U.S. Army chief counsel Joseph Welch (left) and Sen. Joe McCarthy (right) say it with gestures during the celebrated Army-McCarthy hearings in Washington, D.C., in June 1954. During the hearings, Welch famously asked McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Photo courtesy of the Associated Press
By John Skipper
In June of 1954, much of the United States was living in peace and prosperity. Americans were living in homes with $11,000 mortgages, paying 22 cents a gallon for gas for their cars which cost about $2,000.
The Cleveland Indians, led by pitcher Bob Feller of Van Meter, were in second place in the American League but were about to go on a tear that would lead them a record-setting 111-win season.
Children throughout the country were being inoculated with the new Salk polio vaccine and Americans were laughing to “I Love Lucy,” “Father Knows Best,” and other wholesome television programs.
In this pre-Elvis Presley, pre-rock-and-roll era, they listened to hit songs such as “Sh-boom, Sh-boom” by the Crew Cuts, whose name came from the short-cropped men’s hair style of the era.
In the midst of all of this, many of the 65 percent of Americans who owned television sets were watching a real-life drama unfold in Washington, D.C. It was a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in which a relatively unknown lawyer and native Iowan, Joseph Nye Welch, rebuked U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy with a single phrase: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
In today’s political atmosphere, the words seem tepid. In the summer of 1954, they were shocking.
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