McCarthyism ... were you there?

Subject: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Deckman
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 10:54 PM

I'm old enough that I witnessed the bad effects of McCarthyism at its worst. I felt the fear. I saw, firsthand, the pain and suffering of the blacklist. The experience caused me to evaluate my friends, to pick and choose what and where I sang, which songs I did or didn't sing. (don't assume which way I chose, as you don't know me yet). What were your experiences? This thread might prove to be very interesting!

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 11:03 PM

Nope, just missed it, born in '51. Heard of the fallout, though.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: DougR
Date: 01 Sep 01 - 11:49 PM

If you mean, were you alive and old enough to know what was going on, yes, I was there.

DougR

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:08 AM

Yes

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: iamjohnne
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:23 AM

I was born in fifty so I missed it first hand. But during the sixties my folks always warned me not to sign anything if I was at any sort of rally or gathering, at the time I didnt understand why. I realize now they thought all folk singers had to be communists. Like Woody and Pete.

Johnne 'goin where the weather suits my clothes'

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: GUEST,Al
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 11:57 AM

My friend and accordion player Miguel got hosed off the courthouse steps in Berkeley protesting the house unamerican activities committee.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:15 PM

Potentially a very interesting thread Deckman, and I hope you get a great deal of response.

As a side question, did you, at that time in history, believe Soviet expansionism as harmless, good, untrue propaganda, or someting else? Was it just a case of your perception that the USA was comparably expansionist?

And when the USSR collapsed and the KGB records were open to reveal that, for instance, Chambers was right and our State department was infiltrated, did it alter your perspective at all?

I find this period in history fascinating but I find very few who are able to talk about it with much objectivity...we all seem to have a lifetime of belief and action to rationalize and justify. On the one hand, if there were some way to prove McCarthy absolutely correct in the assumptions that led to his actions.....I don't think it would change anyone's mind. Conversely, if the KGB records had offered proof positive that the Soviet Union had no expansionist plans....a John Bircher type would merely assume the records had been tampered with.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 12:58 PM

I was in university at the time, a large southwestern school. By univ. rules we had to take a course in government. The advice was that the instructor I had drawn was something of a pinko, and write essays accordingly to get good marks without work. I generally cribbed something out of the newspapers and a book or two and got a good mark. I was one of many there under the GI bill. We didn't think much about politics, just got on with our studies, and weekend visits to the beer halls. We never agitated, and read but were unaffected by the occasional piece in the student daily about blacklists. In other words, the era had little effect on me or anyone I knew personally. The object of this posting is that I think most people at that time never felt that they were affected in any way.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: marty D
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 01:42 PM

I had that period summed up very nicely for me by one of my teachers. he seemed to cut through an awful lot of crap regarding Government policies, non-aggression treaties, hidden agendas and such. He said that if you ACTUALLY believed what the Constitution said about equality and were willing to say it publicly, your friends had BETTER be Communists, because to many in the mainstream you were just a 'nigger lover'. Can't even imagine what homosexuals or Jews without financial clout must have gone through.

A good movie about Jewish writers surviving during this period is 'The Front'. I think it's a Woody Allen film and it's sort of a comedy, but not THAT funny.

marty

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: DougR
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 02:08 PM

Yes, Marty, and in my opinion, it is teachers such as yours that are responsible for the "non-thinking" of so many people who call themselves "Liberals" today. I wonder. Did students simply take what thier professors said as truth, or did some of them dig into the facts themselves and make up their own minds? Just wondering.

There was an interesting Thread within the past three or four months that asked where Mudcatters got their news. I was amazed to learn that so few Mudcatters read a daily newspaper!

I think that many people today get their news from Jay Leno and David Letterman on late night TV, unfortunately.

DougR

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 02:40 PM

The McCarthy era was really about a minority who were vocal about their beliefs which tended towards socialist practice. The economy was growing rapidly after the war and most people were busy with their own affairs, including mainstream Jewish people. Immigrants would sink or swim, as they had for the last century. The Okies were the coming entrepreneurs in California. Homosexuals were in the closet, and for the most part were unaffected. As rebels are, everywhere, the vocal minority was subjected to repression. Like the general majority everywhere, we distanced ourselves, perhaps listening to Seegar songs when we felt a little rebellious, but remained unaffected. Although McCarthy seemed a little extreme, we went along with it. After all, we had been conditioned for McCarthy's rise by journalists like Walter Winchell, whose radio broadcasts we never missed, and by stories of the terrible repressions of the Soviet era.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: kendall
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 03:15 PM

I remember it well. That soul less creep would do anything to get re elected. He knew he needed an issue to get re elected, and he invented one. Red baiting was very popular in those days. Nixon pulled the same stunt to defeat his opponant in the California congressional race.

One thing I never understood, if our democracy is so superior to all other forms of government, why were we so afraid of an overthrow by a handful of communists?

Any competent therapist will tell you that the basis of all hatred is fear. Why were we so afraid? conditioning by our own governmen thats why. It's always easier to blame others than to solve the problem.

Doug, I am a liberal, and proud of it too. When I found out the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin non incident, a red herring for Lightbulb Johnson, Watergate, Iran-Contre, Arms for hostages, the invasion of Granada, the invasion of Panama etc. I have not trusted ANYTHING my leaders have told me. The thing is, they dont teach the whole truth in schools, you must dig into it yourself to find the truth.

Why hell, they are still teaching that Columbus discovered America when we all know it is not true! And, how about Washington and the cherry tree? pure fabrication, Lincoln walking three miles in bad weather to return a few pennies to some woman whom he overcharged, or the story that he read by the light of the fireplace, all rubbish.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 04:01 PM

Senator Joseph McCarthy. O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh boy. . . .

The following are excerpts from the "reminiscences" that I am writing. I have condensed it a bit to include just matters that are particularly relevant to this thread.

      [Sometime in 1953, habitués of The Chalet restaurant such as] Ken Prichard, Bob Clark, Walt Robertson, Ric Higlin, several other people and I decided that what this area needed was a folk song or folklore society….
      "The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society" became the working title. Considering the size of the area and the variety of material it included, it was biting off much more than we could chew, but we planned on growing. One of the Folklore Society's functions would be to cover the academic side, particularly collecting and cataloging material. Another function would be to present concerts, workshops, and other public events. This way, we could raise the money necessary to at least jump-start the society.
      The East 42nd Street Arts Association came into existence at about the same time. It was made up mostly of the same people. One of the many ideas here was to initiate an annual arts festival to take place on some convenient weekend. Memorial Day, perhaps; or Labor Day.
      The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society and The East 42nd Street Arts Association decided to hold a joint inaugural event. With the cooperation of the local merchants and with all the necessary permits from the city, N. E. 42nd Street between University Way and 15th Avenue N. E. was barricaded off. Movable partitions were brought in upon which paintings could be hung. As I recall, the festival was wide open. Anybody could display anything. People set up card tables, or improvised tables with boxes and boards, or just sat on the sidewalk as in a Middle Eastern bazaar, and displayed their crafts – jewelry, weaving, pottery, whatever.
      Janice Tennant, while attending the Yew Dub, was involved in Methodist student activities at Wesley House, which was located just across N. E. 42nd Street from The Chalet. Janice frequented The Chalet. I don't recall that she ever played or sang, but she was an avid folk music enthusiast and often helped with arrangements to use Wesley House facilities for Folklore Society and Arts Association events.
      Somewhat more formal exhibitions of paintings, crafts, and such were set up in the auditorium in the lower level of Wesley House. These exhibits were cleared away in time for the evening concerts.
      The concert series included concerts by Walt Robertson, a program of Northwest Indian dances performed by Bill Holm and his wife, Marty (Marty, as I recall, was Native American), and if memory serves me correctly, there were programs by the Scandia Folk Dance Club and Dance Circle, a local group interested in Balkan Dancing. This was the first of several such festivals.

So we were off to a pretty good start. But . . . from a chapter I have entitled "Spirit of the Times," the following happened.

      In fall of 1954 a major folk music event took place in Seattle. For the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society it proved to be more than a major event.
      Pete Seeger came to Seattle to give a concert.
      Under the aegis of the Folklore Society, Walt Robertson made the necessary arrangements and obtained the use of the basement auditorium of Wesley House, where several earlier Folklore Society events had been held.
      [The] afternoon before the concert, Dick Landberg and I were sitting in Howard's Restaurant when a Folklore Society member joined us. He was upset, and he seemed almost furtive. . . .
      "Seeger's been up before the House Un-American Activities Committee," [he informed us.]
      "Look," he said, leaning forward and practically whispering, "I'm studying aeronautical engineering. I plan to work for Boeing when I graduate. Now, that's probably going to involve my being able to get a security clearance. So I'm not going to Seeger's concert. And I want my name taken off the Folklore Society's mailing list!"
      This may seem bizarre and paranoid to us now. Yet, during the early Fifties, mention of the House Un-American Activities Committee evoked emotions similar to those that must have been evoked in the 15th and 16th centuries at the mention of the Spanish Inquisition. Many people glanced apprehensively over their shoulders, shuddered, and crossed themselves.
      There was not much Dick and I could do about it but pass the word to whoever maintained the mailing list. We talked it over and decided that this was probably an overreaction. No way were we going to miss Seeger's concert.

I go on to describe Pete's concert. This was the first time I'd ever seen him live, and both Dick Landberg and I—and an audience that packed the auditorium—found the concert completely enthralling. He sang some work songs among many others, but I heard nothing that I would consider any kind of anti-American propaganda (if singing a song or two—among many other songs—expressing some concern for the welfare of the poor working stiff is anti-American, that so be it). After the concert, Pete was game to keep going. He wanted to meet the local singers, so we adjourned to a nearby house and the party went on until four o'clock in the morning, ending with six of us, including Pete, sitting cross-legged on the floor, passing a guitar around, and swapping songs. Then…]

      The aftermath of this event was less felicitous. The dark side manifested itself in a particularly sinister way. . . .

The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society's membership and mailing lists practically imploded.

      . . . Seeger had been called up before the House Un-American Activities Committee and he and The Weavers had been blacklisted. Despite that, the first major performer the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society sponsors is Seeger. Never mind that the Folklore Society consisted of a loose-knit group of people, most of whom were apolitical and some even fairly conservative, who simply liked folk music and wanted to hear Pete Seeger sing. Truth? What did that have to do with it? What mattered was what it made the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society look like.
      It was Kafkaesque. Furtive calls came in from people who almost cringingly insisted that their names be dissociated from the Folklore Society. It was like cattle stampeding in panic. By the end of week the membership list had dwindled to less than a dozen names.
      After what seemed to be such an auspicious beginning, the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society ceased to exist.
      They might not burn heretics at the stake anymore as they did in times past, but it appeared that the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition lived on in Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
      To be suspected was to be condemned.

I always found it very interesting that the same people founded both the Pacific Northwest Folklore Society and the East 42nd Street Arts Association and both organizations were headquartered out of The Chalet restaurant. Yet people who wanted their names removed from the folklore society's membership and mailing lists were unconcerned about their names being on the arts associations lists. The East 42nd Street Arts Association was considered clean and untainted, and it continued to exist and function unhampered and unaccused. Most curious.

There is more. Much more. But that's enough for the moment.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: lady penelope
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 04:08 PM

I am British and I was born in 1966 so I can't say that I was affected by the MacCarthy inquisitions.

From an historical point of view I find it interesting. You ( I mean the U.S.A. ) have a bill of rights ( have I got this right? ) that ensures your human rights no matter what race, creed or religion you are.

To persecute some one because they believe in a different social oder than the "status quo" is therefore in conflict with this bill and could be called "UnAmerican" a term usually used against those on "trial" during the so called witch-hunt.

Am I being ignorant ( I'm really not familiar with the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights ) or is this so basic it's overlooked?

Please help a Limey comprehend.

TTFN M'Lady P.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 04:31 PM

Right in one, Lady P. Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee completely ignored the Bill of Rights. Why nobody with any clout called them on it is a mystery to me. I have a hard time believing that almost everyone in power at the time was so cowardly.

When Pete Seeger was called before the committee, he told them right up front that they didn't have the right to ask the questions they were asking, and they blacklisted him.

There is a great exchange of dialog in A Man for All Seasons -- I don't remember it verbatim, but in effect, Moore asks a young firebrand if he what he is advocating doesn't violate the law. The young man answers, "I would cut down all the laws to track the devil to his lair!" "Yes," says Moore, "and when the devil finally turns on you, where will you hide then?"

Don Firth

Don Firth

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: toadfrog
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 05:02 PM

Gee, this thread has done nothing but creep. The question is, for those who were singing in the McCarthy era, did McCarthyism affect what they sang. Strictly speaking, McCarthy as a personality vanished away in the early-mid 50's (he was "called" by "people in authority"), a time when few of us were singing in public.

If the question is, how were we affected by the atmosphere of the cold war, the answer is this. I was affected by all this, in that I took the contrarian attitude that HUAC, McCarthy et al. could go stick it, and I sang the reddest songs I could find. A lot of my best friends were red diaper babies, and some of those guys stopped being my friends when I voluntarily served my time as a soldier. And what bugged me then, and bugs me even more today, is the BS coming from both the sides of the political spectrum which said, if you want to improve life in America in any way, you were a socialist and a commie and somehow had to be pro-Soviet.

The Stalinist system was a monstrosity, and was a national enemy of the United States. So it was wrong to persecute Pete Seeger, and I admire him to the extent he was brave to stand up for what he believed in and defy HUAC. But unless I am very badly misinformed, Pete also followed each and every twist and turn of a morally reprehensible Party Line, and I am sorry, that I cannot respect.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 05:19 PM

Lady Penelope, no group had its religion, or race or social order attacked during the McCarthy Era. There were grave injustices perpetrated before, during and after McCarthy, but thats another subject. McCarthy built his strength by attacking "anti-Americanism" and found willing listeners among the majority. The 30's were a period of depression that saw many in poverty, and was a period when socialism gained credit, particularly in the labor movement. Entry into the war in 1941 began a period of upheavel but also strenghtened patriotism (my country right or wrong)at all levels. The war brought the country out of the depression, and the following period was one of growth in all segments of the economy. People who espoused a change in the "social order" were naturally suspect, and McCarthy's tenets were believed. Many people with secure incomes had opposed Roosevelt's attempts to relieve unemployment and poverty in the 1933-1940, and conservatives became the majority after the war. McCarthy particularly attacked the liberal press, the artistic community and some labor organizations as hotbeds that would socialize the government. It is here that damage was done to the lives of many individuals as his attack developed into persecution and witch-hunting. Refusal to testify under oath brought loss of jobs and prison to some. During the 30s membership in socialist-leaning organizations was common, but this led to investigations and ultimately attack on an individual's liberty if he refused to cooperate with the Senate committee. Remember that all of this was a sideshow to the majority of Americans at the time. After a long period of depression and war, it was natural that threats to their new-found security were perceived and McCarthy was able to carry on with his circus, until his colleagues realized that much of what his committee brought forth was based on lies, and he was discredited. Of course. by then the damage had been done, and to a conservative majority the indicted remained suspect. It took the changes in the 1960s to rehabilitate these people but to some, they still have the taint left by the accusations.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: DougR
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 05:36 PM

It is not clear to me how the HUAC committee could "black list" anybody. As I recall it, those who were subpeoned to appear and did not cooperate with the committee were cited and some of them jailed. The most famous of them were the Hollywood 10 (I think it was 10). They were not "blacklisted" by the committee, though, they were "blacklisted" by the film industry.

So "who" blacklisted Pete Seeger?

I was in my early twenties during this time period, and kept up with events at the time, but haven't re-visited that time period for years, so my mind is a bit hazy on it.

DougR

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 05:57 PM

Nearly all those investigated by HUAC either confessed it all, naming everyone who was also a member of the suspect organizations (e.g. Burl Ives) or they refused to testify,citing the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution which prohibits self-incrimination. Pete, on the other hand cited the first amendment, to wit:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

The result was the same, as Don pointed out. He was blacklisted and could not perform in public for about ten years.

How did he survive? He performed in schools! Now if you really wanted to prevent someone from spreading their "communist poison" wouldn't schools be the first place you would stop them from playing? Oh, well, that's how our government works.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 06:00 PM

(No creep here, toadfrog. Reread Deckman's original post. And DougR, perhaps I should have said "caused him to be blacklisted.")

The following may be of interest:—

The Fight For America: Senator Joseph McCarthy
By Jesse Friedman, 5th Revision,

      Joseph R. McCarthy, possibly the greatest demagogue in the history of America, was also the strongest anti-Communist. In the minds of his friends and foes alike, he was an incredible person whose mere presence could be overpowering. He was a master at playing the press; his name was in the headlines frequently. He also perfected the art of playing on people's fears. His portrayal of Communism as the supreme evil allowed his accusations of "disloyalty" to be incredibly effective.
      Of course, there were some things about the flamboyant Senator from Wisconsin that limited his effectiveness. During his storied career, he was never once able to have an accused Red be found guilty.1 He was a heavy drinker and had a soft spot for horse racing and poker games. Despite these shortcomings, he was able to become a national celebrity.
      From his expensive election campaign, to his first speech on Communism, to the Army-McCarthy hearings, to his sudden death, and even to today, Senator McCarthy has been the subject of a long-lasting controversy about morality and politics. Some people feel that he was a counter-productive demagogue who aimlessly attacked innocent people. Others felt that he was bringing to the attention of America the eminent threat of Communism. He was a cold-hearted man who was a disgrace to the United States, whose anti-Communist fervor was not based upon ideology but upon his need for a headline-gaining cause.

Mr. Friedman then details McCarthy's biography and political career. It is a fairly lengthy paper, and the circumstances under which the paper was written I find especially amazing (what were you doing when you were his age?). The paper is well worth reading in full. His concluding remarks are most interesting. The emphasis is the author's, not mine.

      . . . Once I wrote this paper, I tuned out to this entire issue. What a mistake. In the last few years, CIA and KGB declassified information has confirmed to some degree McCarthy's accusations of Communist infiltration in our government.
      Here's what's important! I am not calling Senator Joe McCarthy a liar. He was right. The problem is, he didn't know it! Recently declassified information has proved him technically correct, but in his entire senatorial career, as I quote from above, "he never once was able to directly convict a single suspected Communist of a crime." But that's not even my main point. My main objection is the atmosphere of fear of the accusation of being a supposed Communist which McCarthy strongly fostered. He might have been right, but he indirectly violated the nation's freedom of speech.
      One more thing: defending (at least accused) Communists doesn't make me a Red any more than supporting gay rights would make me a homosexual. I base my opinions not politically, but rather morally. As I continually repeat, what the accused may or may not have done concerns me little; I simply object to McCarthy's motivations and methodology.
      That's heavy stuff, I know. You might disagree, like plenty of others; if so, please don't just tell me that I'm wrong. I truly want to know why you think so. And if you agree, I want to know too.

Full text here, with contact information.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Podger
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 06:23 PM

Regarding John's statement "our State department was infiltrated". I'm sure every other country in th world had the same problem. It's amazing how any of them survived without the help of the noble Senator.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: John Hardly
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 07:10 PM

Podger,

Does the success, or lack thereof, alter the fact and intent of the infiltration? And does any nation's having survived a threat lead one to assume that they survived because they did nothing?

The very interesting quote provided by Don Firth (thanks for the extral effort, Don!), though it chose to slant the information in such a manner as to assume McCarthy didn't know he was right------he was indeed right.

I think it's a bigger stretch of imagination to assume he didn't know he was right than to assume he just couldn't prove that he was right......I mean, how many gov't scandals have been easily proven on the spot?

Tell Eastern Europe of the 40's-60's that the Soviet Union was no threat.

Last year Acoustic Guitar Magazine ran an article on the history of protest music. The article was pretty much fluff that many of you guys here at the Mudcat could easliy have written better both historically, musicologically, and even literarally. The thing I found interesting though is that it did the same thing that I've seen articles of this ilk do ever since the 60's-------It criticized those who accused Seeger of being a communist....without pointing out that Seeger was, indeed a Communist....and a proud one. Those articles lead the reader to believe that Seeger was falsely accused and that his accusers were villainous in their accusation. I didn't know for sure that Seeger proudly claimed his Communism until I read it in a 1999 article in Dirty Linen Magazine. Up to that point, I thought from articles I had read, that he had been falsely accused or that his "communist" philosophy did not entail the desired overthrow of the US government......it was a harmless, tamer communism that would merely confiscate and redistribute all the assets of America without actually overthrowing it

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: kendall
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 07:19 PM

Fear is mans worst enemy. (Next to ignorance)

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 07:57 PM

Communists have always advocated the overthrow of a government, using all means including violence. McCarthy would have a better reputation today if he had gone after hidden communists in government and business but the problem there was not visible. The experience of the British was the wake-up call for many people although our own agencies surely knew of problems by then. In other words, I agree with Don Firth on much of his argument. As an opportunist McCarthy chose an easy, visible target; there were known communists in the group. That the accused were not treated fairly according to the Constitution can be deplored now, but at the time a Congressional committee's limits were not as clearly defined. Booking agencies and performance venues refusal to consider tainted performers is difficult, even now, to curb. It all comes down to what they believe the audience wants and will pay for.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: marty D
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 08:52 PM

Doug, for heaven's sake, surely you don't think that a liberal point of view is the result of NOT reading newspapers? There well may be millions today who haven't got the attention span or even the basic skills to get their information from other than CNN, but they're hardly all liberals. I think it's very safe to say that ignorance and awareness are just as evenly split between the left and right as everything else appears to be.

My teacher (who was a young guy during the forties and fifties) recalled how dangerous it was to have blacks and whites in the same car if you were noticed by the police. Do you REALLY think that was a lie? He explained why so many Jews 'anglicised' their names if they wanted to be anything but self-employed (and have a chance at promotion, or a tee time at the golf course). Would he have been a better teacher had he said 'just accept the status quo'? I know one thing, I would have been a worse human being had I not at least tried to change some attitudes along the way.

Suggesting that liberals get their information from Jay Leno or David Letterman is as unfair as my suggesting that Conservatives get theirs from Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson. They're all comedians in their way, and I think that for someone's opinions to count, they should make use of a pretty broad spectrum of information. My father in law (he'd better not see this or I'm in big trouble) has read the newspaper every day of his adult life, but because he can't tolerate even READING a dissenting opinion, his politics totally mirror the slant of his 'daily'. He reads, but I sure don't consider him 'informed'. He's a life-long Democrat who still thinks that Clinton deserves respect, by the way.

I've been away from the cat, working for a while, but I know from two years of hanging around here that you don't resort to insults to make your (sometimes 'a voice in the wilderness') political points, so please understand, I'm not trying to be overly argumentative....just defending a damn good old teacher of mine.

marty (a liberal, who reads so much it's a wonder his eyballs don't fall out)

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 09:19 PM

Most of us hear only the news we want to hear. But to get back to the topic, there has been enough background. Don Firth's comments about the PNW Folklore Society is the only example of what, I think, Deckman wants to see in this thread, that is experiences.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 02 Sep 01 - 09:19 PM

I have very little knowledge of this beyond second hand stuff told to me by my folks. I am still a wee baby compared to some of you seasoned veterans here at the 'Cat! ;D

My perception of it pre-fall of the USSR was that it was mostly a witch hunt.

Since other evidence has come to light since that time, I can only say that, regardless of there having been a reality behind the suspicions, the tactics were wrong...period. Walking all over peoples rights, regardless of there being a threat or no, leaves us all open for a dictator to step in and take all of our rights away "for our own good". Isn't that the exact issue that the US had with communism to begin with? So, how was what McCarthy did any better?

However, I will say this: Evil most often does not *know* it is evil. People mainly do what they do because they believe it to be what is good, right, and best.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Amos
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 12:53 AM

Why nobody with any clout called them on it is a mystery to me. I have a hard time believing that almost everyone
 in power at the time was so cowardly.

Bear in mind, as regards what was motivating McCarthy's success, that the country had just barely survived a war with dedicated, lethal opponents on two fronts, and was still settling out from the mindset of that war.  Consider also that Algers Hiss had been convicted of perjury in January of 1950 and the Klaus Fichs arrest had occurred in London; there was apparently good reason to wonder whether our game of survival was being compromised by the enemy seeing all our cards.

McCarthy was just jumping a bandwagon of public sentiment in order to score some points withthe folks back in Wisconsin.  He hadn't gotten a lot of brownie points for lobbying on behave of PepsiCo, nor for serving as the defending cousel for a group of Nazi war crime defendant relating to a a wartime massacre at Malmedy during the Battle of the Bulge.
McCarthy started making wild charges on the Senate floor and in speeches claiming known Communists were shaping policy.  But not everyone bought it.

Harry Luce's media group, then consisting of Time and Life magazines, earned McCarthy's antagonism by calling him loud-mouthed, and accusing him of making a wretched burlesque of the question of loyalty. in April 1950, the Editors of Life publically deplored McCarthy, his "wild and irresponsible behavior", and the backing he was getting from Rober Taft; while they had no disagreement with fighting Communism, they pointed out that "it is wrong, wicked, to smear people indiscriminately, most of whom are good Americans."  (Bear in mind also that this was a period in which the phrase "good American" was meaningful in the public mind, and not a trivial expression).  <i>Time</i> copped a lot of heat for this position including being accused by Walter Wihnchell of harboring "reds".  (The acitvists, not the pills).   At that time, Life's circulation ran to about 5.5 million. (At 20 cents a copy!)

Remember too that the conflagration about Communism was fed hot fuel by the Korean War, which was not a theory but a real lead and dirt war which took sons and huisbands away and killed them in distant lands.  It was also, BTW, a Time writer who first coined the expression "McCarthyism", which eventually ended up in <i>Webster's</i> defined as a "political attitude closely allied to know-nothingism...".

As for no-one in power doing anything about it, remember that Truman, the President of the nation, was attacking McCarthyism directly, although he did not attack McCarthy -- Truman directly stated that the country was in a "climate of fear".   Life  came out with an editorial which suggested to Robert taft, Sernator, that he was dealing with a demagogue in Joe McCarthy, and that truth and decency were at stake, and that "Joe" was a liability and a danger to the nation.

Just a couple of snippets to underscore that not every one with power was sucked into the Commie Panic of the early Fifties.

Conversely, I recall a close conversation with a member of North Philadelphia's finest in 1964 in which it was still clear from certain stratements he made that his worst nightmares were populated by "commie pinko faggot bastards....".    :>)

Regards,
 

A.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: toadfrog
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 01:25 AM

On reading all the above, I think the answer to Deckman's question is that there are very few people around here who were active in the Left during the McCarthy era, which was the early 50's. This is a very special group, and probably not well represented in Mudcat. They get very intense. They are not represented here.

McCarthy was not a "great" demagogue. He was a momentary phenomenon. He represented Wisconsin, whose population included lots of peopleof German and Irish descent, some of whom felt that we fought on the wrong side in World War II. He attacked the State Department, which was the bete noir of the extreme right. Then he attacked the Army. He was intolerable, he had to go, and he went. He was pilloried in a popular film, the "Manchurian Candidate," which portrayed him as a Chinese agent. If Eisenhower had had the cojones to stand up to McCarthy, he would have gone earlier. His only legacy is the practice of referring to the Democratic Party as the "Democrat party, which still seems to be around."

Unless I misremember, it was not McCarthy but HUAC who called Pete Seeger. HUAC was a different matter.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 02:01 AM

The bandwagon was already rolling when Sen. McCarthy jumped on. The following is a chunk from Washington State history. This bit of nastiness started while I was still in high school, and I remember it well. I have good friends—not communists, just actors—who got burned in this, not to mention a couple of excellent professors at the University of Washington. Note the date: this began in 1947.

-----------------------------------------------

The Canwell Committee and the Seattle Repertory Playhouse

A Short History:

In 1947 the Washington State Legislature created the Washington State Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities. Headed by Senator Albert F. Canwell (R-Spokane), the committee was granted the power to investigate groups suspected of being under control of a foreign power or engaging in communist activities. All in all, the Canwell Committee tried and found guilty 32 professors at the University of Washington. With this behind them, they then turned their eyes to a quaint little community theater near the University.

On June 10th, 1948, Burton and Florence James, founders of the Seattle Repertory Theater, were subpoenaed to appear before the Canwell Committee. Canwell decided to make them a focus of the committee as well because he called the Seattle Repertory Theater an ". . . off-campus drama school, largely attended by University students."

Canwell himself headed the hearings and refused to let witnesses the committee put on the stand to be cross-examined. Canwell later referred to himself as, "a one-man FBI." The James's refused to answer any of the questions asked them by the committee because they believed the committee to be unconstitutional. They issued a statement of reasons for not answering, rather than testifying in court.

During the hearings, several witnesses alleged that the Playhouse produced "communist plays" and served as a "recruiting ground" for the Communist Party. The witnesses supplied little evidence to corroborate their charges, except for the fact that some members of the Playhouse had occasionally provided entertainment at Communist Party fund-raisers. Nevertheless, attendance at the theater declined precipitously after the July hearings, and the Playhouse's income fell by two-thirds the following year. In early 1950 the Playhouse filed for bankruptcy. Because of their standing in the community, Florence and Burton James were not forced to serve any time, but their dream, the Playhouse, had been destroyed.

After the hearings, the Playhouse's landlord, Sam Fitz, sold the Playhouse to the University of Washington.

by Daniel Eneberg

There are a series of links at the end of the article. The article can be foundhere

Links to letters courtesy of Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives at the University of Washington. Other information gathered from above links.

-----------------------------------------------

Launching an in-depth investigation of governmental agencies in search of foreign agents is something that is usually done in secret, and therefore does not garner much publicity for the political figure or figures who spearhead the investigation until and unless it achieves a measure of success. Investigations of college professors, theater companies, and high-profile entertainers (remember, Pete Seeger was a member of The Weavers, who were having a series of very popular hit recordings at the time) hardly does much to root out agents of foreign powers, but it's almost guaranteed to make quite a splash in the news.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 02:53 AM

I'm too tired tonight to write anything very coherent, but I will try to do so tomorrow night. Yes, Toadfrog, there are a few of us still around. I trust that many of you will read the brief article quoted by Don Firth, and will also read the statement, reached by the clicky in the quote, by Burton W. James and Florence Bean James explaining to the people of Seattle their reasons for refusing to answer any questions put to them by the Canwell Committee. You might also look at portions of the rather lengthy syllabus about The Cold War and the Red Scare in Washington State. I'm never sure that I get these clickies right, but I keep trying! If it takes you there, read the segment about "Hunting Reds in the Evergreen State."

When the Canwell Committee hearings began, I had been an actor at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse for about a year and a half. I attended each day of those hearings that pertained to the Jameses and their theater, I heard testimony that I knew personally to be false presented under oath against "Pop" and Mrs. James and the staff of the theater. I will try to describe this experience for you tomorrow.

But, for now, goodnight, good people.

Sandy

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sourdough
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 04:31 AM

I certainly do not want to make light of the terror of the 1950s that has vcome to be represented by the late Senator McCarthy. My family had, I was later to learn, many reasons to fear the forces that he represented but that isn't what this story is about. You see, I am probably the only person who has written in to this thread who actually took part in the Army-McCarthy hearings in the Senate Caucus Room of the old Senate Building in Washington.

I was a student in junior high school in Western Massachusetts and there was an essay contest. I chose the government of my home state, New Hampshire, for my topic and amazingly, I won! The prize was a trip to Washington, DC which was fascinating. I got to visit the FBI crime lab, the White House, my Congressman and I even got to spend a couple of nights as a house guest of a senior official in he State Department. He told me something at that time that was to prove prophetic. He explained to me that Communism was not monolithic and that the Soviet Union and China were never going to be able to make it as long-term allies. This was headys tuff, not generally accepted b the government polcy makers. If it had been, we might have saved ourselves a lot of battle deaths around the Far East.

Anyway, when it came time for me to make my visit to the Army-McCarthy hearings which were the biggest news event in town, I was given a ticket and found that I was expected to stand in a line that snaked out of the big hearing room doors, around the rotunda and down the stairs. There were twenty or so public seats in the hearing room and as people got bored and gave up there seat, the Capitol guards would let an equal number of people in. The line was moving very slowly. I didn't want to wait.

I realized that I had an advantage that the others standing in line did not. I had a Speed Graphic camera. It had been given to me to use by my high school for photos to be run in the school newspaper when I wrote up the report of my trip to Washington.. For those of you who don't know what a Speed Grafic is, I should mention that the Speed Graphic was the prototypical press camera, a 4x5 inch plate camera, the sort carried by Jimmie Olsen in the Superman series. It was not an amateur camera and in the setting of the major news event of the time, it made me look very professional.

Although I was only fifteen years old, was was six foot two and was often mistaken for being considerably older than my natural years. That's what gave me the nerve to go to the front of the line and to watch how the press was treated. Of course, they didn't have to wait in line for hours.

I struck up a quick conversation with a man who I later found out was from the NY Times. Everone seemed to know him by name and liked him so I kept talking as we walked through the door. It was a simpler, more trusting time, the Kennedys had not yet been shot, there had yet to be attacks on Reagan or Ford. Security was not of the tightness we have grown to take for granted today and I walked right into the room.

All arond me, there was a flurry of activity. It must have been the end of the luncheon break.

I recognized David Schine, and Welch, the lawyer from Boston and of course, Senator McCarthy hmself. There were a lot of Army brass there, too. It seemed as though everyone there had something to do. I tried to make myself blend in by taking sopme photos but I really hadn't mastered the intricacies of the Speed Grasphic with its dark slide and negative slides sug a ground glass viewfinder with an upside-down image. It didn't take long before I was spotted but not before I had backed into David Schine who reacted angrily to the unexpected collssion witha mere news photographer.

I have no idea how long I was allowed to roam through the Senate Caucus Room but it was probably only for a couple of minutes. A Secret Service operative asked me for identification which I didn't have and he took me to the door. When he asked me why I had done it, I explained that I had won a trip to Washington for my essay on the government of New Hampshire and that I hadn't wanted to spend several hours of my limited time in Washington, standing in the corridors of power. He must have been struck by my earnestness because he brought me over to a group of empty seats that had been reserved for a US Senator whose party had not yet shown up. I could stay there as long as I wanted or until the Senator's part arrived. They never showed up and I had front row seats.

I really liked the idea of getting in to events without standing in line. That and my natural curiousity led, ten years later, to my having press credentials, real ones, in Washington.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sourdough
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 05:22 AM

I wouldn't take the liberty of inserting a large cut and paste item into this thread but it seems so appropos. It is by Irwin Silber and was delivered at the Paul Robeson Seminar of Smithsonian Associates, in Washington, DC 1/30/98.

The fact that it was given by Irwin Silber gives the speech additional significance:

PAUL ROBESON - A Twentieth Century Joshua by Irwin Silber

There was a time not too long ago when it would have been considered brave to hold a gathering such as this one -- and foolhardy just to attend it.

Consider this:

In the late 1940s, when Richard Nixon was still only a freshman Congressman, he got himself appointed to a seat on the House UnAmerican Activities Committee -- an institution which our political folklore, with unerring instinct, came to call the UnAmerican Committee. It will tell you something about the intellectual level of that enterprise and our future president that in pursuit of secret Communists and Pinkos, Nixon had called, as an expert witness, a movie actor -- no, not that movie actor, but one whose name only my contemporaries and some addicts of American Movie Classics will recognize -- Adolph Menjou.

"These Commies are pretty tricky," Dick said to Menjou. "Do you have any advice on how to spot them??"

"Well," Menjou replied, "one of the best ways to spot a Communist is if that person is seen applauding at a Paul Robeson concert or owns a Paul Robeson recording."

Silly? Of course. But the FBI regularly assigned agents to take photos of people attending Paul Robeson concerts and to write down the license plate numbers of every car parked near any event where Paul Robeson was to sing while Loyalty Boards -- yes, there were such things -- routinely asked civil service employees whether they owned any Paul Robeson records.

And that wasn't so silly. Quite the contrary. These actions were designed to intimidate those who might otherwise attend a Paul Robeson concert at a moment when all the agencies of government colluded to still his powerful voice.

Now I know that today many of those who might ordinarily be on the case of Smithsonian Associates for holding this seminar are otherwise occupied up on Capitol Hill. Still, the more cautious among you may want to sit stony-faced if, in the course of this talk, I happen to say something favorable about Paul Robeson. And I warn you. I will!

After all, I knew Paul Robeson and it was my privilege to work with him on several occasions in connection with various activities of People's Songs, People's Artists and Sing Out! magazine -- institutions whose work and outlook were strongly influenced by Paul. I also had the great honor of having Paul Robeson write the foreword to my first book -- "Lift Every Voice!"

So. Paul Robeson.

Once he was hailed as the most gifted Black man in America. But less than a decade later, President Truman took away his passport and the State Department designated him "one of the most dangerous men in the world."

In fact, he was both. Arguably the most gifted Black man in America and one of the most dangerous men in the world. That seeming anomaly is an important chapter in our common history, shedding light on the ever-precarious relationship between artists and their government when the worlds of art and politics intersect. To which, it must be added, especially in America and especially wherethe artist is Black.

In essence, it is the story of a man who went beyond the confines of a brilliant career to become a Twentieth Century Joshua, one who devoted his life to tearing down the walls of oppression imposed by the inequities of race and class anywhere in the world -- but especially as he encountered them in his own country.

In pursuing this vision, Paul Robeson went everywhere and was fearless in doing so. He broke new ground in every concert hall and on every stage where he appeared -- not only for African-Americans but for all peoples of color. He played roles previously denied Black artists. He forced segregated concert halls to bring down their racial barriers. He made every song, every play every performance a statement of affirmation of his people's remarkable cultural heritage and a ringing challenge to all who would maintain and justify their oppression.

Beyond the African-American community, hundreds of thousands of working men and women who heard Robeson sing -- not in concert halls but on their picket-lines and in their union halls -- still remember the power of that presence which was so accessible to them. There were times when he seemed to be singing on every picketline in America: for striking Black workers at the R.J. Reynolds tobacco plant in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; for striking sugar workers in Hawaii; for autoworkers at the Ford River Rouge plant in Michigan; forseamen, steel-workers, coal miners, teachers, hospital workers.

He sang in Spain for the international volunteers fighting Franco. He sang in the Panama Canal Zone for striking public workers and denounced the institutionalized racism imposed by U.S. policy there. He sang for and with coal miners in Wales. He sang in the Soviet Union where he spoke with favor of what he believed was a grand experiment in a new system of social justice.

Many more millions in Africa and Asia remember Robeson as an unremitting opponent of colonialism, an outspoken advocate of self-determination for every people deemed "not ready for self-government" by those who profited from their labor and held them down by force.

Above all and everywhere he went, Robeson was outspoken about the conditions facing Black people in America.

Small wonder then that there eventually came a time when his name sent shivers of apprehension through the corridors of power in America and much of the western world. The object of perhaps the most intense official and unofficial persecution of any individual in U.S. history, Paul Robeson was, for more than a decade from the late forties to the early sixties, a pariah without peer in America.

It was the particular privilege of those of us associated with People's Songs, People's Artists and Sing Out! in its early years to know and work with Paul Robeson as a compatriot on that singular battlefield where art and politics are sometimes joined. For us, he was the consummate political artist -- an individual who had so integrated his enormous musical gifts with political principles that one could not be thought of without the other.

While his accomplishments are varied and legion, it was undoubtedly most of all as a singer that Robeson made his mark. Blessed with a remarkable voice, he approached music with the same sense of conviction he brought to everything else he did. For Robeson, every song -- whether a Negro spiritual, a Russian folk song, a Yiddish lullaby or an operatic aria; whether "Old Man River," "Ballad for Americans," "Water Boy," or the Chorale from Beethoven's Ninth -- was a statement of who he was and how he looked at the world.

Robeson's impact, not just on his audiences but on American culture more broadly can hardly be overstated. Before a packed house in New York's Greenwich Village Theater in 1925, at the age of 27, Robeson presented a concert that made musical history. His program, a first for any Black soloist, was devoted exclusively to African-American songs -- both spiritual and secular. The impact was electric. Even for those who had heard that Robeson was a great singer with a powerful voice, the evening was a revelation. But at least equally stirring were the beauty and range of African-American music from "Go Down Moses" and "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" to "Water Boy" and "Scandalize My Name." The concert consisted of sixteen songs but the audience refused to leave until Robeson had sung an additional sixteen encores.

"All those who listened last night to the first concert in this country made entirely of Negro music," wrote the reviewer for the New York World, "may have been present at a turning point, one of those thin points of time in which a star is born and not yet visible -- the first appearance of this folk wealth to be made without deference or apology."

Called by another critic "the embodiment of the aspirations of the new Negro," Robeson's subsequent concert tours thoroughly changed the way audiences perceived African-American music. But they did more. By refusing to perform for segregated audiences, Paul Robeson led the way in bringing down racial barriers which had defined U.S. social relations ever since the nation's founding.

One of his most spectacular and significant firsts was in his role as Othello. Although Othello was clearly identified by Shakespeare as Black -- "Othello, the Moor of Venice" was Shakespeare's exact title -- no Black actor had ever played the role on Broadway before. Instead, white actors had put on blackface to play the part. Why? The stated excuse was the fear of "riots" when audiences saw a Black man first kiss and later kill a white woman. Well, of course, there were no riots. There was only applause and ovations as Robeson's Othello became the longest-running Shakespeare play ever to be shown on Broadway while Paul himself won the award for best actor of the year on the Broadway stage.

At times, it seemed, Robeson could do anything -- which wasn't quite the case. In 1940, backed by the Count Basie band, he recorded a blues called "King Joe," a tribute to Joe Louis with words by Richard Wright. "It certainly is an honor to be working with Mr. Robeson," Basie would say afterwards. "But the man certainly can't sing the blues."

Robeson was, indeed, an unsurpassed artist -- even if he couldn't sing the blues. But what made him unique even among the finest of his peers, was a quality which would eventually enrage those who hoped to use his success to divert attention from the realities of American racism.

Paul Robeson was not the first or only artist who vowed to use success as a platform for purposes larger than an individual career. Certainly others have tried; and a few have managed to sustain such a commitment over a lifetime. But in this regard, I believe Paul Robeson stands alone as one for whom art and politics were inseparable and for whom the cost was immeasurable.

What made Robeson especially offensive to the political establishment was that he did not confine his politics to the stage or to merely lending his name to various causes. He was a political personality who used his access to power and to the media as a public platform to advance ideas considered "extremist" and "radical" in their time.

In 1943, with pressure mounting to end the color bar in Major League baseball, Paul Robeson headed a delegation who met with the owners of all 16 teams andthe Commissioner of Baseball, Judge Kenesaw Landis. Addressing them as a former athlete and one who had shown how groundless fears of riots breaking out during the run of "Othello," Paul made an impassioned plea to end the ban, citing the hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers who were at the very moment fighting and dying for their country all over the world. The owners were clearly impressed and the event was another nail driven into the Jim Crow coffin. Less than three years later, Jackie Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.

In 1946 he headed a delegation that met with President Truman to demand government action against lynching. Robeson urged Truman to issue "a formal public statement" condemning lynching and to come up with "a definite legislative and educational program to end the disgrace of mob violence." Heavily dependent on the support of Southern senators and congressmen, Truman balked, saying the time wasn't right for such actions. To which Robeson responded that if the Government did not do something to curb lynching, "Negroes would!" Enraged, Truman said that this sounded like a "threat." It was no threat, Robeson replied, merely a statement of fact.

He was a bitter opponent of those who counseled "gradualism" in the effort to obtain equal rights and minced no words in saying so. "The idea itself," he said, "is but another form of race discrimination: in no other area of our society are law-breakers granted an indefinite time to comply with the provisions of law." And then he added in what was undoubtedly considered another "threat": "Chattel slavery was finally abolished -- not gradually but all at once. The slave-masters were crushed by the overwhelming force that was brought to bear against their rotten system."

Similarly, Robeson's antagonism to colonialism went beyond expressions of support for liberation struggles. "We have a part to play," he told American Blacks, "in helping to pry loose the robber's hold on Africa. For if we take a close look at the hands that are at Africa's throat, we will understand it all: we know those hands."

It was statements like these that aroused such anger in the sanctuaries of power. Thus, when Robeson sued to regain his passport (it had been revoked in 1950), the State Department opposed the suit, "In view of the appellant's frank admission that he has been for years extremely active politically on behalf of the colonial people of Africa." To which the Justice Department added that "During his (Robeson's) concert tours abroad he has repeatedly criticized the conditions of Negroes in the United States."

This dual transgression -- condemning and linking colonialism abroad and Black oppression at home -- was the real source of Paul Robeson's persecution. But it wasn't just Robeson's words. Many others, after all, were equally outspoken. It was who Robeson was: extraordinary artist, gifted actor, all-American athlete, and, most of all, the Black man who, more than any other, was both a role model and the symbol of everything that African-Americans were capable of achieving. This is why, in those secret places where such matters are discussed, Paul Robeson was indeed considered "one of the most dangerous men in the world."

When Robeson sang that soaring finish to his version of "Old Man River" -- "I must keep fighting until I'm dying!" -- transforming Jerome Kern's original song not only into a personal but a universal hymn of resistance, he showed us the possibility of unleashing the political potential that rests within those who have so long been kept out of history. And when all the energies of the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Congressional committees and self-appointed petty inquisitors were launched against him, we saw that assault as a badge of honor awarded to one who had lived his convictions no matter the price; Robeson's commitment to principle reinforced our own efforts to fashion a song culture that we hoped would also help change the world.

Paul Robeson was with us not only in spirit -- but in the trenches. When, early in 1949, we launched People's Artists and Sing Out! magazine, there was Paul delivering the keynote speech at our founding meeting. Little did we know that in a few months we would again be joined on a battle field whose very name invokes indelible images of heroism and pain.

That battlefield, of course, was Peekskill where People's Artists produced the Paul Robeson concerts heard around the world. Racist vigilantes broke up the first concert. But despite a climate of state-promoted fascist hysteria and threats of death to Paul, we went back to Peekskill and put on our concert. With the audience as well as Robeson protected by thousands of Black and white trade unionists, Paul sang that day even as police helicopters flew menacingly overhead while a score of bodyguards served as a human shield for the Black man whose very existence had become anathema to a U.S. political establishment with a newly awakened appetite for world domination.

More than anything, it was the living example of Paul Robeson which kept Sing Out! going in those dark years that followed. Our circulation was small; our finances were minimal. But with Paul risking everything for our shared beliefs, how could we abandon that little bastion of people's music we had worked so hard to establish?

What a standard Robeson set for us! There is much that a new generation of artists and singers can learn from his life and especially the way in which this courageous man conducted himself in those years when support for his persecution was a litmus test of loyalty.

Here was a man, son of an escaped slave, who had achieved greatness in the face of racial barriers and political persecution in every field of activity he had undertaken.

That persecution reached a high point in 1949 when he purportedly declared at an international Peace Congress in Paris: "It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war against the Soviet Union on behalf of those who have oppressed them for generations." The statement triggered a firestorm of denunciations from political figures, the press and many prominent Blacks.

The years that followed were a nightmare.

The FBI pursued him with a rare vindictiveness which presaged its later hounding of Martin Luther King. But it will tell you a lot about this most "American" of all government institutions that in 1942 its official description of the Council on African Affairs -- of which Paul Robeson was President -- concluded that it was not only a Communist front but the leading group "presently active in creating considerable unrest among the negroes by stressing racial discrimination."

Local police agencies and various legislative committees investigating "subversive activity" followed the FBI's lead. Concert halls which a few years earlier had been honored to have Paul Robeson on their stages barred their doors to him. In 1950, syndicated columnist Robert Ruark urged Robeson's internment "as any Jap who got penned away" during World War II, calling him "an enemy of his own country and a passionate espouser of those people who are our declared enemies." The 37 newspapers which made up the Hearst press chain ran an editorial declaring, "It was an accident unfortunate for America that Paul Robeson was born here."

The cruelest cut of all, perhaps, came when Robeson was denounced by many prominent African-Americans -- including Jackie Robinson and Walter White, then the head of the NAACP.

Nevertheless, Robeson would not knuckle under. Kept off the concert stages, he sang in Black churches all across America where he remained welcome. Denied his passport, he gave concerts by telephone to audiences in other countries. Enjoined from even going to Canada -- where no passport was required -- he gave an unprecedented concert at the Peace Arch on the U.S.-Canadian border just south of Vancouver which was attended by tens of thousands from both countries.

And he continued to speak his mind. In 1953, with the Korean War still raging, he said in a public speech:

"Will shooting down Chinese help us get our freedom? Will dropping some bombs on Vietnamese patriots who want to be free of French domination help American Negroes reach a plane of equality with their white fellow citizens? Mr. Eisenhower or Senator McCarthy would have us believe that this is necessary to "save" the so-called "free world." But the man who keeps that Negro sharecropper from earning more than a few hundred dollars a year is not a Communist -- it's the landlord. And the man who prevents his son from attending school with white children is not a Communist -- it's Governor Talmadge or Governor Byrnes of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations."

In 1954, as defeated French troops were preparing to leave Vietnam and John Foster Dulles was suggesting that American troops should take over their role in Indochina, Paul Robeson echoed his charged Paris speech, asking: "Shall Negro sharecroppers from Mississippi be sent to shoot down brown-skinned peasants in Vietnam to serve the interests of those who oppose Negro liberation at home and colonial freedom abroad? The American Negro cannot become the ally of imperialism without enslaving his own race."

In 1956, called before HUAC, Robeson was accused of being a secret Communist with the Party name of John Thomas. After bursting out in laughter -- as his wife said at the time, "the idea of the world-known giant with the fabulous voice trying to hide himself under an assumed name was absurd" -- he responded: "My name is Paul Robeson, and anything I have to say or stand for I have said in public all over the world -- and that is why I am here today.... You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people."

Asked why he didn't move to Russia, Robeson shot back: "Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?"

"White folks are scared of this type of leadership," declared the African-American newspaper, Chicago Crusader. "They were enraged at Jack Johnson who could look a white man in the eye in such a way as to make him cringe. In Paul Robeson they have met their match again."

In many ways, the two great movements of the sixties -- the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movement -- were Robeson's vindication. John Lewis, then head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and now a Congressman from Georgia, would speak for a new generation of African-Americans in saluting Paul as a role model. Like Robeson, he would declare, "We, too, have rejected gradualism and moderation.... We are Paul Robeson's spiritual children."

There were likewise echoes of Robeson when Muhammad Ali, in refusing to be drafted to fight in Vietnam, declared: "No Vietcong ever called me nigger!" even as hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets chanting, "Hell, No! We Won't Go!" Few of them would even know who Paul Robeson was. But they were marching on the trail he had blazed.

Even Jackie Robinson would later have second thoughts about his role in aiding the witch-hunt. "I have grown wiser and closer to painful truths about America's destructiveness," Robinson wrote in his autobiography published in 1972. "And I do have increased respect for Paul Robeson who, over a span of twenty years, sacrificed himself, his career, and the wealth and comfort he once enjoyed because, I believe, he was sincerely trying to help his people."

Thirty years ago, Paul RBut today, more than twenty years after his death, Paul Robeson remains, like Banquo's ghost, a figure whose very memory continues to haunt the official history of our times. Fortunately, we have more than memories. We have Paul's music -- and it is still a rallying cry for all the unfinished battles against every form of oppression and injustice still on our common agenda.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 08:49 AM

I was 12 years old (1949) when I met my first folksginger. He was Bill Higley (Willy Wa Willy) and had just married a family friend. He proved to be a pivotal person in my life. Over the next ten years, with Bills' tutoring, I became a pretty fair folksinger myself. I learned my craft, educated myself, built a considerable repetoire. Seattle was a very exciting place in those days. Every weekend night one could find gatherings (hoots). The city semed alive with music, good, bad but folk music. As soon as I got my car, my guitar and I were gone most every night. I made many new and exciting friends. Soon we were meeting and singing with some very prestigous people who lived in the mansions. It was a heady time. As my reputation grew, I started making money singing for various orginizations, labor groups, various committees. I also became aware of the politics of the time. I watched the McCarthy hearing on T.V. I read about the Washington state committees to investigate local communists. I read about the supposed Communists that were members of the U.W. facilty. I soon realized that I was singing at the homes of many of these people. By now, at the age of 17, I was also "President" of the Seattle Folk Music Society, predeccesor to the present Seattle Folk Lore Society. Many of these same people were strong members of our club. I also realized that these so called communists had the BEST SONGS! About the time I was 18, and just out of High school, two things happened that really caused me to make a decision on the issue of so called "pinkos": I was visited by the FBI and I went into the Army. More later. CHEERS, Bob Nelson

Subject: A Man for All Seasons
From: GUEST,Al T
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 10:55 AM

An earlier poster, Don Firth, referred to a piece of dialogue from "A Man for All Seasons." I also have a favorite line from the same work that is appropriate here.

When Thomas More, the lone dissenter, is asked by the group to change his vote to make their ruling unanimous; he is told it would be best if he joined them "for company."

He replied in effect: "Yes, and when all of you go to heaven for voting your consciences, and I got to hell for not voting mine, will you join me...for company?"

Ah, the pitfalls of peer pressure in society.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 01:57 PM

I don't remember the McCarthy hearings, since I was born in 49, but I recall asking my Mom about it some twenty years later. I think I phrased my question something along the lines of "why was McCarthy allowed to persecute people?" and Mom replied "McCarthy? He was the good guy!" It is indeed a sad fact that my country, founded on the premise that free speech and free communication are sacred, allowed itself to indulge in a witch hunt on this scale. Arthur Miller was one of the few who even had the courage to criticize the persecution by cloaking it in parable, in his play The Crucible.

It is perhaps understandable in the context of the times...communism was not just a philosophy in the minds of many Americans, it was a disease embodied by the USSR and its growing sphere of influence, the newly emerged Maoist China, and was accented by the acquisition of our Superweapon A-bomb through the treason of the Rosenbergs. The fact that Communism was essentially a socio-economic philosophy whose ideals could be realized through democratically elected socialist governments was not understood until the late 50s and 60s saw the bloom of such states all over the world, and even among our closest allies.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 05:13 PM

I'm pleased Deckman started this thread. One of my friends at Bowdoin College in the early 1960's came out of the Seattle left folk music scene, and may begin lurking around here as a guest. We had very little in common with other Bowdoin students but we and a few others had a great time swapping labor songs and traditional folk songs.

I only had a vague understanding of the time of the McCarthy witch hunt, which with the help of Burl Ives poisoned my uncle's very successful concert career. Such were the consequences of those who did an occasional fundraising concert for Russian war orphans during WW II; of course my uncle was also a critic of capitalism and also performed at several Almanac House rent parties in the 1940's. I'm not convinced that his efforts brought much comfort to either Moscow or Peiking.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 08:37 PM

I want to preface my next comments on this thread with an apology. I just started this thread last Saturday night. Since then it has had 37 postings ... obviously it's a hot issue. I've had a lot of busyness in my life since then ... I fully intended to post more frequantly. I want to continue to tell my experiences, then I want to relate on just how my experiences still affect me today. I was just graduated from High School when I received a letter from the FBI inviting me to come to the Federal Office Building in downtown Seattle. At that meeting, I was interviewed by a male agent. He did everything he could to scare the hell out of me. He kept holding up a thick manila file folder, telling me that this was information on ME! He wanted names, dates, who, what, where, when? Finally he scared me enough (I was just 18) that I said, well Hell, maybe I better get out of the "Seattle Folk Music Society." He the said, "Oh no, we don't want you to do that. We want you to stay as active as you are now, and come visit us once a month and tell us what's going on." I had enough sense, even at that tender age, to say "No thanks," and I walked out (true story). ((I know others that had similar experiences at the same time.)) Then, about 6 months later, and this is where it gets funny, I decided to enlist in the Army. As a volunteer, (dumb!) I was sworn in at Fort Lawton. In those days,(1956) you had to sign a loyalty oath to get into the military. When the time came for me to sign my loyalty oath, I was given 6, yes six, pages of organizations. I was asked to check off any of them that I had any affiliation with. I still remember the look on the Captain's face when I checked off 16 of them. I said, "Oh sure, I know these folks, and these folks, and these folks are really fun!" Seattle Labor Council, Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, Committee to Repeal the Smith Act, on and on and on. He left the room and came back with another officer and an M.P. with a gun. Then I was grilled. How did I know these groups? Why? When? etc. I explained that I was a practising folksinger, and I'd sing for anyone that gave me $5 and a spagehtti dinner. (I didn't throw in the part about the free beer). Anyway, to make this part of the story short, I successfully made it into the military. When I can get more time, hopefully later tonight, I want to talk about what happened when I hosted Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry for a Seattle concert in 1956. And, I want to talk about my envolvement with the Seattle Negro community of the 1950's ... here's where the cheese gets binding! CHEERS and keep up the thought provoking posts ... Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 11:08 PM

Okay, friends. I apologize in advance for such a ridiculously lengthy post. I realize that very few of you will be sufficiently interested to plow through it, but here's my contribution for those that might.

I hitch-hiked, dead broke, into Seattle from the Midwest in 1946. My father, with whom I had irreconcilable differences of opinion, had been transferred there, but was spending most of each year in Alaska. This meant that I might be able to use a room at the family home without fear of renewed conflict. I had finally decided to take a crack at finishing high-school after being away from it for a couple of years. Yeah, I had been urgently invited to leave Salina High School in Kansas in the winter of 1944/45. High school in Seattle didn?t work out either. I had spent a couple of summers in the Kansas/Nebraska wheat fields, rambled around the country on my thumb, and just couldn't adjust to jangling bells and tardy slips. Besides, Dad came home for the winter. However, I had discovered some empty rooms above a greasy spoon at the corner of 42nd and University Way (I'm fairly sure of that location, but it's been a long time!) and, determined to be an artist, I found a neglected entrance, set up a camp cot and my easel, and established squatter's rights. About this time, a friend urged me to try out for a play at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse where he was a regular performer. I did so, and found my "home away from home."

I did a few rather insignificant parts in a variety of plays. Since some of you may have read the claims later leveled at the Playhouse that it was presenting "Communist" plays, I'll tell you what they were. I played Fenton in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (a somewhat trivial comedy by that ranting red radical William Shakespeare). I then played a young soldier from Kentucky in an original musical based on the story of the "Pig War" in the San Juan Islands (written by the mother of one of our actresses and titled "The San Juan Story") I also played the kid who wants to run away from home in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (serious Communist attempt to break up the American family, I guess, since Sheridan Whiteside encouraged the lad to go ahead and do his thing!). I was Ferguson (a very small part) in "A Sound of Hunting" (World War II prize-winning drama), and I worked backstage on Thornton Wilder's ""Our Town." Someone actually described "Our Town" as an attack on the American family because the husband says of his wife, at one point, "I don?t know why she sings in that choir. She's got no more voice than an old crow." We also did a special children's production of "Tom Sawyer," based on a book we all know was written by a subversive, atheistic radical from Missouri. If any production that I was in might fall into the "propaganda" category, it would be "The Informer," the powerful Sean O'Casey play about "the troubles." I played "Tommy," the young school teacher who draws the short straw and is thus assigned to assassinate the informer. I remember Mrs. James reading a lovely letter from O'Casey in which he expressed his regret that he could do nothing to reduce or forgive the required royalties, because the play was in the hands of his publishers, over whom he had no control.

So I was quite familiar with the Repertory Playhouse, with its directors and its staff, when, in 1948 (one year after HUAC attacked the Hollywood Ten and several years before Joe McCarthy began his self-aggrandizing rant), the Canwell Committee called "Pop" and Mrs. James to answer charges of Communist Party membership and, therefore, that they advocated the violent overthrow of the government of the United States. The newspapers, especially local Hearst daily (The Post Intelligencer), jumped on the story like seagulls on crickets. As the unchallenged testimony at the hearings (no one was allowed to cross-examine those who testified against them) spewed forth, headlines such as "Repertory Playhouse Communist Party Assembly Line!" (followed by very small print: "witness declares") were emblazoned on page one. Well, I had worked there for perhaps a year and a half, and no one, I repeat: no one, ever invited me to become a Communist or to attend a Young Communist League meeting, or anything of the sort. Maybe it was me, although I don't know why I should have been an exception. Come to think of it, the friend who first encouraged me to visit the Playhouse was never recruited for the Party either.

One sleazy local character's testimony offered such juicy tidbits as "they gave fund-raising parties for the Communist Party at which all the actresses mingled with the crowd, selling drinks!" This was presented with a salacious snicker (after all, we know what actresses are really like, don't we? Heh-heh.). To my knowledge, only once a year, at Christmas, did the theater give a party, and that was for its subscribers and its staff. At this party, a traditional pot of "glug" was served, a fairly strong Swedish drink, I understand, made with raisins. At no other time, never during the other 364 days of the year, was alcohol permitted inside the Playhouse. If an actor arrived to play his role after having a bit too much to drink, he was denied entrance to the theater and sent home, even if that meant someone took a book onstage and read in the part! "Pop" and Mrs. James were convinced that alcohol and acting did not mix. Period! The testimony as it was presented to the Committee was simply untrue. But again, there were no "friendly witnesses" permitted to rebut this kind of perjured testimony.

Worst of all, the Committee's star "professional" witness (paid by the Committee and the FBI), a man named Hewitt, testified that he had met Mrs. James in Moscow in 1934. He had been standing on the steps of the Kremlin, he swore, with a major Communist Party official when Mrs. James walked by below them. "The official pointed to her and said to me, `There goes one of our best workers in the United States!'" Newspaper stories about Mrs. James' trip to Russia, articles she had written describing the work of the Moscow Art Theater, etc, were duly entered into the record as documentary evidence against her. In fact, Mrs. James had taken an extended theater tour in 1934, visiting the Old Vic Theatre in England, the Comedie de l'Arte (I have no idea how that should be spelled; my French went by with my high-school!) in Paris, and, indeed, she visited and observed the workings of the Moscow Art Theater in Russia, then the world center of the Stanislavski method. I should add that she traveled with an extremely respectable Republican companion for the entire journey. A couple of days later, this Hewitt person, in the course of his testimony, stated that he had left Russia in 1933, the year before Mrs. James made her tour. "Pop" James caught this contradiction in Hewitt's sworn testimony immediately. He rose to his feet and bellowed in his best Shakespearean tones, "YOU'RE A LIAR!" Instantly, Canwell called for the state police to eject "Pop" from the hearing room, which "Pop" was fully aware would result from his outburst (it had happened to others who had tried merely to ask a question of the Committee chairman). As they roughly ushered "Pop" out, his lawyer quietly suggested to the Committee: "Mr. Chairman, this man is a perjurer on your records!" He, too, was immediately thrown out of the room, leaving Mrs. James with no legal representation in the room. Another lawyer rose to protest the action and was told that one word out of him would see him join the others outside. Very quietly, he responded, "I bow to force." And sat down. The audience, me among them, exploded with applause. Canwell then threatened to have the state police clear the entire hearing room, so we all quieted down, angry but intimidated, yet unwilling to give up our chance to witness the rest of the hearings. Canwell called for a recess. When the hearing resumed, Hewitt was permitted unlimited time to carefully explain that he had misspoken earlier, and that he had actually met Mrs. James in Russia in 1932! I assume he must have known that proof could be found to establish that he had returned to this country in 1933. However, Mrs. James wasn't in Russia in 1932, and she could surely prove that fact, given sufficient time and money to dig up fifteen-year-old records of her presence in this country throughout that year. So Hewitt spent the next hour or two carefully explaining how Communists were always sneaking back and forth to Russia, traveling with forged passports, etc., and it would be impossible to trace their movements.

This same witness, by the way, testified that he had met Melvin Rader, University of Washington philosophy professor and author of a respected book on aesthetics, at a Communist camp in the Catskills during one particular summer "training session." Rader answered the big question when it was put to him. "No! I am not, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party!" Yes, he had spoken before meetings of the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, helping to raise funds for refugees from Franco's regime in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. Was this a crime? No, but this was the sort of brush with which they tarred him. He filed a perjury charge against Hewitt, who had been whisked back to New York immediately after the close of the hearings. When it became clear that New York was not going to extradite Hewitt to stand trial on the perjury charge (a New York judge was quoted as saying "He wouldn?t get a fair trial in the Soviet of Washington!"), the Seattle Times assigned reporter Ed Guthman to investigate the matter. Rader and Guthman were able to establish, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Rader had spent that particular summer with his family at a modest resort in the Cascade Mountains. In fact, the Committee knew that, too! Committee investigators had actually taken the guest register for that year from the resort and later, when Rader asked for it, claimed it had been "lost." But local people remembered Rader being there! You see, that was the summer "so and so's barn burned down," and many of them remembered Rader being part of the bucket brigade that tried to fight the fire. But the conclusive evidence came from the local store keeper. Down in his cellar, even after all those years, was a box of sales slips from that summer. Rader had set up a charge account with the store and had signed sales slips throughout the month he was said to have been learning his subversive skills at the Catskill camp. Guthman wrote a series of articles for the Seattle Times, exposing the perjury, for which he was awarded a Pulitzer prize. Read Rader's book, False Witness.

Mrs. James called the Times to see if they might assist her in a similar investigation to gather the materials needed to prove her presence in the United States during 1932. The Times asked, "Are you a Communist?" Mrs. James indignantly replied, "Young man, I wouldn't answer that question before the Committee, and I won't answer it for you, either! Under our Constitution, a individual's political beliefs are their own, private business. You have no more right to ask me that than Canwell did!" And so the Times declined to help her. God bless Florencee Bean James' courageous and consistent spirit!

So, what did I learn from these people and how did it influence my life? Well, I learned that there were adults who would look upon my creative impulses as legitimate enterprises. They also taught me to be concerned for the welfare of others less fortunate that I and that one should stand up for the principles in which one believes. These people were "progressives" who believed in equal rights for all people of all classes and colors, in equal justice for all under our laws. These were issues they did talk about in my presence, and I listened and admired them for their positions. They worked to support anti-lynching legislation, for example, and they supported the Washington Pension Union's effort to pass legislation that would guarantee health care for the state's impoverished elderly. Yes, they say the head of the Pension Union, Bill Pennock, was a Communist, and he might well have been. When I went down to the Union with him to sing a few songs for the old folks (Bill's wife was one of the finer actresses at the Playhouse), I saw how much the people there loved him and how deeply he cared for them and their welfare. He was a gentle, loving man. If American Communists were all like Bill Pennock, they might have won a few national elections! When Bill was called to stand trial under the Smith Act, the emotional strain proved to be too much. He was taking sleeping pills to help him rest during the agonizing nights of the trial and, one night, he took too many. His wife has always believed his death was accidental, but it was ruled a suicide. I don't know, but, to me, he was a saint.

What happened to the Playhouse and its directors? Well, after twenty years as a completely self-supporting cultural institution, a theater conscious of its role as an expressive part of its community, a theater totally financed by season subscription sales, block sales to various organizations, and regular ticket sales at the door, their funding dried up almost overnight. Subscriptions dropped to one-third of the previous years, block sales evaporated. No one was willing to support a "subversive" outfit like the Repertory Playhouse. Hadn't the newspapers said they were recruiting University students for the Communist Party? What did it matter that there were NO University students working or studying at the Playhouse? What did it matter that the Canwell Committee was established to investigate Communists on the state payroll and that the investigation of "Pop" and Mrs. James could easily have been described as a misuse of state appropriations. After all, they were not on the campus (just near it), were not on the state payroll, and there were no students involved. At the end of the hearings they were charged with the equivalent of "contempt of the State Legislature." Their appeal was never heard and they had no money to pursue it. The University bought the Playhouse building from its owner. The Jameses had a lease based on a percentage of the gate, but surrendered it when the owner pleaded with them that he could no longer afford to maintain the property with no income from it. The night that the Drama Department of the University opened its first show in the building, "Pop" James suffered a cerebral hemorrhage from which he never awoke. Mrs. James went to Canada to teach and direct small community theater enterprises.

I went to work for a couple of other theater groups in Seattle: The Tryout Theater which produced original plays under the guidance of Doc Savage of the University Creative Writing department, and then for the Great Plays Company which lasted only a short time due to the extravagant living habits of its "just in from Hollywood" director. I learned from this experience a certain distaste for purely commercial theater. I went to New York the year of the Army/McCarthy hearings and learned that my distaste was not ill-founded. I left New York and was bumming around the country with a guitar, a pack and a sleeping bag when I discovered that people might actually pay me to sing all the old songs I had been singing just for fun. At that point, the direction of my life was permanently altered, but the lessons of concern for others, of the insistence on freedom of speech and association for all people, and of the value of the non-commercial arts as presented by ordinary people (our folk arts, if you will) "all taught to me by those beautiful people at the Repertory Playhouse" have never been forgotten. And that, my friends, is what "McCarthyism" did to me, or perhaps I should say "did for me!"

Sorry I couldn't write a shorter post. This one was too important to me.

Sandy

Sandy, I think I got them all
fixed correctly. Please let me know if not.
It is a privilege to read this and to help out with the glitches.:-)
kat/joeclone

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 11:16 PM

Could one of our dear clones please change all those question marks to appropriate apostrophes and quotation marks? I had no idea that they wouldn't transfer from Word to the Mudcat HTML system. I'm sorry, kids. I remain a first-class

Cyberklutz.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Deckman
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 11:31 PM

WOW! what you are witnessing here folks is REAL LIVE DRAMA! This is the value of a free communication system. I, for one, have to take a break here, spend some appropriate time to read, study and analize what has been expressed here. There are many more areas I want to get into, but first I need to do the homework you've all given me. Thank you Sandy. CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Amaranth
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 11:39 PM

I missed the McCarthy era, but benefited from some of the professors that had to return to Canada to get jobs after being black balled for socialist connections. I do wonder though if John Steinbeck was ever called before the Unamerican Activities Committee. If he was what was the result.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:05 AM

I don't know abour Steinbeck, but when the Board of Regents of the University of Washington overruled the Tenure Committee and fired several professors who had refused to cooperate with the Canwell Committee, it set off a wave of similar firings at Universities around the country. Many college administrators were afraid to stand up and defend the right of their faculties to freedom of thought. "Get rid of 'em now, before they come after us!" seems to have been the order of the day.

Sandy

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:35 AM

I am sorry to say that the disgusting accomodation and rank cravenness which characterizes these tales of false witness under pressure is still, in my opinion, present in our population, even if circumstances allow it to submerge beneath a thin veneer of social response and actions. While no-one knows exactly how they will act when the chips are really down, as they were in these stories, I believe it is a worthwhile exercise to imagine such a scenario and consider which options you would consider, and why. Mass thinking is a touch wave to stand up against. How would you handle it if you were in such circumstances? Which path? Which importance? What would your reasoning be?

One thing I like to remember in imagining such circumstances is that the worst thing that can happen to you is dying, if you choose an unpopular path. But that is bound to come sooner or later. If you choose an "acceptable" but unethical one, you get to die anyway, and any living you do before that point AND after it is completely spoiled at the core. Kinda changes the perspective some.

Regards,

Amos

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Kim C
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 10:24 AM

I wasn't there, but I did rent Spartacus this weekend - screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:01 PM

I'm not surprised that many people bent under pressure during the McCarthy period, and that a few profited by turning in their "friends and acquaitances." Those were tough times. The ones that I admire most held up under pressure, struck back when they could, and somehow survived. And I'm certainly not sure how well I'll hold up if a similar committee is revived, but then I've just been a nuisance.

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: GUEST,Beatlemaniac
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 12:13 PM

What is all this criticism of McCartney? The man is a great musician and founder of the greatest rock band of all times. What the hell does he have to do with communists?

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 01:25 PM

My post above, is too long, I know, and made even harder to read by the fact that the quotation marks and apostrophes failed to transfer from Word. I'm sorry. However, I though many of you might have missed the "blue clicky thing" in an earlier post that led to the statement made to the press by "Pop" and Mrs. James, explaining why they refused to answer questions put to them by the Canwell Committee. So, since I'd really like you to read it, here it is in full. It states, far better than I could, why my dear friends and others like them who were called by either HUAC or the McCarthy sub-committee took the position they did. I hope it translates properly and can be easily read.

Sandy

Mr. and Mrs. James Tell Why They Refused to Answer

In a statement issued yesterday, Florence and Burton James, directors of the Repertory Playhouse, set forth reasons why they refused to answer the question posed at the Canwell hearings: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"

Another statement, bearing the names of 32 persons identified as members and associates of the Playhouse, protested what was termed "the unconstitutional procedure" of the committee and defended the theater's record.

STATEMENT ISSUED

The statement of Mr. and Mrs. James follows:

"Many people have wondered, and rightly so, why we failed to answer the so-called $64 question. We have been asked 'Why, if you have nothing to hide, do you refrain from answering this query?' Some people have misunderstood our action.

"The fact is we would be delighted to face our accusers in a court of law where we would have the opportunity to cross-examine and where evidence, not personal animus or political enmity, would reveal the truth. We do not propose, however, to dignify nor affirm the legality of this committee and its methods by replying to any questions which are an infringement upon our basic rights as established both by the courts and by the Constitution.

"We are risking a contempt charge in the hope that the legality of the Canwell committee and its procedures can be questioned under constitutional procedure.

'FABRICATIONS' HIT

It is our belief that no justice can be secured in an atmosphere where slander and fabrications are permitted to go unanswered, where counsel have no legal status or recourse to the usual safeguards against malicious and baseless personal attacks.

"Since we are not given the opportunity to disprove the testimony of our accusers, our only recourse is to challenge the legality of this committee and its procedures.

"Mr. Hewitt has asserted that he met Florence Bean James in Moscow in 1932. Mrs. James made a tour of the continent in 1934 with, the witnesses might be surprised to know, a politically conservative and thoroughly credible companion. . . .

"[This is] merely [a sample] of the irresponsible testimony permitted before the Canwell committee. We believe that this hearing is [part of] a series of attacks on all ideas contrary to the fixed notions of the members of the Canwell committee.

'UNFAIRNESS' HIT

"Every school, church, newspaper, publisher, writer, union and group interested in progressive democracy may well be hauled in before the Canwell committee to stand the acid test of Canwellian orthodoxy. Someone, some-time had to take a stand. We have taken ours.

"We would like to know why 'friendly' witnesses are allowed to give vent to their personal opinions and feelings without check, while the 'unfriendly' witnesses are given virtually no latitude to reply to the calumny heaped upon them.

"Counsel have repeatedly asked, both orally and in writing, for the right to cross-examine and were ejected from the hearing. Is this democracy?

"By what right does Mr. Canwell act as both judge and jury. . . ?

"We want the informed judgment of our fellow citizens in this community. Has Canwell's hearing given you the basis for an intelligent decision about us? That is the $64 question Burton and Florence James pose for the people of Seattle."

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Deckman
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 01:59 PM

I want to make this next posting very concise so that I can get to some of the excellant comments that have posted. Also at this time in Seattle, 1957 - 1962, was a wild and wooley coffee house scene. Don Firth has written some excellant information about this. It's where so many of us learned and honed our performance skills. The competition was great and only the strong, or the prettiest, survived. The "red scare" was also very strong on the street. There were many rumors about FBI informants amongst us. This led to the inevitable games: who is it ... I heard ... etc. At this same time, I had become very close friends with a prominant and influence Black man (in those days we used the word Negro) named Keve Bray. He proved to be a VERY good friend and mentor to me. He influenced me greatly. He was a consummate actor (Shakesperian) and was the director of a local amateur theater group called "The Contemporary Players." He loved folk music and we hit it off. We wrote and scored plays and musical togethers. Then he asked me to join his 'all black' theater group and I agreed. We had much fun presenting me to the other actors as the "token white." Keve worked hard with me, giving me acting and elecution lessons. All this further increased my performance skills. And yes, I did run into some very hard times being white ... I was not accepted by all the members. And, to be fair, I put my white foot in my mouth many times. So, here I was, 18 and 19 years old, VERY active in the Seattle area, singing in coffee houses, singing for suspect orginizations, being prominant in the Seattle Folk Music Society, performing on stage with an all Black theater (except me) group ... no wonder I was visited by the FBI. Then to top things off, I promoted, and hosted Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, C.J. Borroughs (Sonny's cousin) in a very large, well attended concert at the Moore theater. This was at the time that Pete was still blacklisted and couldn't buy a job. Enough of the telling of the history. Now I want to mention one event that seems to crystalize, for me, the "temper of those times." It was a Saturday night hoot. We were all there, the usual crowd. I was going with a girl named Nancy (have you noticed that I haven't even brought up the subject of the girls yet?) and we were at the home of someone named Ray ... I forget his last name but I can still see him today. As the evenings singing went on, he and I wandered off to another part of the house and started visiting. He was much older than I, I was about 18. And he was one scared puppy. I'd never seen a grownup this scared and it startled me. He was afraid that he was going to lose his government pension. You see, he was one of the nuclear physicists that worked on the Manhatten Project. (the building of the atomic bomb). His best friend was Robert Oppenheimer, and he had just watched him get crucified by the COMMITTEE. Today I still feel his fear. So enough of my history. I'm going to hang up for a while. I'll be back when I've had time to study the postings ... love you all ... Bob Nelson

Subject: RE: McCarthyism ... were you there?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 04 Sep 01 - 02:30 PM

As Lee Hays said of this period, "If it wasn't for the honor, I'd've rather missed being blacklisted."

The same as happened in Seattle happened at Northwestern University (Chicago/Evanston, IL) when friends of mine sponsored a wonderful concert in '55-'56? with Pete and Bill Broonzy----and then with Pete solo. (I've still got aging tapes of both of those concerts.) "Wasn't that a terrible time?"--the song says.--Yes it was---but it was also the best of times---as Mr. Dickens said. Being a teenager then helped mold my own social conscience as well as my feelings about what was right or wrong. I remember feeling somewhat betrayed when I found out that, yes, some of my mentors had been communists. But the morals I developed in those times, have suited this rabid individualist pretty well. If I have communists to thank for those, I can do that easily enough even as I watch the pendulum swing somewhat more toward the center in these latter days.

Art Thieme