Joseph Welch denounces Sen. Joseph McCarthy in Washington, D.C.

The Boston attorney denounces McCarthy’s attack on Fred Fisher, a junior member of Welch’s law firm, Hale & Dorr, during one of the series of Congressional hearings that began on April 22, 1954. Welch asks, “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy is censured by the U.S. Senate in December 1954. He dies three years later at age 48.