
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 10, 1990                   TAG: 9004100700
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: AUSTIN, TEXAS                                LENGTH: Short

FOLKLORIST WHO FOUGHT BLACKLISTING DIES AT 76

Humorist-folklorist John Henry Faulk, who faced blacklisting head-on with a lawsuit in the 1950s and became a Faulk champion of civil rights, has died after a long bout with cancer. He was 76.

The Austin-born author and lecturer, whose objections effectively ended blacklisting in the entertainment industry, died Monday at his Austin home, said his niece, Anne McAffee.

Faulk was a popular CBS radio and television personality when, in 1957, he mounted a six-year legal battle in a New York court against an organization that tried to brand him a subversive.

The network signed him in 1946 to do a weekly, one-hour radio show. He worked for CBS until 1957, when he was fired after AWARE Inc., a group that blacklisted entertainment personalities, accused him the year before of having subversive associations.

Faulk sued AWARE in 1956, charging the group had libeled him and destroyed his career. He won the lawsuit and was awarded $3.5 million, but the judgment was later reduced to $725,000 on appeal.

The 1962 trial brought an end to blacklisting. Faulk returned to Austin, where as a lecturer and writer he earned a reputation as a champion of individual rights.

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