In 1962, I won the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ “Voice of Democracy” award in my
hometown of Providence, Kentucky. The contest required students to write
speeches on the topic, “What Freedom Means to Me”. The script of that speech,
which I delivered to judges, is provided below. Typos have been corrected (used
manual typewriters with no correct tapes in those days); otherwise I have, with
several deep breaths and a couple of tears for lost youth, provided the script
verbatim.
Below that speech is a letter I received from the director
of church relations of PROTESTANTS AND OTHER AMERICANS UNITED for Separation of
Church and State, dated February 8, 1962. It too is copied verbatim.
I wonder what happened to that 17 year old boy?
I wonder about how quickly our idealism meets the realities and
politics and religions of the world, and how we manage to maintain, react,
re-adjust, re-affirm? Or do we get bitter and depressed? Or do we just keep on
keeping on, doing what we always have, hoping for the best?
One of the great things about having been a teacher for so
many years is that I rubbed elbows with 17 year-old college freshmen. Their
idealism and naïveté helped keep me balanced. Rather than my brainwashing them,
they served to remind me that I don’t have all the answers, and that fresh
perspectives from naïve people keep humanity alive.
What Freedom
Means to Me
The right to breathe deeply
of clean, crisp air in the early morning twilight and know that I am close to
God; to feel like an eagle loose from a cage and soaring over snow-capped
mountains in the distant horizon. This is freedom.
To me, freedom has, actually,
two forms. The first form is the natural freedom a person has. This freedom is
found to a certain extent in everyone and every living thing and can’t be taken
away by any one or any means. This is the feeling a person has when he is born,
that he is a free man—not a dog on a chain or a puppet on a string.
It is the feeling that is
responsible for the bringing about of the second phase of the term, as it was
this characteristic in men that led them to seek and find the second form,
which is, in my opinion, the unleashing of the inborn spirit of freedom into
reality so that it can be used to its fullest extent in everyday life without
fear.
Thus the two forms are
interrelated and form a feeling. To this feeling there is a one-word definition
that is very suitable. This word is life.
Without freedom, one doesn’t
live, he merely exists, living a life filled with fear and trepidation; fearing
to speak or pray. Afraid to answer a knock on a door; afraid he’ll find on the
other side of that door an evil, grinning face, and a tommy-gun spitting in his
stomach. Dodging from shadows; afraid to trust even your friends; cowering in
fear. This is life without freedom.
Freedom is the right for me
to know the God put me on this earth as an individual, different from everyone
else, not as just one of a million pieces cast from the same mold. To know that
I am somebody, someone that means something, not just a tool to be used until
it is worn out, then cast away; thrown into a junk heap. To know this fact is
freedom.
The right to get out of bed
in the morning and go to school, where I have a choice of studies and a right
to speak my thoughts and ideas without fear about any subject. This is freedom.
Freedom is my right to go to
work knowing that I am benefitting myself and my family, not the “state” or
someone sitting in a plush fancy apartment while I live in a pig-sty building
with ten-inch cracks in the walls.
Freedom is the feeling within
me that I can hold my head up high and not have to worship or bow to anyone. It
is this same blessing, though, that gives me the right to worship God in
whatever church I please or wherever I please, whenever I please, and however I
please without fear, but with joy, reverence, and thankfulness.
Freedom is to me the
wonderful objective that was fought for by William Penn in 1675 and by Peter
Zenger in 1735. Freedom, the same blessing that was sought after and won by
such men as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Munroe, the Great
Emancipator Abraham Lincoln, and the countless other men and women through the
ages.
To answer the question of
what freedom means to me is simply to give my definition of the word freedom.
Freedom is life to me; a full, happy, contented life with God, and without
fear. Of course, there are days of strife for me and everyone else in the free
world, as in the entire world. I, and everyone else, have certain “thorns” in
my everyday life, but with these thorns comes the sweetest rose of any age.
This rose is freedom, the God-given blessing which I will fight for as long as
I have the faintest ray of faith in God, my country, my world, and myself.
Letter From Protestants and Other Americans United
Dear Jim:
It was inspiring to read your speech, “What Freedom Means to Me”, in
the Henderson Gleaner and Journal of February 2. I wish I might have heard you
deliver it.
We, who are trying to uphold Separation of Church and State and
religious liberty, are encouraged to know that a teen-ager has such an
understanding of the subject.
In your own grand state of Kentucky one church is exerting pressure
on the State Legislature to pass a bill requiring the Protestants of Kentucky
to pay $200 tuition to every child enrolled in the parochial schools and free
bus transportation. This is not fair, especially when those children are taught
that Protestant religions are “counterfeit”, as you will read in the enclosed
leaflet, “What Do They Teach in Catholic Schools”. When something is
counterfeit you withdraw it from circulation and you destroy it. I hope you
will read the enclosed leaflets.
This organization is not anti-catholic, it is for Separation
of Church and State. It is just as quick to call attention to Protestant
violations as to Catholic.
May God bless you, young friend, and guide you always.
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