Literature Network » Emile Zola

Despite centuries of violent retaliation, dissent continues

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From: Sunday Gazette-Mail
Date: 20080113
Author:Perry Mann

"Must man always talk like other people or keep quiet? ... Not the slightest truth could show its head without arousing anger and jeers," Emile Zola wrote in 1866.

I learned Zola's lesson, not from my parents or schools, but from experience. I learned it, when as a teacher in public schools in Virginia, I wrote letters to newspapers denouncing unequivocally Virginia's legislative and judicial reaction to Brown v. Board, which was to let the blacks have the poor public schools and to build model private schools for the whites. My employment as a teacher was terminated forthwith.

It was not an ...

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