I understand you
have been studying the McCarthy period, which has also been described as
a witch hunt. I looked witch hunt up in the Webster College dictionary where
it is in part defined like this: "An investigation usually conducted
with much publicity, supposedly to uncover subversive political activity,
disloyalty, etc., but really to harass and weaken the entire political opposition."
I think that is
a fair description of the McCarthy witch hunt. It was indeed for the purpose
of weakening the entire political opposition to the Cold War against the
Soviet Union. Since that country's revolution in 1919 which changed its
capitalist economy into a socialist economy, the capitalist countries, particularly
the United States and Great Britain plotted to overturn the new Soviet government,
first by military intervention, in which they were joined by the French,
and failing that, by trade boycotts. However, when
faced with the threat of Hitler Germany's invasion of both France and England,
the United States, France and Great Britain became allies of the Soviet
Union, the result of which Hitler's fascist army was defeated. After the
war public approval of the Soviet Union's great contribution to the victory
was at an all-time high. The U.S. General McArthur said: "Thank God
for the Red Army." To return to the
pre-war agenda of destroying the socialism of the Soviet Union it was necessary
to turn around the thinking of the general public. So, Winston Churchill,
prime minister of Great Britain, made his famous speech at Fulton, Missouri,
saying that the Soviet Union was the enemy that must be fought on all fronts.
President Truman took up where Churchill left off and by executive action
ordered that all government employees be forced to take loyalty oaths and
declare they were not, nor ever had, been Communists. Loyalty or disloyalty
is a very private matter because there is no way, with or without oaths,
can the secrecy of one's inmost thoughts be known. Therefore, it is obvious
that the sole purpose of the loyalty oath was to intimidate people into
suppressing their ideas of what they thought of the Cold War campaign. Many
refused to take the oaths as a matter of principle, claiming that membership
in the Communist Party was their right as citizens of a free country, just
as was membership in the Democratic, Republican, or any other political
party. So, it was through
the Democratic President, Harry Truman, that the Cold War was launched and
it was carried through by the succeeding Republican presidents into the
period of political repression known as the McCarthy period. McCarthy was a
senator from Wisconsin who was obsessed by the anti-Communist virus and
carried on a hysterical campaign, supported by the newspapers, TV and radio
for several tragic years, until finally his arrogance and extremism led
to public refusal to take any more of it, and he went down to defeat. But
not until damage was done to the lives of uncounted thousands of people.
The witch hunt
penetrated into every part of our society. For example, the churches were
ordered to have their governing members take loyalty oaths, stating they
were not Communists. Most churches caved in. However, one church in Los
Angeles, the Unitarian Church, refused to take the oath and was immediately
punished by the Internal Revenue Service, demanding them to pay taxes on
their church building and property, even though it was, and still is, the
law that churches pay no taxes. The church brought
legal action against this injustice. After several years in court they won
their case and the Internal Revenue Service was forced to return the taxes.
That settled the matter for all other churches. Unions were forced
to take loyalty oaths that none of their officers was a Communist. Many,
if not most, gave in to this pressure and actually expelled officers or
members who had fought against corruption, racism or other discriminatory
acts within the union. Seamen had to take loyalty oaths or their right to
employment was forfeited. Thousands lost their jobs. The Democratic Political party suffered loss of many good leaders through the witch hunt within the party.
All teachers were
forced to take the oath or lose their jobs. Many were accused of having
unpopular political opinions and found themselves unemployed and blacklisted.
Hundreds of the best and most courageous teachers were lost to the schools,
and, of course, to the students. But many fought back. For example, a number
of professors at the University of Washington brought suit against the loyalty
oath, and after a long court battle, won their case, thus making an important
contribution to civil liberties in this country. The arts came
under attack. Among others the great African American baritone singer, Paul
Robeson, was brought before the national Unamerican Activities Committee
and questioned. He made a courageous and principled defense. Nevertheless,
the government punished him by refusing to let him leave the country to
give concerts abroad. On one occasion he was to sing at a convention of
the Seamen's Union in Vancouver, B.C. but was not permitted to cross the
border. So he returned to Seattle and sang to them over the telephone with
some loud-speaker device. He promised to return to the Peace Park on the
Canadian border, which he did. His open-air concert was attended by thousands
of people from both Canada and the United States. Charlie Chaplin,
the great British comedian, who had made his residence in this country,
where he made some of the world's most outstanding movies, was deported
to England. Ronald Reagan,
who was then a B-rated movie actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild,
led a movement to blacklist actors and technicians. The blacklist threw
hundreds of them out of jobs with no hope of finding others in the movie
industry. A famous court
trial of what was known as the Hollywood Ten, sentenced them to prison for
refusal to take the oath or state whether or not they were or ever had been
Communists. Among them were some of the finest artists. One of the Ten,
I think it was John Howard Lawson, wrote a movie under the assumed name
of "Rich". It was entitled "Friendly Persuasion", a
beautiful story of the Quakers in the Civil War. It won an Oscar and no
one knew or heard of, or knew the whereabouts of Mr. Rich - until some time
later. Public outrage at this injustice to talented writers of movie scenarios
helped put a stop to this attack on the arts. A whole crew of
professional stool pigeons erupted, who for a fee, would appear in court
or at governmental state and national Unamerican Activities Committee hearings,
and swear that this, that and other accused was a Communist. It is interesting
that the fee for men who testified was $50, while the women and Filipinos
received $25.00. I always felt they should have joined a "Stoolpigeons"
union and fight for better pay and no discrimination. The known Communists
came under special persecution. Even the lawyers who defended them were
harassed and threatened with disbarment. Judges who were brave enough to
rule according to law, if the law favored the accused, were threatened.
Jury's were intimidated into handing down guilty verdicts or face the loss
of jobs or pensions should they decide otherwise in view of the evidence.
There were Communists
arrested all over the nation, five of them in Seattle. They were accused
of plotting to overthrow the government by force and violence, but not one
charge was ever proved against them, not one. The trials were
largely on what books they read and what was in the books. Many served prison
sentences, but most, after a long court battle, were freed. Time was beginning
to run out on the witch hunters due to a constant increase public outrate
and disapproval. One example is the fate of the chairman of our state Unamerican
Activities Committee, Senator Canwell of Spokane, who was soundly defeated
the next time he came up for reelection. I thought you
might want to know what a Communist did from day to day. I joined the Party
in about 1934, in the middle of the Great Depression (your grandparents
no doubt well remember). Millions of families were unemployed. Teachers,
engineers, actors, nurses, bookkeepers, secretaries, construction workers,
carpenters, waiters, cooks and truck drivers - people in every walk of life
And of all races. The depression bit deep. I, a single mother with a small
daughter, was one of them. I was a secretary. At the beginning there was
no welfare, no unemployment insurance, no social security for the retired
worker, no industrial insurance for injured workers. I, too, was dependent
on an inadequate food voucher, which was all the help that was available.
I came across a person one day at the food voucher station, who asked me
to sign a petition to the state legislature. It petitioned the legislature
to provide unemployment insurance to jobless workers. I had never heard
of such a thing and neither had anybody else as far as I knew. I asked who
drew up the petition (which I signed, of course) and was told it was drawn
up by the Communist Party. That really interested me so I went to one of
their meetings held in a home only to find out that the family was being
evicted for non payment of rent. So I joined in what was occurring. As the
Sheriff's men brought the furniture out to pile it on the sidewalk, the
rest of us picked it up and took it into the house by the back door. This
went on for quite a while until the sheriff and his men, who were not very
enthusiastic in the first place, left in despair and frustration. We went
inside for the meeting. I learned that the Communists were planning to organize
the people at the voucher station to better things in general. From then
on I was very busy. So busy, in fact, that I forgot my own very real problems.
I no longer felt alone and helpless; matter of fact, it was even a sort
of fun time. We demonstrated
down at Olympia, occupied the city hall for days, wrote letters to politicians
and wherever needed. We struggled for food, for housing, for clothing, against
racism and for the rights of women. We also helped organize a Senior Citizens
Union which launched a petition to set up pensions on a state level for
the elderly. This prompted the Postmaster General to say "The United
States is made up of 49 states and the Soviet of Washington." This
was the very first state pension ever paid in the United States, and remained
in force until the national Society Security payments began to take the
place of state pensions. Incidentally this pension union was placed on what
was known as the Attorney General's Subversive Activities list, in an effort
to destroy the union. As the Depression
began to thin out due to the hiring of people in government work programs,
and later through preparation for the World War II, the activities of the
Communist Party became less necessary and I lost interest and gradually
stopped going to meetings and paying dues. About 1942 I was no longer a
member although I never lost my respect for the work we did when I was,
and I have many friends who still belong today. Early in 1958,
some 13 years after I left the Communist Party, I was arrested for deportation
and charged with conspiring to overthrow the government by force and violence
and with belonging to the Communist party thirteen years previously. I was not a citizen,
having been born in Victoria, in Canada. I might say that the foreign born
were the earliest victims of the McCarthy witch hunt. The reason for this
is that those who are foreign born do not have the protection that native
born citizens have of the laws of the Constitution, so they are easier to
prosecute. We had a number of foreign born, or aliens, in this country then.
This arrest of foreign born had a great affect on all the non-citizens and
hampered them in any effort they might make to join a union to better their
lives. Our immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, Asia and the
Philippines are a source of cheap labor and agriculture and cannery projects
owned by large corporation, want to keep it that way. They still have a
hard and uncertain life. Some 400 aliens
who were Communists or suspected Communists were arrested throughout the
country. Most of them were rescued by the courts. When I was arrested
I was put in a room with two other prisoners. The first thing they wanted
to know was why I was in jail. I told them I had been accused of conspiring
to overthrow the government. One of the young women said: "What a wonderful
idea. The government ought to be overthrown. They had a jigsaw puzzle in
the room which I started to work on because I hardly ever had a chance to
finish one and here was my big chance. But it was not to be. My friends
bailed me out before the day was over. So much for my being in the slammer.
My arrest caused
a little flurry in the newspapers and reporters interviewed me. The first
question was "What did I intend to do if I were deported?" I remember
saying the first thing that crossed my mind: "I know I wont be deported,
the American people wont let that happen" I could not have been more
right. A committee was formed by volunteers, most of whom I had never heard
of, calling themselves The Washington Committee for the Protection of the
Foreign Born. Eventually we had some 14 cases in this state. Among them
were four Filipinos, leaders of the Cannery Workers Union, who had fought
corruption in the union and for a contract with the cannery companies, with
great success. But the Immigration Department arrested them in violation
of the law, and was not able to deport any of them after many months and
even years of court action. At one stage in
my case Canada refused to accept me because I was no longer a citizen of
that country due to the fact I had married an American. In those days when
women married foreigners in either Canada or the United States, they lost
their citizenship, while at the same time they did not take on the citizenship
of their husbands. They were women without a country. This law has since
been changed. This decision
from Canada was a low blow to the Immigration Service. Then, after licking
their wounds a while, they attempted to deport me to England on the basis
that my father was a British citizen, therefore I derived that citizenship
from him. As the case went
from court to court, even to the Supreme Court of the United States, we
lost each court battle, but in the end we won the war, because the McCarthy
hysteria had died down through public pressure and even the Immigration
Department decided that I wasn't going to overthrow the government after
all, and they dismissed the case, after nearly twenty years. In 1970 I became
a citizen. During those some
20 years I went on with my life, working in a law office as secretary. My
daughter grew up and had five children. They and my brother, sister and
mother stood by me through it all. During this time
I had plenty of things to do besides worrying about something that might
never happen. I got involved in the environmental movement, busy saving
wildlife, protecting wilderness, working for pure air and unpolluted water,
open spaces in cities, and the many issues that we face today due to destruction
of so much of the earth on which we live. I also became
interested in Nicaragua, where our government was trying to overthrow a
government that nationalized their tropical rainforests and thus sent the
big timber companies out of the country; and banned the use of poisonous
chemicals in farming, which cost United States chemical companies a bundle
in lost trade; and many other acts that dug into the profits of corporations
who wanted the cheap labor and natural resources of Nicaragua for their
profits. I visited the
country four times since 1985; the last time was to observe their elections.
During the question period I'd be glad to talk more about Nicaragua. I understand you
have been studying the McCarthy period in American history, which I think
is good. We have times in our history that we can be proud of, but in far
too many times where we can only be ashamed. We must have knowledge of these
bad times, what caused them, and what we must do to keep them from occurring
against. Otherwise we can make the same mistakes. As you must know
by what I have said, I never did try to overthrow the government, or if
I did, I didn't do a very good job. America is my adopted country and I
hope never to stand still to see our government violate our Constitution
or discriminate against the foreign born, or the people of color, whether
their forefathers came from Africa, Asia, Europe, or Latin America. I also
resent discrimination against women in all its aspects. If that is interpreted
as "overthrowing the government", so be it and I am all for it.
And, in a way,
it is sort of a fun way to live.