Stephen L. Carter, Columnist

Why I Support Dissent: My Great-Uncle Who Wouldn't Name Names

Investigated by the FBI, jailed for assisting Communists, driven into exile.

August 12, 2016 at 7:27 PM UTC

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”

Dashiell Hammett and Alphaeus Hunton, on their way to jail in 1951.
Source: Bettmann

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This year marks a peculiar anniversary for my family. Seventy-five years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a file on my great-uncle. Ten years after that, he was in a federal penitentiary for refusing to name names. The swirl of events of the intervening decade helps explain why I believe so strongly in the freedom of dissent, and why I find so repulsive efforts to restrict debate on controversial subjects, or to try to harass or intimidate those with whom we disagree into recanting or shutting up.

My great-uncle’s name was Alphaeus Hunton. He taught English at Howard University. He held a master’s degree from Harvard and a doctorate from New York University. His specialty was the Victorian poets, particularly Tennyson. And in 1941, due largely to his activism in the cause of anti-colonialism, the FBI opened a file on him.