My friend and colleague Anthony Cody tells the story of his family’s travails during the McCarthy era and links it to events of the present day.
Not long after I first met Anthony, about five years ago, he briefly summarized the story of his parents and the hardships they endured because of McCarthyism. As a historian, I urged him to write about it. The events of the past week provoked him to do so, especially when he heard a Trump surrogate speak of the World War 2 internment camps for Japanese-Americans as a precedent for dealing with suspicious Muslims. Those camps were eventually ruled unconstitutional, and those who were interned were paid reparations, which were certainly inadequate to the loss of their freedom and the humiliation of being jailed because of their origins. But obviously the Trump surrogate didn’t know the facts.
Anthony’s parents were supporters of human rights and civil rights at a time when it was dangerous to be leftists. They fled the country and moved to Mexico to avoid being forced to testify before the infamous House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1950.
When it was safe to return, in 1954, they moved to Berkeley and opened Cody’s Bookstore, which became a celebrated mecca for student activists and radicals of all stripes.
Fast forward to the present and we have a President-elect who was mentored by the infamous Roy Cohn, a protege of Joseph McCarthy. Cohn was an unscrupulous and unethical lawyer who was eventually disbarred. Trump was a close friend of Roy Cohn, who mentored him. According to profiles of the two, Cohn taught Trump to meet every challenge with “attack, counterattack, and never apologize.”
Anthony’s parents’ lives are a part of American history that we should study and learn from. One thing we can learn is that bad things don’t last forever. In the presence of injustice, we must stick to our principles and resist, as his parents did. It is resistance that eventually prevails, not passivity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/aftermath-sixteen-writers-on-trumps-america#morrison
“All the pieces are in place for the abuse of power, and it could happen quickly. There will be precious few checks on President Trump. His party, unlike Nixon’s, will control the legislative as well as the executive branch, along with two-thirds of governorships and statehouses. Trump’s advisers, such as Newt Gingrich, are already vowing to go after the federal employees’ union, and breaking it would give the President sweeping power to bend the bureaucracy to his will and whim. The Supreme Court will soon have a conservative majority. Although some federal courts will block flagrant violations of constitutional rights, Congress could try to impeach the most independent-minded judges, and Trump could replace them with loyalists.”
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There is a preferred narrative being pushed here – as always – but I wonder if there is more to this story than Mr. Cody is telling us. McCarthy was definitely reckless and wrongly accused many people of being Communists who were not. But as Soviet archives released in recent years show, McCarthy missed hundreds of people who were beyond all doubt pro-Stalin, pro-Soviet. Were the Codys liberals committed to democratic reform, or were they pro-Stalin, pro-Castro like many academics, journalists, and Hollywood celebrities of that time were? One of Hubert Humphrey’s great accomplishments was to purge Communists from the Democratic Party in Minnesota; Humphrey believed in democratic change and civil liberties, not whatever-it-takes totalitarianism.
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John, we have openly Nazi people in the US who parade around in Nazi regalia. Are they being locked up just for their views? So what if someone is openly communist or a Stalinist? Stalinism, Naziism and communism are horrible but we do have freedom of speech. If some one is a spy or agent for whatever ism, then they will be subject to our laws. The Westboro Baptist Church loonies picket soldiers’ funerals because they think it’s somehow related to homosexuality. Crazy nonsense but it is their right of free speech. If you are going to persecute folks who are communists then be prepared to persecute the Nazis, the KKK and the Westboro baptist Church nudniks.
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John Webster
I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the communist party.
But who are you or anyone else especially in the seat of government , to tell Americans who they can associate with. How they can exercise their constitutional freedoms, As long as those actions are not aimed at the violent overthrow of the US Government or giving national secretes to the enemy. .
Speaking of which I have a very serious question as to the actions of several members of the Trump team, in directly colluding with the Russians.
Possibly colluding for personal gain, right up to the candidate himself . Colluding to subvert the results of our electoral system. Through a concerted effort to release embarrassing information directed to insure the candidate that desired wins .
Using connections within the national law enforcement apparatus (the FBI), to again try and alter the results of our free electoral process.
“None dare call it treason”, I do. Those communists that “infiltrated every aspect of American life ” turned out to be a figment of the over active right wing imagination.
Trump and the despicables surrounding him are far greater concerned than a group of intellectuals or Union leaders debating what economic model is best for the Nation in the 1950s.
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So it is is OK to advocate for “democratic change and civil liberties”, but apparently these liberties do not do not extend to those who supported the revolution in Cuba. In this view, civil liberties are for the expression of a narrow set of politically acceptable beliefs — otherwise, it is appropriate to declare people enemies and hound them from their jobs.
True democratic values create space for a wide range of political views, even those who wish to promote socialism. If the Democrats of today find common ground with our current generation of McCarthyites, we will not have learned what democracy really ought to be about.
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If your parents never condemned what became a totalitarian government in Cuba, they are not heroes worthy of admiration, as apologists for Hitler are not admirable. What is the truth, or are you telling us only part of the story?
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Anthony, according to John Webster, you and your family are somehow guilty until proven innocent. And your motives seem to be suspect as well. This says so much more about him than it does you. Your family’s legacy demonstrates great honor.
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I’m not accusing the Codys of anything. I merely ask if they ever regarded Stalin and Castro as admirable people, and if so, did they ever disavow that belief as many honorable people on the Left did when it became clear that Cuba and the Soviet Union were anti-democratic tyrannies.
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There is a preferred narrative being pushed here – as always – but I wonder if there is more to this story than John Webster is telling us. While claiming that “McCarthy was definitely reckless and wrongly accused many people,” Mr. Webster will at the same time justify such behavior because the depth of McCarthy’s fear mongering was not sufficient to ultimately, in Mr. Webster’s reasoning, prove his point.
He fails to recognize that many people who were spied upon by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI were also accused of being “pro-Stalin.” But being “pro-Stalin,” as Mr. Webster should know since he claims to be student of history, was much more complex than being he implies. A large number, if not most, of “pro-Stalin” Americans, disavowed Stalin after learning of verified reports about his deadly purges, including large numbers of veterans of the Spanish Civic War’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who, when they returned to the U.S. and wanted to join the U.S. military to fight in WWII, were banned from doing so because they were “premature anti-fascists.” Mr. Webster also fails to acknowledge that pro-Castro before he aligned with the Soviet Union is quite different from being pro-Castro before that as he toppled the corrupt strongman Batista.
I guess the preferred narrative being pushed here is comprised of a revisionist, all-knowing retrospective view of history. He must also fault them for not having the prescience to predict obscured motives and future events. His is an intellectually dishonest pretzel logic.
And I think a fair reading of the readers’ comments that predominate this blog is that we reject the notion of “be[ing] prepared to persecute the Nazis,” etc, etc. What we are prepared to do is engage them in the forum of ideas and resist anything they will do to distort American ideas of fairness, equality, pluralism, and the Constitution.
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I’ll bet any amount that I’m far better read in serious history than you are, with the added advantage that I don’t have an ideological agenda to push. I don’t at all justify the McCathyist abuses: those abuses harmed the cause of legitimate opposition to Soviet communism. The FBI’s actions were clearly often wrong. Mr. Cody still won’t tell us if his parents supported left-wing tyrants.
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John,
I bet I am better read than you about American history than you, especially the history of the Communist party and the American left–which was a broad spectrum, not just members of the Party. McCarthyism was a shameful era in our history. Many leftists admired the Soviet idea even when they had no idea of the tyranny of Stalin. Many on the left were wrongly called Communists or pinkos because they believed in racial equality. I graduated from high school in 1956. We had John Birch-types sitting in on our classes to watch our teachers and see if they ever expressed a “subversive” thought, like admiring the UN or the Urban League. That was grounds for firing.
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I withdraw my “bet” remark from the previous comment; too strong and irrelevant. Let’s say we’re all familiar with the McCarthy era and American history in general. My self-directed reading in American history is 200+ mostly long volumes.
You lived through the McCarthy era; I was born just after. I don’t at all approve of the McCarthy abuses, and fortunately America has developed well beyond that type of thinking. McCarthy severely damaged the cause of legitimate anti-Communism. At the same time, there were Communist elements in the U.S. government, most of them NOT identified by McCarthy (see Soviet archives).
I caution everyone from believing in the next great Utopia, be it the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. Revolutions are dangerous events, which have almost always led to despotism, no matter how noble their intentions initially appear. The United States is the great exception, which according to Thomas Jefferson was largely due to the moderation of one person: George Washington, who willingly surrendered his great powers – twice – something that the Stalins and Castros of the world never do.
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The fact that you would write “Mr. Cody still won’t tell us if his parents supported left-wing tyrants” demonstrates pushing a serious “ideological agenda.” You not only justify McCarthy, you are trying to bring his legacy back to life. Should we ask the same question about you and your parents?
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My late parents never supported tyrants of any type, and neither have I. The gist of this posting is that the Codys were heroic for resisting McCarthyist repression. They had a right to be Communists or subscribe to any other beliefs. If they were Communists or fellow travelers, they supported tyrannies who denied those same rights for others.
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“Were the Codys liberals committed to democratic reform, or were they pro-Stalin, pro-Castro like many academics, journalists, and Hollywood celebrities of that time were?”
Yes many liberal folks saw communism as a great human experiment, and were unable to see the totalitarian forest for the communist trees, even after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, tho I expect Orlov’s 1953 details on the Stalinist purges did the trick for many more. It is not surprising that some ideologues thought the grand experiment might succeed on a small scale, & supported Castro; others simply saw it, perhaps naively, as don’t interfere w/popular uprising/ will of the people.
What’s spurious about your question: (a) the House UnAmerican Committee was UnAmerican. You don’t set up a Senate committee & haul citizens before it to drum them out of their professions because of their political beliefs. You don’t execute people (Esther Rosenberg) w/o proof of treason. And (b) the idea that we should condemn folks from the ’50’s & ’60’s for supporting a totalitarian regime whose ideology pleases them is rich in hypocrisy, given strong US govt support in those & subsequent decades for multiple totalitarian govts worldwide.
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“One of Hubert Humphrey’s great accomplishments was to purge Communists from the Democratic Party in Minnesota; Humphrey believed in democratic change and civil liberties, not whatever-it-takes totalitarianism.”
HHH did not focus anti-totalitarian, that’s just your revisionism. He was simply rabidly anti-communist early in his political career. The thing I treasured about him was that he was a passionate liberal. His Civil Rights stance for Afro-Americans & Jews was admirable. Civil rights stance for American communists, not so much. His positions waxed and waned, informed by political opportunism. He decided in late ’40’s-mid-’50’s that the strategic move to protect the liberal fortress was to put up a fiercely anti-communist position, so liberals wouldn’t be tainted & go down w/ the ship. Hence his party-purging which you so admire, supporting internment camps for ‘subversives’, making membership in the Communist Party a felony, etc. Some of which he admitted a decade later he was not proud.
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Well said!
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John Webster
You seriously must be kidding us ,to assert that American foreign policy has ever had a moral basis .
As Truman famously said .”but he is our S.O.B” .
I am not a fan of either Stalin or Castro. But I tell you what, given the choice of living in Cuba, or Honduras, Guatemala , Haiti ,El Salvador , I think the majority of these populations would chose Cuba as would you.. We always use the false equivalence of the wealthiest country in the world vs Castro’s Cuba .
Ask the people of Chile how they liked the peaceful transition of power in 1973 (sarcasm )when they had the nerve to select a socialist government . .
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/07/chile-new-hopes-for-justice-for-pinochet-era-victims-after-charges-and-arrests/
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Thanks Joel. The film Missing with Jack Lemmon is a good primer on Chile for those who won’t read history. May I add: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Congo, Liberia, Ghana, South Africa, Iraq, Lebanon, Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Argentina, Marcos’s Philippines…the list goes on. It will be interesting to see which right wing regimes Trump’s tenure will favor.
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Greg
May I add Honduras and two soft coups in Argentina and Brazil . Under the watchful eye of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.
Who nauseated me tonight with a curtain call for TPP . Not being content with delivering the “post industrial” Mid West to Trump. He now seeks again to re-frame his legacy.
For those who do read “Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man”
by John Perkins.
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Sometimes eras such as the 50’s backfire. As an elementary student in a rural township school, I created a make-believe game to act out at recess. My girlfriends and I sneaked around campus playing “Communist Spy,” calling each other comrade. Our teacher asked to stop. I felt she was frightened of local authorities. I also picked up that she was describing the fear the authorities claimed could be found in undemocratic countries.
The authorities also claimed that in Russia children were supposed to turn in their parents if the parents advocated against the communist regime. I saw the parallel and became a liberal activist as an adult. So be careful what you wish for Joe.
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West Coast Teacher: you need to reread my comment. What am I supposedly wishing for? I was not wishing for anything, just explicating that it’s wrong to persecute people solely for their beliefs.
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McCarthy, a dangerous, reckless demagogue who ruined lives and stifled liberty and freedom. Sounds like Trump to me, though Trump is not a drinker. McCarthy was an alcoholic who died at age 48.
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Thank you Joe. I also feel that we are an intolerant society in general. In Japan there are communist party members of their ruling body. It is just another point of view. In this country we need enemies or we can’t function. Many have documented this. I spent the first 7 years of my life on the run — we could not go anywhere because we had no money. My father had worked for FDR and when Truman came in he had to blame members of his government as spies so he could prove he was fighting communism. And yes my dad is supposedly mentioned in the documents from the Soviet Union. But since when do we use our “enemies” to prove our truths. I am writing about this but it won’t get favorable reviews. Nor will it be published sadly.
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Anthony-
My dad was a Trotskyite, a history teacher extraordinaire among other things and was investigated by the FBI in the 1950’s. He often credited his principal who staunchly defended him against false charges as the reason he kept his job. My folks would have been so proud of the 2008 election and so horrified by this year’s. Perhaps my early memories of the fear and tension are why I am soooo adamant about trying to keep these demagogues from power. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Very scary and Unamerican. We cannot sit still. Every appointment is worse than the last.
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My parents were a Yellow-dog Democrats, people who always voted the straight Democratic ticket. They were patriotic. They owned a small business and they didn’t like Communists, labor unions, or “pinkos.” Fortunately I did not inherit their political views.
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Hmmm…. Your parents didn’t like Communists, but fortunately you did not inherit their political views even in that area. You really have changed.
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I don’t believe in blacklisting or persecuting people because their political views are different from my own.
McCarthy would have jailed Communists. I would not. I certainly never approved of Stalin or Castro–still don’t– but I would not want to jail people who do. In MvCarthy’s time, many people who had committed no crime were imprisoned for thought crimes or persecuted and lost their livelihood. That was abhorrent to American values. We don’t compel belief. There is this thing called the First Amendment. Freedom of belief and Association. Freedom of speech is not just for people with whom we agree.
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I agree 100%. I also support same-sex marriage, but I don’t think that religious people of conscience should be blacklisted or that CEOs who have never discriminated against gays should be fired for disagreeing with me.
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The First Amendment is a good guideline to protecting dissent and free thought.
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I am glad you support same-sex marriage. I would never blacklist religious people of conscience who don’t approve of same-sex marriage. But recall that Mike Pence as governor of Indiana pushed legislation that allowed business owners to refuse service to gay people based on their religious views. He didn’t back down until major corporations threatened to leave Indiana to protect their gay employees from being discriminated against. I recall that in the 1960s, there were business owners who thought they should be free to discriminate against black people because of their own religious views. That didn’t hold water.
I have actually never heard of anyone blacklisting people for their religious views although we do have a long tradition of discrimination against Catholics, Jews, Mormons and other religious minorities.
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Funny how these supposedly anti-communists have no trouble doing business with communist China and setting up factories there. Capitalism functions very well in an authoritarian communist police state or a fascistic dictatorship (think Pinochet or Franco).
I wish the Chinese would label their products Made in Communist China not just China. It would be honesty in labeling. Oh, I should add, I am not now nor have I ever been a commie commie commie. Gingrich wants to resuscitate HUAC.
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As usual sorry I did not scroll down first before posting. My daughter just went to Vietnam for a short vacation 2 weeks before working in Australia for a year.
55 thousand young men and a million Vietnamese died in that war so that Nike could manufacture there and Americans could vacation there .
What a waste .
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Has anyone else noticed how much Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn resembles Brig. Gen Jack D. Ripper from the film “Dr. Strangelove?” The same fanatical facial expressions with the same menacing intensity.
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I’d like to see a lot more “resistance” on the part of the educational punditry and teachers “unions” against teacher abuse. In the face of a huge shortage of teachers, AFT and NEA say practically nothing except to sand bag their own members and divert attention. With Michelle Rhee running the Dept. of Ed. the destruction of teaching as a profession will move more quickly. I bet many union “leaders” will follow the lead of George Parker, former president of the D.C. Teachers union and go to work for the enemy.
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Actually, Diane, the internment camps were NEVER ruled unconstitutional. Korematsu vs. United States has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. This means that, without a Supreme Court overturn, people can STILL be locked up by race for “military necessity.”
The case that DID help Japanese Americans, Ex Parte Endo, was decided that the Supreme Court that the government no longer had reason to hold Japanese Americans.
Terrifying stuff.
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The conventional wisdom for at least a dozen years — probably more, but 2003 or so was the first time in fifty years prior that the case seemed relevant to contemporary life — has been that Korematsu is dead letter. I’m not sure that’ll be the case in a few years.
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Every high school US history textbook teaches about the Japanese internment camps as a shameful episode in our history
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Of course it’s considered a dead letter, but if the Supremes haven’t ruled on it, it’s technically still law. It’s one of the reasons why people like George Takei, who was interned as a child, are so nervous.
Diane, it was a requirement of the reparations bill signed in the late 1980s that, along with financial compensation for those who had been interned who were still alive, that all textbooks include information on internment. Unfortunately, most of the time, the textbook information is limited to one paragraph. Most Americans still don’t know about the internment. I did some work with the Japanese American National Museum in L.A., and when I talk to people, it’s amazing how many have never heard of the camps.
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thank you Anthony. you’re an inspiration. your parents store showed me what was possible. bravo for pat cody’s pioneering work on des daughters.
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I add my thanks to Anthony and Diane. A snippet more of history.
I watched the McCarthy hearings on a then new medium in our household: Television.
As a new teacher in 1957, I could not be hired to teach in my home state of Florida unless I signed an oath that I had never been a member of the Communist party or a member of any suspected “communist sympathizing” and “subversive” organizations.
I recall that the list of these forbidden organizations was very long–on legal paper, two columns, both sides of the paper, with the list continuing on another page. I was not a joiner. The list was not in any way meaningful except as a threat. The threat was made vivid from the relentless interrogations of McCarthy and friends on TV.
Much later in life, I had the privilege of spending several days with sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett. Elizabeth had been an activist at Howard University. Among other memorable activities in a remarkable life, she chained herself to the handrail on the steps to the Art building, protesting unequal pay for the women faculty.
A scholarshio enabled Elizabeth to travel to Mexico to study printmaking at the Taller de Gráfica Popular. She had married Charles White, a Communist, and divorced him not long after being in Mexico. She participated in the Taller de Gráfica Popular where she met, and later married Francisco Mora printmaker and muralist. She lived and taught in Mexico for quite a long time. While there, she was in a circle of artists that included Diego Rivera among other “leftists.”
When Elizabeth Catlett tried to return to the US she had been listed “undesirable alien” because of her association with Communists and sympathizers in Mexico.
She was finally able to return, but it required high level intervention on her behalf.
This is a trustworthy account of some highlights of her career and the revolutionary impulses at the Taller de Gráfica Popular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Catlett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taller_de_Gráfica_Popular
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Dearest Dr. Ravitch:
This is my heartfelt endorsement of your IMPARTIAL judgment.
Your website is very tolerant to all viewers from extreme left to extreme right.
However, to be honest and realistic, IMHO, malicious leaders and strategists ALWAYS take advantage of the belief of the majority of writers in this website to spread their FAKE NEWS and BELIEF to NORMALIZE their malicious ideal.
Educators should use their lateral thinking skill and should reinforce and emphasize this PARTICULAR skill to all learners through historical stories, true memoirs of all survivors, Fables…
Practically, IMHO, it will take many years in living with PRINCIPLES, and go through experiences of PRINCIPLES, so that people will truly be human beings WITH IMPARTIAL JUDGMENT.
Otherwise, uneducated (= NOT cultivated mind or open-minded), illiterate, theoretical lip-services people are the ROOT of societal chaos.
I love this song for it describes the TRUE FEELING of all classes and ideologies in the world. Here is the link:
Everything I Own
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiE6xTmARro
Bread
…
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew,
Were all the years I had with you
And I would give anything I own
I’d give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own,
Just to have you back again
YOU = can represent classes, ideologies, greed, lust, fame, fortune, EGO, power, most of all, humanity, and civility.
In short, Buddha demonstrates that he gave up his beautiful wife, adorable children, throne, power, wealth in order to be enlightened.
In a lateral thinking, I hope that people MUST REMEMBER THAT freedom, humanity and civility always meet with its adversaries, like dictatorship, indolence, and barbarity.
Thought will lead to actions and result in deeds whether it is good or bad KARMA that will be our shadows with our re-incarnated lives.
All in all, the virtue like patience and forgiveness is to relieve our grudge, bias, discrimination, jealousy, and misery to both authorities and commoners.
Very respectfully yours,
May King
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