One-hour high-definition video written, produced, and directed by Roderick Bradford, author of the biography "D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker" (Prometheus Books, 2006). Produced in association with Inquiry Media Productions at the Center For Inquiry, Amherst, New York. Edited by Tom Flynn and winner of the Portland Humanist Film Festival Grand Prize For Feature Length Film Festival Award in 2011. Production funded by a grant from the James Hervey Johnson Charitable Educational Trust. Copyright © 2009 Roderick Bradford.
This 17:41 segment is Act One of the (58:35) historical video that chronicles the life of D.M. Bennett, nineteenth-century America's most controversial publisher and free-speech martyr. Bennett founded the "blasphemous" New York City freethought periodical The Truth Seeker and challenged the puritanical Comstock Laws. He was imprisoned for mailing alleged "obscenity" and the monumental petition campaign for a presidential pardon went all the way to the White House.