restraint of these things as
they really were. Let me then record my deliberate conviction
that Albert Parsons never entertained the thought of harm
against any human being, for I have seldom met a man of a more
genuine kindness of heart; and if the men he denounced in his
speeches had been in actual danger before him I am certain
he would have been the first to rush to their defense from
physical harm. And while I am on this subject, I may add an
expression of a wonder growing upon me for many years, that
no one has ever paid an adequate tribute to this man. I have
not the slightest sympathy with his doctrines, if he believed
in the violence he seemed sometimes to preach, which I could
never tell. I have lived in the world long enough to know that
the social wrongs that moved him to protest can never be cured
by violence. Say, then, that the man erred grievously; if his
error had been ten times as great it ought to have been wiped
from human recollection by his sacrifice, and there should
remain but the one image of him, leaving his place of safety
and voluntarily entering the prisoner's dock. I doubt if that
magnanimous act has its parallel in history. A hundred men have
been elevated to be national heroes for deeds far less heroic.
The fact that after all these years it is still obscured
and men hesitate to speak about it is marvelous testimony to
the power of the press to produce enduring impressions. Even
the other staggering fact that in the history of American
courts this is the only man that ever came voluntarily and
gave himself up and then was hanged, even that seems to be
eliminated from the little consideration that is ever bestowed
upon a figure of courage so extraordinary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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