"Voices of Protest"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Alan Brinkley's book, "Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression," which examines the social history and popularity of the movements of U.S. Senator from Louisiana Huey P. Long and Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from a suburb of Detroit. The paper discusses the history of the movements and compares them to today's political climate.

From the Paper:

"Long and Coughlin zeroed in on the vague anxieties with which society had wrestled for many decades over ''the animosity toward concentrated power, the concern about the erosion of community and personal autonomy" (Brinkley, 261). Their efforts turned the focus of the public away from the cultural issues that had dominated the politics of the 1920s and focused it on the economic realities of the 1930s and the Great Depression. Their rhetoric addressed issues of privilege, wealth and centralized power as well as the failure of conventional political institutions to deal with these areas (Brinkley, 261). Brinkley maintains that Long and Coughlin are representative of a long tradition of opposition to "large, inaccessible power centers, a tradition that stretched from the American Revolution to the populist revolt and beyond" (Brinkley, 261). However, he also shows that even by the 1930s, American society had begun a process of economic centralization that was already far too advanced for a genuine reversal to be a possibility (Brinkley, 262)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Brinkley, Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982).

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