Word: drumhead
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
From the hoarse throats of 250,000 Cubans jammed before the presidential palace in Havana rose the chilling cry: "Pa-re-don! To the wall! To the firing squad!" By whipping up a frenzy of hatred, Fidel Castro last week got mob approval for a resumption of the drumhead justice that earlier put to death 551 Cubans accused as supporters of ex-Dictator Fulgencio Batista. Now the blood purge would be aimed at defectors in the band of barbudos (bearded ones) who lifted him to power, of whom hundreds are now in prison...
...time, there was a proto-union of Irish immigrant miners that violently opposed exploitation by American industry. Calling themselves the "Molly Maguires" after the famed Irish rebel,*they operated outside the law, tried and condemned opponents on their own. Blythe, who was obviously no labor sympathizer, records one such drumhead trial. John O'Brien Inman was the son of the prominent portraitist Henry Inman. Oddly enough, he himself never made much of a reputation. But his Moonlight Skating in Central Park is pure champagne: chill, sparkling, heady. And like the others in the exhibition, his picture helps fill...
...land where cautious men do not openly criticize the Communist Party. In the last nine months, the Communists have established themselves as the sole strong political organization in the new republic, dominating the mobs, the press, the radio and parts of the government. On their behalf, a drumhead People's Court, whose broadcast proceedings are challenging Cairo's Voice of the Arabs as the Mideast's most popular radio program, fills the Iraqi people with Communist-made opinions. Such is the nightmarish atmosphere that in at least one Iraqi city (Basra) the populace is firmly convinced that...
...total result of the press coverage was that the U.S. newspaper reader, depending on his paper to bring focus to a scene far beyond his own powers of definition, was left with a murky picture. The facts were all there-the drumhead justice, the full-length profiles of the dramatis personae in a national upheaval. The meaning was not. Publisher John S. Knight (Miami, Akron, Detroit, Charlotte) openly criticized both A.P. and U.P.I, for "obscure coverage." But the blame was wider and the problem deeper than the press services...
...democracy fell still. The men who had just won a popular revolution for old ideals-for democracy, justice and honest government-themselves picked up the arrogant tools of dictatorship. As its public urged them on, the Cuban rebel army shot more than 200 men, summarily convicted in drumhead courts, as torturers and mass murderers for the fallen Batista dictatorship. The constitution, a humanitarian document forbidding capital punishment, was overridden...