Did Anyone Here Do Any of the Following?

Question

Did you do any of the following?

1. Vote for Joe McCarthy for Senator in Wisconsin?

2. March over the Edmund Pettis Bridge on 3/7/65, Bloody Sunday?

3. Try to prevent (as a member of the police force) the marchers from coming over the Edmund Pettis Bridge on Bloody Sunday?

4. Vote for Dwight D. Eisenhower?

5. Attend or listen to Winston Churchill's 3/5/46 Iron Curtain speech at Westminster Collge in Fulton, MO?

6. Vote for Barry Goldwater for President in 1964?

If you did any of these things, provide details please! Why did you do what you did back then? Looking back, do you think it was the right or wrong decision?

I am afraid that so many individuals that lived through these historic events are passing on and I'd love to get a history lesson from someone who actually did these things.

Answer 1

go barry!!!!!    i lived in arizona at the time and he was a senator from there

Answer 2

This is mostly second-hand, but I'm afraid that's what you're going to get as answers to most of your questions.

1.  My father voted for Joe McCarthy in the 1946 Republican primary, and I spent some time asking him why.  He was a Democrat, but Wisconsin had and has an open primary.  After the War, though, the Progressive Party -- which had owned the state for two decades -- dissolved, and sitting senator Bob LaFollette Jr decided to run as a Republican, as there pretty much was no state Democratic Party.

Joe McCarthy was known to the family, as he had come over to my grandmother's house for a free lunch quite a lot when he was a struggling law student at Marquette in the 30s, and for a while he was dating my mother's best friend (my mother didn't like him).  Also he was a Catholic and a purported war hero, "tail-gunner Joe" -- untrue, but that was his campaign pitch in 1946.  Plus, Young Bob's brother, Phil, the Governor, was embroiled in a scandal involving an aide who had killed someone while driving drunk.  Phil was not Bob, but this tarnished the LaFollette brand.

For the record, both my parents voted against McCarthy in his successful re-election bid in 1952, after he had revealed what he really was.

I can reply to several of your other numbers but couldn't give you anything so good as this.

  

Answer 3

At 62 I was too young to have participated in these events and now too old to remember much about them. My suggestion is to find someone or several to talk to about this. It will be a first person, oral history of these events and in itself would be invaluable. Be sure to keep a record of who you spoke with their age, city in which they lived at the time, and any other pertinent information which lends validity to your study. Another important aspect is to converse with them, not do it as an opinion poll. This way will put them at ease and they then will be more open to your inquiries. People who are elderly tend to be very guarded about these things and sometimes are unwilling to discuss the with strangers. Develop a friendship first and the rest will be easy. I say this from experience while researching the "orphan trains" of the 19th century. Good luck!

gatita_63109