Essay: Forgetting and Remembering the Labor Plays of Manny Fried

Abstract

Against the background of current campaigns to undercut industrial labor unions in the United States and to isolate wealth in the fabled "one-percent," Barry Witham explores the working-class plays of Emanuel "Manny" Fried who contested these same forces thirty years earlier. Fried was blacklisted after a celebrated appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but retaliated against the FBI and the Catholic Church by documenting in dramatic form his harassment and the suppression of the labor union movement. His memory plays recall a turbulent era which still haunts our culture.

Keywords

• Catholicism
• FBI
• Labor plays
• black list
• government
• memory