In 1953 President Truman announced the US had developed the hydrogen bomb shortly before turning the presidency over to Dwight D. Eisenhower; Georgia approved the first literature censorship board in the United States; James Watson and Francis Crick announced that they had determined the chemical structure of DNA; Joseph Stalin died; Ian Fleming published the first James Bond novel; Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest; Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England; the first Chevrolet Corvette was built; and Miklo Radulovich began a fight that arguably constitutes a major milestone in the history of this great country.

In 1953 McCarthyism was in full swing.

After ten years of service and one year as a reservist, Lieutenant Radulovich was stripped of his Air Force commission because his father, a Yugoslav immigrant, kept abreast of events in his native land by subscribing to Serbian newspapers.

Kendall Wingrove of the National Ledger summarizes the story quite well:

The lieutenant decided to fight the charges and demanded an Air Force hearing. He needed legal assistance, but any attorney helping Radulovich ran the risk of also being labeled a subversive. Eventually Charles Lockwood, a semi-retired lawyer and former Detroit College of Law professor, came to his aid.

Lockwood decided to fight the case in the media. He contacted Russell Harris of the Detroit News, who explained the situation to his readers. Among them was a young attorney named Ken Sanborn, who remembered Radulovich from their days in the Aviation Cadet Program at Michigan State College (now Michigan State University).

The politically conservative Sanborn, a first lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve, risked everything to defend his old classmate. Like Lockwood, he accepted no fee.

Despite such heroic legal services, the hearing’s outcome was predetermined, and the Air Force stripped Radulovich of his commission.

In addition to these two attorneys, the Detroit News was instrumental:

On Oct. 14, 1953, The News printed another front-page article on the case, and this time it attracted the attention of CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in New York. Murrow hosted a television newsmagazine show called ‘See It Now,’ where he occasionally focused on what he called the ‘little picture’. Murrow was anxious to expose Sen. McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunts and had been waiting for the right story of an average citizen being persecuted. When he read of Milo Radulovich he was certain he had found it.

Murrow took The Detroit News story to his CBS producer Fred Friendly. Friendly immediately dispatched reporter Joe Wershba to Dexter to interview Radulovich, his father and sister. Wershba called Friendly that evening and told him this was definitely the story they needed…

The show was, according to Friendly, ‘the shortest half hour in the history of television.’ It consisted of filmed interviews with Milo, his wife, and father. CBS reporters had combed the town of Dexter looking for opposition to Milo but all supported his fight.

On Nov. 24, five weeks after the show aired, Harold E. Talbott, Secretary of the Air Force, reversed the findings of the administrative board of three Air Force colonels that had declared Radulovich a security risk. He was cleared of all charges.

It was the beginning of the end for Sen. McCarthy. Murrow aired an attack on McCarthy in March of 1954 and gave McCarthy a show of his own to respond. McCarthy’s only response was to call Murrow a communist.

In a 1969 interview by Richard Ryan of the Detroit News Radulovich stated:

There is absolutely no question that it affected my life. It stopped me from achieving some of the goals I wanted to attain. I never got my college degree and that bugs the hell out of me…There are probably a lot of guys floating around now washing garbage cans who were involved in the same period. And there might have been a lot more. I consider myself really lucky. It is only by the grace of public opinion that I was able to carry my fight. If it hadn’t been for The Detroit News I don’t know where I would be today. Where else but in this country can you find a free press that is willing to express itself to save a little man?

I ask the same question: “Where else but in this country can you find a free press that is willing to express itself to save a little man?�

Amendment I of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution is something to remember, as well as cherish and protect:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

What would you have done if you had been Radulovich?

Additional notes: Radulovich’s story was reduced to book form in 1996 by Michael Ranville in To Strike at a King: The Turning Point in the McCarthy Witch-Hunt. George Clooney has now brought this story to theatres across the country in Good Night, Good Luck.