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"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of
memory against forgetting." |
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| This book of memories spans the two decades from 1945 to 1965, an era largely connected in American recall with tail-fins and rock-and-roll, and with the last time a middle-class family of four could be supported on a single income. But it was also a time of political upheaval, when the question "Are you now or have you ever been a member of Communist Party?" was prologue to personal ruin, to life in exile or on the blacklist, a shattered family, imprisonment, suicide, and for some, even a violent death. For many who faced that question, the consequences of their answer still haunt them today. | ||
| "It was a watershed event in Hollywood--the hearings and the blacklisting and the informing. The memories die hard, although the people involved are dying. We're talking about forty years ago for those of us who were called in '51, and more for the Ten who were called in '47. There are only two of them left." Back then, he was a young screenwriter active in the Communist Party. With a dozen films to his credit, the future looked promising. He would be blacklisted for nearly twenty years. | ||
The memories die hard--yet for many Americans only the barest
sketch of the era remains, or nothing at all. In 1992, a man of thirty,
doing well in a San Francisco publishing firm, told me what he knew of
the Red Scare: "It was Joseph McCarthy and he went after Hollywood
actors for the sake of publicity. Richard Nixon was in on it." One
woman of thirty-five demanded, "When did all this happen?" Another
of the same age, after confusing "Reds" with her favorite baseball
team, In the 1950's, the dangers of semantic association were not lost
on the Cincinnati Reds, who to avoid any confusion briefly changed their
name to the Redlegs. came back astonished: "America had a Communist
Party?"  Studs Terkel, in his introduction
to "The Good War," laments America's fast fading memory.
"It appears that the disremembrance of World War Two is as disturbingly
profound as the forgettery of the Great Depression--World War Two, an event
that changed the psyche as well as the face of the United States and of
the world." The Red Scare was another sort of war--one against dissent
and nonconformity. It changed the psyche and face of the United States
as surely did World War Two. Our collective amnesia is partly
a token of that grim spree; for many years, just to present a comprehensive
record of the period would have been "controversial" and to be
"controversial" invited suspicion. Thus in popular culture and
education we hand the era to Joseph McCarthy, the one man almost everyone
agrees was up to no good: let him be the flaw in our seamless weave. Yet
McCarthy was only the opportunistic creature of larger events. |
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| "Everything changed at the end of the Second World War. The ally Russia became the enemy. Anybody who had sympathy became suspect. Because I was local Party chairman, because I had studied in Moscow and fought in Spain, I was the devil himself." He was just hitting middle-age then, a Party organizer with a family, a couple of kids. He would face twenty-five years in prison. | ||
| The Red Scare was Truman's Cold War come home to roost. When the
shooting stopped in 1945, the United States stood untouched among the ruined
nations of the globe. At that point we were the most powerful country on
earth; yet morally and intellectually we were completely dominated by a
foreign nation. In a 1949 essay, "The Conquest of America," reprinted
in the Atlantic Monthly, March 1980. Archibald MacLeish explained the
phenomenon: "American foreign policy was a mirror image of Russian
foreign policy: whatever the Russians did, we did in reverse. American
domestic policies were conducted under a kind of upside-down Russian veto:
no man could be elected to public office unless he was on record as detesting
the Russians, and no proposal could be enacted, from a peace plan at one
end to a military budget at the other, unless it could be demonstrated
that the Russians wouldn't like it." Led by a reactionary Congress, and
with considerable aid from Harry Truman, the media trumpeted the alarm:
encircled by the Soviets and betrayed from within, our nation's very existence
was endangered. This fear dominated national life; steps were taken to
discipline the citizenry. Loyalty oaths became the order of the day. First
it was government employees who were affected, then teachers; soon Americans
of all varieties were mumbling oaths of fealty. Even Las Vegas got into
the act, swearing a troop of strippers to a solemn vow that they had never
conspired to overthrow the government. State and federal investigators
grilled suspected citizens on their reading habits, voting patterns, and
church attendance. Support for racial equality became evidence of subversive
leanings. Heretical literature was banned from public and school libraries;
some communities even held book burnings. Hollywood scoured its films for
the subversive taint. Neighbors informed on neighbors, students on their
teachers. Readers of "questionable" works hid their Leftist tomes
or buried them in the back garden. Seven war-era concentration camps were
dusted off, and lists prepared of the radicals to fill them. By the early 1950s, nearly all of
America's radicals had been identified by the FBI. But the Inquisition
demanded a public accounting. Witnesses before the investigating committees
were expected not only to repent their past heresies, but to name their
former comrades. The pressure to collaborate was enormous. The full weight
of government and society hung by a thread over each reluctant individual.
One's livelihood depended on one's willingness to inform; and many times,
so did the avoidance of a prison sentence. Federal agents were known to
threaten the uncooperative with internment in the newly established camps,
with the removal of their children, with the deportation of aging relatives.
All one had to do was cooperate and life would be restored. It was a seductive
whisper: repent, ask forgiveness, give a few names. Of course, those named
would in turn suffer. But might they not anyway? Hadn't they already been
identified? Could anyone know for sure? Many Americans did collaborate;
a number quite eagerly, others in daring the line between ruinous defiance
and complete cooperation, still others only after time on the blacklists;
a few even from their prison cells. But many more refused and they paid
dearly for their principles. Here then is an attempt to rescue
a chapter of history from our habitual "forgettery," a mosaic
of voices from both sides of the Great Fear. Here are ordinary men and
women--Communists, Progressives, and New Dealers alike--as they recall
their lives under the Inquisition. Here also are the hounds that hunted
them--the Attorney General, the union boss, the FBI agent, the security
officer, and the professional informer. From the hunted who cooperated there
are regrets and confusion, and earnest explanations. After more than forty
years, they still struggle to be understood. From those who resisted, there
is pride in having behaved well in difficult times. There is anger and
sorrow aplenty for the friendships betrayed, the lives and careers cut
short, and the resulting years of struggle. Laughter comes into play too,
as dark as it may be, for every Inquisition is at its core an enormous
absurdity, and the relief of humor is as evident today as it was then.
Ultimately, however, this is a story of America at mid-century when, at
the pinnacle of national strength, we turned in fear to strike down our
own. |