Fear on Trial

John Henry Faulk was a popular radio and television personality during the McCarthy era. He was host of his own radio program on WCBS in New York when he publicly challenged AWARE Inc. an ultrapatriotic group engaged in the systematic blacklisting of entertainment personalities. In response an AWARE bulletin accused Faulk himself of subversive associations. Angry and frightened by this accusation Faulk brought suit against AWARE charging conspiracy to libel him and to destroy his career. Thus began one of the great civil rights cases of the twentieth century.John Henry Faulk recounts the story of this harrowing time in Fear on Trial the dramatic account of his six years on the blacklistan exile that began with the AWARE bulletin and ended with his vindication by a jury award of $3500000the largest libel award in U.S. history at that time. The heart of the book is the trial of Faulk''s libel action against AWARE in which attorney Louis Nizer relentlessly exposed the blacklist for what it wasa cynical disdain of elementary decency couched in the rhetoric of patriotism.Many of the people involved in the Faulk case were and are famous: attorneys Nizer and Roy Cohn; Edward R. Murrow and Charles Collingwood; Myrna Loy Kim Hunter Tony Randall and Lee Grant; J. Frank Dobie; Ed Sullivan David Susskind and Mark Goodson. But the hero is Faulk himself a man whoin the words of Studs Terkelfaced the bastards and beat them down.