Source: We Choose America, Hoover E 169.1.W5x

Staff Person: Ralph Scott

Description:

We Choose America was East Carolina University's literary contribution to the 1976 American bi-centennial. Written at the height of the Cold War, the volume pokes fun at Communism using the American view of perceived differences between life in the Soviet Union and the "blessings of our…way of life." Published about ten years after the Cuban missile crisis and a year after the Watergate scandal, the book does not once mention the Soviet Union, but rather refers to "The Communists" and "Russia" throughout. The author of the work was Thomas A. Williams, a professor of Foreign Languages and Literature at East Carolina. Williams was editor of Era Press (the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had passed the U.S. Congress in 1972), and The New East Magazine. The work is illustrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Charlotte Observer cartoonist Eugene G. Payne. The foreword to the small pamphlet was written by East Carolina University Chancellor Leo W. Jenkins.

Williams, Thomas A. "We Choose America," (Greenville, N.C., Era Press, 1975), 48pp. Hoover Collection E 169.1 W5x and North Carolina Collection.

8/22/2008