Anti-Censorship Attorney Edward de Grazia -- RIP

Edward de Grazia
(photo: The New York Times)

Attorney Edward de Grazia, whose trailblazing legal initiatives expanded free speech in the United States, died recently at age 86. The New York Times' obit offers a succinct overview of the barrister's active, profoundly influential career.

He successfully represented Grove Press in its 1964 landmark censorship case involving Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer. De Grazia was also the attorney who led the fight against the U.S. Postal Service's attempt to prohibit dissemination of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. He also won a court case that permitted public showings of the movie I Am Curious (Yellow).

It's easy to look back at these cases and imagine there was something quaint in the legal issues and moral fervor they generated. However, at the time, de Grazia's work was absolutely essential to establishing free speech in literature and motion pictures. This was serious business, with high stakes for open, creative minds. Had de Grazia lost these key cases, the cause of artistic and literary freedom would have been stunted. The consequence of de Grazia's extraordinary legal work can be found today in libraries, bookstores, museums, movie theaters, the stage, the ballet, television, radio, music, and the Internet. The politically conservative forces opposed to de Grazia's legal positions survived and have even prospered. So has the nation, which religious and political ideologues falsely asserted was simply dissipating in a morass of what they considered "pornographic works," such as those of Henry Miller and James Joyce.

De Grazia's passing is a reminder that the struggle to maintain free speech continues. It's the present generation -- people such as you and I -- that must carry the torch that Edward de Grazia so proudly and decisively held high for all Americans.