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Spring 2008 Banned in Red Scare Peter Dreier Occidental College, [email protected]

Jim Vrabel

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Recommended Citation Dreier, Peter and Jim Vrabel. "Banned in Red Scare Boston." Dissent. Spring 2008.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Urban and Environmental Policy at OxyScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in UEP Faculty & UEPI Staff choS larship by an authorized administrator of OxyScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HIDDEN HISTORY Banned in Red Scare Boston The Forgotten Story of Charlie and the “M.T.A.”

Peter Dreier and Jim Vrabel 1959, but it was a local Boston group, most of whose members are still alive, that wrote and first performed it ten years earlier. Why weren’t they on the stage that afternoon? n a clear, chilly day in Novem- But the most revealing sign that Boston was ber 2004, then-Massachusetts forgetting its past was that the version of the governor Mitt Romney stood in- song sung that day omitted the name of the sideO a large white tent set up on the brick plaza Boston mayoral candidate for whom it was writ- outside Boston City Hall. Romney wasn’t there ten—Walter A. O’Brien, Jr. to deliver a speech or cut a ribbon. He was Romney and the mass-transit bureaucrats there to sing a song—something he did with who organized the event were, no doubt, un- gusto as he joined the Kingston Trio in a rous- witting accomplices to this collective memory ing rendition of “M.T.A.,” the well-known bal- loss, and like most of those in the audience, lad about a “man named Charlie” doomed to unaware that O’Brien’s name was missing from “ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston” and the lyrics sung at the ceremony. But its absence become “the man who never returned.” reflected the fact that a chapter of Boston his- The purpose of this unusual concert was tory has been torn out of the city’s collective to launch the “Charlie Card,” an electronic fare memory. Few today remember a period of time card that has now replaced tokens on the Bos- barely sixty years ago when Boston was less like ton subway system. “I’ve always wanted to do the “Cradle of Liberty” or “Athens of America” that, since about the fifth grade,” said Rom- and more like nearby Salem during the time ney, after singing the song that has become not of the witchcraft trials. only part of American folklore, but a proud part of Boston history. alter A. O’Brien, Jr., was a good- History is a complicated business, though. looking, broad-shouldered, charming Sometimes places, like people with selective W Irishman. He combined a gift of gab memories, omit parts of their history to avoid with a passion for progressive politics. Born in inconvenient truths. There were signs of 1914, O’Brien was raised in Portland, Maine, Boston’s historical amnesia at work that day. where his ancestors had fled from the potato One sign was that the ceremony was held famine in their native County Tipperary. At age outside a subway station now called Govern- twenty, he graduated from the Gorham Nor- ment Center, an assemblage of sterile city, mal School (now part of the University of state, federal, and private office buildings. In Southern Maine), but immediately shipped out the “M.T.A.” song, the station was called by to sea as a deckhand because, he later ex- its original name, Scollay Square, a place teem- plained, “They were paying teachers $12 a ing with burlesque houses, barrooms, tattoo week.” It was at sea that O’Brien discovered a parlors, and pawnshops. But after Boston se- taste and a talent for politics, and he became cured federal urban renewal funds in the early a union organizer. He married the former Laura 1960s to “clean up” its downtown, the entire Manchester, also from Portland, in 1939, then area was razed and renamed. served as a radio operator in the Merchant A more telling sign was that the Kingston Marine in the Second World War. After the Trio was invited to perform. It’s true that the war, Walter and Laura moved to Boston, partly West Coast group had popularized “M.T.A.” in for the opportunities offered by a bigger city

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Walter A. O’Brien, Jr. Photo courtesy of Julia O’Brien-Merrill

82 ■ DISSENT / Spring 2008 M.T.A. and partly to escape the conservative politics naïve, a dreamer, and worse, while lauded by of Maine and of Walter’s parents, who were others as a champion of the New Deal and a not happy with the increasingly liberal views visionary. Some early polls showed that Wallace of their son and his wife. had the support of more than 20 percent of Their first apartment was on Myrtle Street, the voters. Democratic Party officials, as well which straddled the line between the Beacon as some left-leaning union leaders, feared that Hill of Boston’s bluebloods and its polyglot, even if he couldn’t win the election, Wallace working-class West End. The pair immediately might attract enough Democratic voters so that plunged into politics. Walter got a job as port the White House would fall into the hands of agent of the American Communications Asso- the Republicans. ciation, a union affiliated with the left-leaning O’Brien was a delegate to the Progressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Party national convention in Philadelphia in Laura did secretarial work for the various po- July 1948 that nominated Wallace for presi- litical organizations in which they became in- dent and Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho for vice volved. Both joined the Massachusetts chapter president. O’Brien campaigned energetically of the Progressive Party, which held its found- for the ticket, and even became a candidate ing convention when three thousand delegates himself. Running for Congress in Massachu- crowded into the Hotel Bradford in Boston in setts’s Tenth Congressional District, O’Brien April 1948. lost by a two-to-one margin to the Republican incumbent (and future Massachusetts gover- he national Progressive Party had been nor and U.S. secretary of state) Christian Hert- formed a year earlier by a fragile coali- er. Although he received fifty thousand votes, T tion of independent radicals, commu- pundits attributed O’Brien’s showing less to his nists, and left-wing Democrats who were stands on the issues and more to his Irish sur- unhappy with the Truman administration. On name and the fact that he also ran on the Dem- domestic issues, they criticized Truman’s un- ocratic ticket when that party declined to field willingness to challenge Southern Democrats’ a candidate. Wallace, whose campaign had be- support for Jim Crow and his tepid support for gun with such high hopes, received fewer than labor unions. They advocated an end to segre- 40,000 votes in all of Massachusetts and just gation, full voting rights for blacks, and uni- 1.1 million (2.4 percent) nationally. versal health insurance. Wallace’s poor showing had little to do with On foreign policy, they attacked Truman’s his stand on domestic issues. It was the Pro- get-tough policy with the and his gressive Party’s foreign policy positions that support for loyalty oaths to root out commu- many found troubling, in particular its uncriti- nists and radicals from government jobs, cal support for the Soviet Union and the Stalin unions, and teaching positions in schools and regime. That support, and its failure to bar universities. They opposed the Truman Doc- Communist Party members from its ranks— trine, which aimed to contain communism as the newly formed Americans for Democratic through military intervention if necessary. They Action did—led to charges that the Progres- even refused to support the Marshall Plan to sive Party was infiltrated, some said controlled, rebuild Europe, which they considered an in- by the Communist Party. strument of the cold war. They preferred a As John Culver and John Hyde write in multilateral aid program that would be admin- their 2000 biography of Wallace, American istrated through the United Nations. Dreamer, “Only the most rabid Red-baiters The party was formed primarily to support thought Wallace himself a Communist. But the 1948 presidential bid of Henry Wallace, millions came to believe he was a ‘dupe’ or a an Iowa farmer, inventor, and crusading pub- ‘fellow traveler’ or a ‘pink’ or the naive captive lisher who had served as Franklin Roosevelt’s of leftist radicals.” Wallace would resign from secretary of agriculture, vice president, and the party two years later over its failure to sup- secretary of commerce. As a candidate for port the U.S. intervention in Korea, and sub- president, Wallace was denounced by some as sequently say, “You know, I didn’t actually

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realize how strong the Communists were in the But O’Brien and his fellow activists under- Progressive Party.” stood that the best way to energize a party and promote issues is through an election cam- fter Wallace’s poor showing in the paign, so in 1949 he became a candidate 1948 campaign, most of the state chap- again—this time for mayor of Boston. O’Brien’s A ters of the Progressive Party disbanded. opponents included the incumbent, James However, thanks largely to O’Brien, who was Michael Curley, a legendary figure in Boston named its executive director, the Massachu- politics who had already been elected mayor setts Progressive Party kept going. “He was a four times in four different decades; City Clerk wonderful person to work for,” recalled Anne John B. Hynes, who had served as acting mayor Alach, now eighty-four but then the office sec- for five months in 1947 when Curley was serv- retary, “although knowing Wally, he would have ing time in federal prison for mail fraud; Demo- said ‘to work with.’ ” O’Brien, she said, “was cratic ward-heeler Patrick J. (Sonny) committed to all of the causes and serious McDonough; and Republican real estate de- about the work, but he always had a smile on veloper George F. Oakes. his face, and an accepting approach to every- O’Brien ran a spirited, if low-budget, cam- body.” paign. He and Shubow, his campaign manager, With O’Brien at the helm, the Massachu- spent much of their time riding around the city setts Progressive Party headquarters attracted in a boxy old sound truck, draped with banners, idealistic volunteers from different back- stopping to speak, according to a newspaper grounds—college students, factory workers, account, “to whatever audience he can find.” professors, longshoremen, and housewives— When even a handful of people could be coaxed who agitated for better housing conditions, to gather, the truck would stop and the two men supported labor unions, and crusaded for civil would hop out and scramble up to a platform rights. They put in long hours in an atmosphere mounted on the roof. Shubow would introduce that Alach described as “hectic and joyful.” “We the candidate, and O’Brien would launch into worked late and we worked hard,” she recalls, one or another of his stump speeches. “but thanks to Wally we weren’t all going O’Brien called for the creation of public around with dour faces . . . even though the works jobs to reduce unemployment and for a odds were against us.” city rent control law and a metropolitan hous- Lawrence Shubow had just graduated from ing authority to end the shortage of affordable Harvard and was active in the Progressive Party housing. He deplored “police brutality against at the time. Now eighty-five, he describes how strikers and members of minority groups” and O’Brien helped “heal a big political breach.” urged people to speak out against “jingoists, war Many of the Progressive Party’s members were mongers, and enemies of world peace and in- college-educated and Jewish, he explains, and ternational cooperation.” O’Brien didn’t vary his O’Brien helped attract recruits from Boston’s message depending on the audience. Speaking largely working-class and Irish-Catholic popu- at the Harvard Club of Boston, he called for a lation. “Wally was a solid, tough-minded indi- government jobs program more ambitious than vidual who was asking his own questions when the New Deal. Before members of the Suffolk Irish Catholics were not supposed to challenge County Republican Club, he condemned the authority or rock the boat.” “money interests [for] owning and maintaining O’Brien was described as the Progressive the city’s slums for their own profit.” Party’s “Mr. Outside,” for the role he played as But O’Brien was much more in his element the public face of the organization, speaking among Boston’s working people. On one occa- at rallies, leading demonstrations, and testify- sion, he led a picket line of tenant housewives ing before committees. Shubow, who despite and children outside a meeting of the National his Ivy League education, once said he “got my Association of Apartment House Owners and ideology from soap-box orators,” was described charged that the landlords “lie through their as “Mr. Inside,” filing legislation, writing teeth” when they say there is no longer an acute speeches, and preparing issue papers. housing shortage. On another, he warned long-

84 ■ DISSENT / Spring 2008 M.T.A. shoremen at Commonwealth Pier, “Unless you John Lomax, was the campaign’s “music direc- take an active part in city, state, and national tor,” and he made sure that song sheets were elections through political action . . . you too passed out at every meeting or rally so that will find a city rife with unemployment as it singalongs could alternate with speeches. It was during the thirties.” was not surprising, then, that O’Brien asked O’Brien’s biggest issue, though, was his call Lomax’s sister, Bess Lomax Hawes, who lived for a rollback of the recent subway-fare increase. in the Boston area, if she could come up with In 1897 when Boston opened the nation’s some songs to help boost his mayoral cam- first subway line, one hundred thousand people paign. had lined up to pay the five-cent fare for a half- As a teenager, Bess had worked with her mile ride inside the tunnel that ran under the father and brother on the groundbreaking col- edge of Boston Common. Over the years, a lection of American Our Singing chaotic web of individually owned, privately Country, published in 1941. Later, she and her run subway and streetcar lines had sprung up husband, Butch Hawes, had been members of all over the city. In 1922, the Massachusetts the Almanac Singers, along with Woody legislature allowed one company, the Boston Guthrie, , Lee Hayes, and others. Elevated Railway Company, to take over the Not only did Bess know more folk songs than others. But in 1947, when that company faced anyone else, but when the Almanacs needed bankruptcy, the legislature stepped in to cre- songs for union rallies, to dramatize particular ate the Metropolitan Transit Authority issues, or to plug political candidates, she could (M.T.A.) to take over the system—and, O’Brien write new songs on short notice—“sometimes charged, to bail out the stockholders of the pri- on the spot,” Hawes, now eighty-seven, recalls. vately owned “El” with taxpayers’ money. These “new” songs were essentially parodies of In August 1949, despite howls of protests old ones, lyrics written for the specific occa- from the mostly working-class riders and a last- sion modeled after and set to traditional tunes. minute lawsuit by O’Brien and the Progressive Bess and Butch had moved to the Boston Party, the M.T.A. raised fares by as much as area in 1946. Butch worked as a book illustra- 50 percent on some lines. O’Brien seized on tor and Bess raised their three small children, the issue in his mayoral campaign. He circu- while also teaching a course called “How to lated a petition to reverse the fare increase. Play the Guitar.” They kept in touch with the More than 20,000 people signed it in just a local folk music scene by hosting an informal few weeks. Sunday night get-together at their house on But O’Brien was looking for something Shepard Street in Cambridge, where people else to generate excitement around his cam- gathered to sing; play guitars, banjos, and paign, and he thought some folk songs might fiddles; swap songs; and, inevitably, talk poli- do the trick. tics. After O’Brien approached her to write some songs for his campaign, Bess turned for n the 1930s and ’40s, American leftists help to some of the people who came by on regularly used folk songs to energize picket Sunday nights. Ilines, enliven rallies, and galvanize labor One of them was Jackie Steiner, a Vassar unions and political campaigns. During the graduate who had just dropped out of gradu- Great Depression, the struggle by mineworkers ate school at Radcliffe and was working for the in Harlan County, Kentucky, inspired Florence Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, which Reese to write the labor classic “Which Side raised money to help refugees from the Span- Are You On?” In 1940, wrote ish Civil War. Although Steiner had a back- both “Union Maid” and “This Land Is Your ground in classical music, as she became more Land.” Although it didn’t catapult him into the interested in politics she found her way to White House, Henry Wallace relied heavily on Hawes’s folk-song gatherings. At one she heard folk music in his presidential campaign. Folk Bess sing the “Kentucky Moonshine Song.” singer Pete Seeger traveled with Wallace; Alan “That converted me,” recalls Steiner, now Lomax, son of the famed folk song collector eighty-two and living in Connecticut. “I’d been

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a snob about folk music before that.” “Arnold and I were saying that if you didn’t have Steiner merged her interest in politics with a nickel, then you could never get off the sub- her newfound love of folk music, and soon dis- way and you’d never get home,” Sam Berman covered that, like Hawes, she had a knack for recalls. Hawes and Steiner were intrigued at making up songs “on the spot” on picket lines, the possibilities that this predicament pre- at union rallies, and at demonstrations. sented. Brothers Sam and Arnold Berman and Al Rather than compose a new melody, Hawes Katz were the other members of the group that recalled a song that the Almanac Singers had joined forces to help O’Brien. All three grew written and performed in 1941 for a Transport up in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, then a Workers Union rally that filled Madison Square largely working-class Jewish enclave. Sam and Garden, which they called “The Train That Al had been high school classmates who knew Never Returned.” Lawrence Shubow from the American Student That song was based on two older songs. Union, a national popular for One was “The Ship That Never Returned,” high school students. written in 1865 by Henry Clay Work and popu- Sam Berman, now eighty-five, is a small, lar in the late nineteenth century, which told wiry man. Sitting in the living room of his sum- the story of a young man who goes off to sea mer cottage on the rock-rimmed coast of and leaves his worried mother behind. The Gloucester, Berman’s voice is often little more chorus asks and then answers the key ques- than a whisper. “We sucked Larry into more tion about the vessel: left-wing organizations,” Sam recalls with a Did she never return? chuckle. Sam had served in the Army Air Corps She never returned, in Europe during World War II, graduated from Her fate, it is yet unlearned. the University of Wisconsin, and, once back Though for years and years in Boston, met Bess Hawes when he took her There were fond ones watching, guitar course. His brother Arnold, a year Yet the ship she never returned. younger, had served in the Army Infantry in the Pacific during the war and was attending Work’s tune was resurrected in the 1920s Harvard College on the G.I. Bill. Al Katz al- with new lyrics, based on a true story about the ready had an undergraduate degree in engineer- wreck in 1903 of a Southern Railroad mail train. ing from Northeastern University and had In 1924, Vernon Dalhart, a popular “hillbilly” returned there to earn his master’s degree. singer, recorded “The Wreck of the Old 97.” In addition to working up some songs for This version became America’s first million-sell- O’Brien, these four (all but Hawes, who was ing record. In telling the story of the engineer’s too busy with her family responsibilities) effort to reach his destination on time and the formed a group called Boston Peoples Artists. eventual crash, the chorus explains They sang and played at square dances and Did she ever pull in? No, she never pulled in. other venues around the city, passing the hat In the Almanac Singers’ 1941 version, a for contributions at the end of the evening. group of crooked politicians who were trying They would turn over the night’s proceeds to to crush the transit workers union board a “yel- whichever one of them was most in need at low scab train.” The Almanacs distributed the the time. lyrics to the 20,000 people at the rally, many of whom joined them in singing the chorus: he idea for “M.T.A.” came one day when Sam and Arnold Berman were jok- Did they ever return? No, they never returned. T ing about one of the peculiar aspects of And their fate is still unlearned. the recent fare increase. Although riders of the The Almanacs never recorded the song, but Boston system were still only charged ten cents eight years later, Hawes remembered it and sug- to enter underground subway stations, they gested reworking it for the O’Brien campaign. were now being charged an additional five “I knew that it was a good song that groups of cents to get off trolleys at aboveground stops. people could sing together,” Hawes recalls.

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Steiner agreed to give it a try. She wrote Peoples Artists can recall today, one verse was most of what would become “M.T.A.” When left off the record, the one Steiner says was she brought her draft back to the group, ev- meant to reflect the conductor’s working-class eryone liked it, but they objected to the name “solidarity” with Charlie: of the protagonist, which was “Angus.” They “I can’t help,” said the conductor, thought it suggested the stereotype of a skin- “I’m just working for a living, but I sure agree flint Scotsman and smacked of “national chau- with you/ vinism”—the phrase in 1940s left-wing circles For the nickels and dimes you’ll be spending in for being “politically incorrect.” Angus quickly Boston/ became the more ethnically neutral Charlie. You’d be better off in Timbuktu.” Bess Hawes also added what proved to be the song’s most memorable verse, the one in “M.T.A.” made its debut on October 24, which Charlie’s wife brings him a sandwich 1949, according to a story in the Boston Globe every day, handing it to him through an open (which incorrectly described the song as be- window “while the train goes rumbling through.” ing “to the tune of ‘Casey Jones’ ”), when O’Brien campaigned outside factory gates in To this day, people can’t resist asking why Charlie’s wife couldn’t just hand her husband South Boston and Roxbury. The song was used a nickel instead. As Steiner explains “Without throughout the campaign. Sometimes the Bos- that verse, the song wouldn’t have been so ton Peoples Artists squeezed together with their popular.” instruments on the platform on top of the In reminiscing today about the song and sound truck and sang at campaign stops. When its origins, the surviving members of Boston they weren’t available, the recording was Peoples Artists make one thing clear: Charlie played. Either way, the crowds liked the song. was never meant to represent a luckless fool “There was just something about it,” Sam doomed to “ride forever ’neath the streets of Bos- Berman recalls. “When people heard the song, ton” for want of some spare change. He was they were taken by it.” That was true both on meant to symbolize the working Everyman, and off the campaign trail. Wherever the Bos- caught in a system that was rigged against him ton Peoples Artists played—at events for and did not care if “he never returned.” O’Brien or at neighborhood dances in and Hawes and Steiner ended the song by mak- around Boston—people invariably asked the ing sure voters knew which candidate was on group to sing “M.T.A.” Charlie’s side—and theirs: espite the popularity of the song, Vote for Walter A. O’Brien Walter O’Brien never stood a chance in and fight the fare increase the Boston mayor’s race. His campaign Get poor Charlie off that M.T.A.! D had always been more about educating voters The group wrote seven songs in all for the to challenge Boston’s political and business es- O’Brien campaign. Only “M.T.A.” and “The tablishment. Three weeks before the election, People’s Choice,” written by Al Katz, made it O’Brien acknowledged as much, by saying: “I’m onto a record that was made entirely for cam- not an evangelist, but I believe I am doing a paign—not commercial—purposes. The re- teaching job which will some day bear fruit.” cording session took place in late September Two days before election day, he reminded his or early October 1949 at ACE Recording Stu- campaign workers that they were “building a dio on Boylston Place, an alley across from Bos- movement . . . rooted among the people . . . ton Common that is home today to a number devoted to the furtherance of progressive ide- of upscale singles clubs. Sam Berman sang the als,” which would outlast his campaign. lead on “M.T.A.” and played guitar; Jackie In his closing statement, which appeared Steiner sang backup; Bess Hawes played man- in newspapers on election eve, O’Brien vowed, dolin, Al Katz guitar, and Arnold Berman uku- “Whether in office or out, on Jan. 1, I am de- lele. Everyone chipped in on vocals for the termined, as my organization is determined, to chorus. For reasons that none of the Boston continue to carry on in union halls, at shop

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gates, in ward headquarters and on the streets, Americans reluctant to associate with political our battle for a new political party of the work- groups labeled left-wing or communist. ing people, small businessmen, housewives and members of victimized minorities who will or most people, mention of the “Red once and for all end the phoniness, corruption Scare” of the 1940s and 1950s (an ear- and unholy devotion to the needs of big busi- Flier one occurred after World War I) ness that has captured the major parties.” brings to mind images of the grave-looking O’Brien would not be in office on January members of the House Un-American Activi- 1. Instead, Boston voters elected John B. Hynes ties Committee holding hearings: the badger- mayor. Hynes received 138,000 votes, com- ing of witnesses by the senator from Wisconsin, pared to 126,000 for Curley, 22,360 for Joseph McCarthy; the trial of Alger Hiss and McDonough, and 7,133 for Oakes. O’Brien fin- the execution of the Rosenbergs for being So- ished last with only 3,563 votes, barely 1 per- viet spies; and the blacklisting of the screen- cent of the number cast. As the years went by, writers and directors known as the “Hollywood the 1949 mayoral campaign would be remem- Ten”—events that took place in Washington, bered in Boston as the “Last Hurrah” for the New York, and Los Angeles. colorful Curley. Although the “M.T.A.” went on If Boston is mentioned at all in connection to become a popular folk standard, hardly any- with this turbulent era, it is because of the day one today remembers the candidate whose in June 1954 when Joseph Welch, an attorney campaign gave birth to the song. with the prestigious Boston law firm of Hale and After the election, the Boston Peoples Art- Dorr, stood up to McCarthy’s bullying during ists split up. A few years later, after lasting hearings held in Washington, D.C., to investi- longer than most of its counterparts in other gate alleged subversive activities within the states, the Massachusetts Progressive Party dis- Army, asking, “Have you no sense of decency, banded as well. Many of its members had been sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of de- young people, including veterans recently re- cency?” It was a moment that many historians turned from the war. As they got married and consider the beginning of the end of McCarthy’s started families and careers, they found it hard influence and political career. to sustain their previous level of political ac- Boston enjoys being remembered for tivism. Nevertheless, many of them remained Welch’s defense of civil liberties and his attack active in the social justice, peace, civil rights, on McCarthy’s guilt-by-association tactics, just and women’s movements. as it enjoys being remembered as a center of Walter and Laura O’Brien had also started abolitionism and headquarters of the a family, but they continued to agitate for social movement’s most vigorous champion before the change in Boston with the same level of inten- Civil War, William Lloyd Garrison. References sity. In June 1950, Walter was arrested on to both Garrison and Welch are easy to find in Kneeland Street in Downtown Boston while any search of Boston history. One has to look demonstrating for an end to the cold war. At the much harder, though, for references to the same time, Laura was pushing their daughter 1830s period when Garrison was nearly Kathleen in a baby carriage on a picket line just lynched in Boston by what a newspaper of the a few blocks away on Tremont Street, protest- time described as “an assemblage of fifteen ing the extension of the draft. In the fall of 1951, hundred or two thousand highly respectable Laura took her turn as a Progressive Party can- gentlemen.” It is all but impossible to find ref- didate. Campaigning on the slogan “As Boston’s erences to the period when many of Boston’s housewives and mothers we can win this pro- leading citizens during the 1950s followed gram for a Better Boston and a peaceful world,” McCarthy’s lead and made reckless accusa- she received 11,500 votes in an unsuccessful tions that questioned the loyalty and patriotism bid for a seat on the Boston City Council. of the city’s radical activists, unionists, profes- By 1955, the national Progressive Party and sors, teachers, and clergy. its Massachusetts chapter were dead. The party Recent decades have seen a renewed inter- fell victim to the Red Scare, which made many est in the McCarthy era. The Red Scare has

88 ■ DISSENT / Spring 2008 M.T.A. been put under a spotlight in books and articles 1951 “Herbert Philbrick Day,” and more than by historians and journalists, and movies by eight hundred people turned out for a testimo- Hollywood studios and independent documen- nial dinner in Philbrick’s honor at Boston’s Ho- tarians. But Boston’s role in the frenzy has re- tel Bradford—where the Massachusetts mained in the shadows. It seems hard to believe Progressive Party had held its founding conven- that Boston, today seen as a bastion of liberal- tion just three years before. ism and the capital city of the bluest of blue Senator Joe McCarthy had a large follow- states, was once a center of cold war hysteria. ing in Boston. Joseph P. Kennedy, patriarch of But fifty years ago, it was a much different the Kennedy clan, was a generous contributor place. It was a city controlled economically by to McCarthy’s reelection campaign. In 1952, conservative Brahmin and Yankee Republican only eighteen months out of law school, Rob- businessmen and politically by conservative ert Kennedy went to work for McCarthy as as- Irish-Catholic Democratic politicians. It was sistant counsel of the Senate Permanent a city where books were banned, unions were Subcommittee on Investigations. Two years not welcome, and protesters demonstrating for later, John F. Kennedy was the only Senate jobs, justice, or peace feared not only hostile Democrat who did not vote to censure mobs but also the police who were supposed McCarthy. “Hell,” JFK later explained, “half my to protect them. voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as Indeed, Boston and Massachusetts enlisted a hero.” early in the war against communists and “fel- Like a Broadway producer, McCarthy used low travelers.” In 1948, the Boston public Boston as a kind of tryout town, bringing his schools began to require every teacher to sign Permanent Investigating Committee on the a “loyalty oath” as a condition of employment. road for what the Boston Globe called “the most In 1949, speaking at a campaign rally just days tumultuous congressional sessions ever held in before the mayoral election, President Harry Boston.” The hearings were held at the Fed- Truman informed his Boston audience, “I hate eral building in Boston’s Post Office Square communism” and vowed that he would never and televised live by two local stations. Three surrender to the “godless creed it teaches.” In people were ejected during the proceedings (in- 1951 Massachusetts became one of the first cluding a man who shouted, “You’re a menace!” states in the country to outlaw the Commu- at McCarthy). At one point, McCarthy en- nist Party—three years before Congress and gaged in a shouting match with Lawrence President Eisenhower took such a step. Not Shubow, one of the few lawyers willing to de- long after that, the Boston Bar Association sent fend those called before his committee. out ballots to its members containing various “Mr. Lawyer,” McCarthy bellowed, “I have proposals to expel and disbar any members in- told you about ten times you will not make volved with “Communist or subversive organi- speeches into the microphone.” He then de- zations.” manded that Shubow take the stand. “I am here Herbert Philbrick was a Boston advertising as an attorney, and I refuse to be sworn in,” salesman whose work as a double agent for the Shubow responded. “You will leave the room,” FBI inspired the film and television show I Led McCarthy ordered. Court officers moved in to Three Lives. A star witness before various con- escort Shubow out of the hearing room, but be- gressional investigative committees, Philbrick fore they got to him, the clock struck twelve, identified between seventy and eighty individu- signaling the end of the session. “I’ll be back,” als in Boston businesses, colleges, schools, and McCarthy warned. In fact, he didn’t bring his even churches who he claimed were either com- committee back to Boston, but others came, in- munists or “the weak and the jelly fish who crawl cluding the Senate Internal Security Subcom- before the Communist Party and those who do mittee and the House Un-American Activities its dirty work without ever admitting they are Committee. sympathizers or party members.” To show the For some of those called before the vari- state’s appreciation, Massachusetts governor ous committees, the pressure was unbearable. Paul Dever, a Democrat, declared November 27, Noted literary scholar F. O. Matthiessen was

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one of five Harvard faculty members accused being a communist. “On my first ship I was of belonging to “Communist front” organiza- tagged a Red troublemaker,” he once said, tions. In March 1951 he committed suicide “when I complained because I was poisoned by jumping from the twelfth floor of Boston’s by a bug.” Both Walter and Laura O’Brien were Hotel Manger. “How much the state of the called to testify before the Massachusetts world has to do with my state of mind I do not Commission on Communism. Both refused to know,” Matthiessen said in a note that he left answer questions. In his statement, Walter behind. “But as a Christian and a socialist be- denounced the commission as “inquisitorial.” lieving in international peace, I find myself ter- In hers, Laura called the members “little ribly oppressed by the present tensions.” McCarthys.” “People don’t realize how frightening it On June 9, 1955—a year to the day after was,” Sam Berman recalls. “If you had sub- Joseph Welch had denounced McCarthy in scriptions to certain magazines . . . if you had Washington and six months after McCarthy’s certain books . . . you hid them.” One of the censure by the U.S. Senate—the Massachu- main reasons that Bess and Butch Hawes left setts Commission on Communism stubbornly Boston was that FBI agents had come to their completed its mission and issued a two-volume children’s nursery school to ask both the chil- report with the names, addresses, and bio- dren and parents about the Hawes’s political graphical sketches of eighty-five people it iden- activities and ideas. tified as “present or former Communists or Massachusetts even had its own version of followers of the Communist party line.” Walter HUAC. Created in 1938, it was originally and Laura O’Brien were among those named. called the State Special Commission to Inves- Some of the people identified undoubtedly tigate the Activities within the Commonwealth were Communist Party members. Probably all of Communist, Fascist, Nazi and Other Sub- of them were far too sympathetic and uncriti- versive Organizations, So Called, but “Fascist” cal of the Stalin regime. “We had all wanted a and “Nazi” were dropped from its title when socialist system to work, and we didn’t look at the commission was reestablished in 1953. The what was happening with cold enough eyes, Massachusetts Commission on Communism, and it was terrible to see our ideal so distorted,” as it was more popularly known, worked so Anne Alach admits. “Sure, we should have closely with McCarthy that when he came to known,” Lawrence Shubow agrees. “There was Boston he invited its chairman (state senator too much talk to be ignored. But in all that time Philip Bowker, a Republican from suburban and with all the people I met, I don’t know Brookline) and vice chairman (state senator anybody who ever placed the interests of the John E. Powers, a Democrat from South Bos- Soviet Union over that of the United States.” ton) to sit in on his committee’s hearings. After the Massachusetts Commission on For the next two years, the Massachusetts Communism released its report, Walter Commission on Communism held more than O’Brien, like many of those named, could no fifty public hearings and executive sessions and longer find work. For a while, he tried to use called scores of witnesses to testify. Like his winning personality and gift of gab as a car McCarthy’s committee and others that were salesman. But each time he got a job, FBI operating at the time, it did not confine itself agents would show up at the automobile deal- to calling Communist Party members to tes- ership and speak to his employer, and O’Brien tify. (By then, there were only an estimated would be out of work again. eight hundred of those in all of New England.) “To think that people actually thought of “Being in the Progressive Party was tanta- my father and mother as a threat to this coun- mount to being in the Communist Party in try is frightening,” their daughter Julia O’Brien- the eyes of most people,” remembers Arnold Merrill says today. Vivacious and earnest, she Berman, who now lives in New York’s Hudson is fifty-seven and lives in Brunswick, Maine, Valley. but readily agreed to take time out of a visit to Ever since his tour in the Merchant Ma- Boston to talk about her parents. Spreading out rine, Walter O’Brien had been suspected of newspaper clippings, she explains that the ma-

90 ■ DISSENT / Spring 2008 M.T.A. terial came from the boxes of documents her named by the Massachusetts Commission on parents never talked about when their children Communism, and whom Walter considered his were young, but refused to throw out. political mentor. Days after the Massachusetts Commission A few years passed. Walter thought his past on Communism issued its report, the eighty- in Boston was behind him—until one day in five people who had been named “Communists the summer of 1959, that past came calling in or followers of the Communist party line” is- an unexpected way. sued a statement in which they complained of Sam Berman remembers getting the phone being blacklisted by a legislative body which call from O’Brien. “He’d just heard ‘M.T.A.’ on had made a “mockery of justice” and engaged the radio, and he was very excited, very happy,” in a “witch hunt.” They also vowed “to con- Berman recalls, sitting in his home in Lexing- tinue to fight for the rights of labor, for the civil ton, Massachusetts, decorated with prints by liberties guaranteed by our Constitution, for his wife and other artists. “ ‘We’re famous!’ equality of rights for all Americans, for the Wally said.” Although it was typical of O’Brien needs of youth, and for a peaceful world.” The that he would use the plural pronoun, in this truth was, though, that few of them were in a case he had an additional reason. The song he position to do so. had just heard on the radio was almost identi- Walter and Laura O’Brien certainly were cal to the one written and performed for his not. They had two daughters to raise and had campaign by the Boston Peoples Artists—ex- to find work. During his mayoral campaign, cept that it did not include his name. Walter had said that he had detected a “stand- offishness” among his neighbors and dreaded he story of how “M.T.A.” became a how his “little daughter might be treated in a hit song—minus any mention of couple of years by other children.” He also said T Walter O’Brien—illustrates that the that he would like to find “an apartment in some reach of the Red Scare extended into cul- section of the city where you can be just a little ture as well as politics. bit left of a capitalist without fear of the conse- It begins with Richard “Specs” Simmons. quences.” In 1956, convinced that could not Now seventy-eight and living in San Francisco, happen in Boston, the O’Briens moved back to where he owns a popular bar, Simmons grew Maine. They first moved to the small town of up in Roxbury and had been a member of the Gray, but after being confronted several times Progressive Party’s youth group and a low-level by FBI agents, they moved back to Portland, volunteer in O’Brien’s mayoral campaign. In hoping that a bigger city might provide them— 1955, Simmons, a sometime folk singer him- and their children—with a chance at anonym- self, had taken to performing “M.T.A.” in his ity and a new life. occasional gigs. One day, while working as a Walter became a librarian, Laura an el- waiter at New York’s Purple Onion nightclub, ementary school teacher. They put their politi- Simmons performed the song for folk singer cal lives behind them. (Even the FBI noticed Will Holt, who was appearing at the club. “I the O’Briens’ withdrawal. An entry in Walter’s thought ‘this is very funny,’ ” recalls Holt, now FBI file stated “In view of the absence of re- seventy-eight and living in . “It ported activity on the part of the subject since just hit.” 3/15/58, it does not appear that he meets the Holt added “M.T.A.” to his repertoire, current requirements for inclusion on the Se- changed the tune a little, and recorded it, as a curity Index and, accordingly, it is recom- single and as part of an album, for Coral mended that he be deleted.”) Records in 1957. The song quickly began to The O’Briens kept in touch with their receive airplay on radio stations and seemed former Progressive Party friends, driving down well on its way to becoming a hit. LIFE maga- from Maine for periodic visits and exchanging zine even sent a reporter/photographer team cards at holidays. They remained particularly to Boston to do a feature story on Holt, taking close to Florence Luscomb, the Party’s candi- pictures of him at the various subway stops date for governor in 1952, who had also been mentioned in the song.

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But a funny thing happened as “M.T.A.” didn’t even know who the writers were.” But began to climb the music charts. Radio sta- in the version they recorded on February 16, tions suddenly stopped playing the song. Stores 1959, at the Capitol Recording Studios in New stopped selling the record. LIFE magazine York, the group dropped the real-life Walter A. abruptly pulled the story on Holt before that O’Brien and replaced him with a fictional issue of the magazine hit the newsstands. Holt namesake, George. says that the reason for the sudden turnaround Today, Shane and Reynolds offer different was that radio stations—particularly those in explanations for why they made the change. Boston—had begun to receive complaints that (Guard died in 1991.) Shane says he isn’t sure, the song “glorified” a communist, because it but thinks it had more to do with not wanting mentioned Walter O’Brien. Sing Out!, the na- to mention a real person. Reynolds says he tional folk song magazine, corroborated Holt’s knows why they did it. “We changed the name account, noting at the time that “the record so we wouldn’t get into political trouble. This company was astounded by a deluge of pro- was the McCarthy era,” he recalls. “Who tests from Boston because the song made a knows who would come knocking on your hero out of a local ‘radical.’ ” To this day, Holt door?” Reynolds explains that the Kingston Trio doesn’t know if the attack was part of an or- were “big fans of ,” the folk group chestrated campaign or just a handful of people that included two former Almanac Singers complaining. “It was still the McCarthy era,” (Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes) and had a num- Holt says. “It was nuts.” ber one hit in 1950 with “Goodnight Irene,” In a desperate move to salvage the song, but were blacklisted and forced to break up in Coral Records removed the line about O’Brien 1953. from the song. They literally cut it out—with- “We decided that if we wanted to have our out replacing it—so a careful listener can no- songs played on the airwaves, we’d better stay tice a gap in the subsequent version. Coral in the middle of the road politically,” Reynolds rereleased the song without that line, but the says. “We’d just gotten out of school. We didn’t damage had been done. Holt’s new version of want to get blacklisted like the Weavers.” Asked “M.T.A.” went nowhere. He proudly insists that if the Weavers had warned the Kingston Trio he continued using Walter O’Brien’s name when not to be controversial, Reynolds replies, “They performing the song in clubs and concerts. didn’t have to.” Although Holt went on to become an ac- “M.T.A.” was released on the Kingston complished performer and songwriter (includ- Trio’s second album on June 1, 1959, and as a ing the popular folk song “Lemon Tree”), he single a week later. Without Walter O’Brien’s never became as successful as the group that name holding it back, the single of “M.T.A.” went on to record “M.T.A.” That group was the made it to #15 on the Billboard chart, and the Kingston Trio, which learned the song and a album reached #1 on the pop charts. LIFE lesson from Holt. The trio was formed in 1957 magazine, which had abruptly abandoned Will by three recent California college graduates— Holt two years earlier, ran a cover story on the Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. Kingston Trio in August 1959. The group went Although purists often deride the group for on to be voted Best Group of the Year and won watering down folk songs in order to make a Grammy as best folk performers of the year. them commercially popular, the group deserves credit for helping to launch the folk-music t has been almost fifty years since the boom that brought recognition to more authen- Kingston Trio released its version of tic folk practitioners like Woody Guthrie and I“M.T.A.” Since then, the song has become Pete Seeger and newcomers like Joan Baez, part of American folklore. It has been reprinted Bob Dylan, and Phil Ochs. in myriad songbooks and become a staple Reynolds recalls learning “M.T.A.” from around campfires at summer camps. It has Holt, whom the Kingston Trio had met through been recorded by many different performers, San Francisco folk-music circles. “We sang most recently in 2007 by an Irish-American Will Holt’s version,” Reynolds says today. “We group, the Highland Rovers Band.

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Why has the song lasted? “It’s a good tune, original version of “M.T.A.” first of all,” Pete Seeger recently explained, Sam Berman remained in the Boston area “and the whole idea of getting on the subway and took over the family trucking business. He and not being able to get off . . . it’s a great stayed involved in politics and folk music, and poetic switch.” in 1952 wrote and performed another cam- After leaving Boston, Bess and Butch paign song, this one for Vincent Hallinan, the Hawes moved to California, where she began last Progressive Party presidential candidate, a career teaching anthropology and folk arts, at a rally in Symphony Hall. He, too, is retired. giving guitar lessons, making documentary Al Katz earned three PhDs in engineering, films, and occasionally performing at folk fes- did research for several computer companies, tivals and coffeehouses. In 1975, she went to and taught at several universities. He remained Washington to organize folk-life festivals for the active in local politics wherever he lived and Smithsonian Institution. The following year she active musically as well, as a member of an accepted an offer from the National Endow- amateur folk group in Connecticut called the ment for the Arts to develop its Folk Arts Pro- Possum Glory String Band. He died in 1997. gram, distributing grants to folk musicians and Lawrence Shubow completed Harvard Law artists. Hawes retired in 1991 and two years School and became a defense attorney. His cli- later received the National Medal of the Arts ents included some of his Progressive Party at a reception at the White House. In 2000, friends investigated for their radical politics. the National Endowment of the Arts created Despite complaints raised about his left-wing an award in her name to honor those who make past, Shubow was named a municipal court major contributions to folk and traditional arts. judge by Massachusetts Governor Michael She now lives with her daughter and son-in- Dukakis in 1978. Shubow is retired and lives law in Oregon, and her autobiography will soon on Cape Cod. He, his wife, and two daugh- be published by the University of Illinois Press. ters can often be found at Saturday morning Jackie Steiner and Arnold Berman got mar- “standouts for peace” outside the Falmouth ried and moved to New York, so that Arnold Post Office. could attend graduate school in physics at Co- Anne Alach married a man she met through lumbia University. They later divorced and both her Progressive Party involvement. They moved remarried. Steiner remained active politically to suburban Canton and raised a family, but and musically, recording and performing clas- continued to participate in civil rights and sical and folk songs in concerts and at benefits peace demonstrations. She now lives in for political causes around the country. When- Quincy, Massachusetts. ever she performed the “M.T.A.” song, she says, The U.S. House Un-American Activities she always explained to audiences beforehand Committee paid its last visit to Boston in that it wouldn’t be the version they were prob- March 1958. After issuing reports identifying ably familiar with, but the original one. twenty-two and thirty-seven more individuals Steiner viewed the song as a “toss off, an as Communists or communist sympathizers in occasional song that would soon be forgotten.” 1956 and 1958, the Massachusetts Commis- Likewise, Hawes considered the song a “throw sion on Communism went out of business in away”—one of many topical songs written for 1962, due in part to U.S. Supreme Court rul- a particular political cause at a particular mo- ings in 1956 and 1957 declaring that state in- ment in time. Both find it ironic not only that quiries into sedition had to be “justified by a the song has endured, but that they continue specific legislative need.” But as late as May to receive royalty checks for it. 1959, the Massachusetts legislature voted to After receiving a Ph.D. in physics, Arnold keep the commission going after one of its Berman worked for many years as a research members, a state senator from Boston, made physicist for IBM and other companies. In re- an impassioned plea in which he warned his tirement he has created an elaborate Berman colleagues that if they did not, “there is a family Web site that features pictures of the chance that tomorrow—Friday—we could be Boston Peoples Artists and a recording of their under domination of Communist agents be-

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cause of an A-bomb attack,” and called on he sought. After moving to Maine, the O’Briens them to “show the voices in Moscow that we lived a quiet life. In the 1960s, they occasion- will stand up and fight.” ally took their daughters (a third child, Amy, It never bothered Walter O’Brien that his was born in 1964) to local civil rights and anti- name was removed from the “M.T.A.” song. In war demonstrations, but they avoided the spot- fact, it helped him protect the anonymity that light. “They don’t know who I am up here,” he

“M.T.A.” Lyrics by Bess Lomax Hawes and Jacqueline Steiner; copyright Atlantic Music. Used by per- mission. Below is the original song written in 1949. The Kingston Trio version, recorded in 1959, is available on several Web sites. Let me tell you the story of a man named Charlie On a dark and fateful day He put ten cents in his pocket and he kissed his loving family And he went to ride the M.T.A.

CHORUS: Did he ever return? No, he never returned And his fate is still unlearned. He may ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston He’s the man who never returned Charlie handed in his dime at the Kendall Square station Then he changed for Jamaica Plain When he got there the conductor told him, “One more nickel!” Charlie couldn’t get off that train. [Note: The Kingston Trio did not record this verse] As his train rolled on through Greater Boston Charlie looked around and sighed “Well, I’m sore and disgusted and I’m absolutely busted I guess this is my last long ride.” Now all night long Charlie rides through the tunnel Saying, “What will become of me? And, how can I afford to see my sister in Chelsea Or my brother in Roxbury? [Note: Hawes and Steiner wrote this stanza but it was not included in the original recording.] “I can’t help,” said the conductor “I’m just working for a living but I sure agree with you For the nickels and dimes you’ll be spending in Boston You’d be better off in Timbuktu.” Charlie’s wife goes down to the Scollay Square station Every day at a quarter past two And through the open window she hands Charlie a sandwich As his train goes rumbling through Now, citizens of Boston, don’t you think it is a scandal That the people have to pay and pay? Vote for Walter A. O’Brien and fight the fare increase Get poor Charlie off that M.T.A.!

94 ■ DISSENT / Spring 2008 M.T.A. told a friend, “and that’s the way I want it.” the six activists took place on October 19, Walter and Laura eventually retired to a cot- 1999, in the ornate Hall of Flags, an atrium at tage at Cundys Harbor, Maine, where they ran the center of the Massachusetts State House. a small used-book store described as open only Speakers included then-Massachusetts gover- in the summer or “by chance.” nor A. Paul Cellucci, chief justice of the Su- When he reached his eighties, O’Brien oc- preme Judicial Court Margaret Marshall, and casionally let his guard down. He even began historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Each talked to enjoy the attention when someone interested about the need to remedy the “exclusion from in the “M.T.A.” song would track him down. history” suffered by the honorees. Seated in the The original version of the song can now audience were two of Walter and Laura be heard in a ten-CD collection called Songs O’Brien’s daughters, Julia and Katie, and many For Political Action: Folk Music, Topical Songs of their friends. For them, Walter O’Brien’s “ex- and the American Left 1926-1953, released in clusion from history” was at least partly rem- 1997, that includes 296 songs collected by edied after the speeches were over and the last folklorists Ronald Cohen and Dave Samuelson. song of the evening was sung by a special group Soon after its release, Tony Saletan, a long- of singers and musicians organized by Saletan time Boston area folk singer, put together a pro- that included Jackie Steiner and Sam Berman. gram of political songs that he performed With banjo, guitar, and bass strings blazing, the across New England. While touring in Maine, group launched into the original opening lines Saletan stopped by O’Brien’s home and gave a of the song: private concert. By then, O’Brien was in poor “Let me tell you the story health, suffering from emphysema and lung of a man named Charlie cancer, and forced to use an oxygen mask to On a dark and fateful day . . .” help his breathing. “He seemed to enjoy the musical interlude,” says Saletan, now seventy- Recognizing the song immediately, the au- six. “The only problem was that I wanted to dience burst into applause. Everyone—includ- ask him about the songs, but all Wally could ing Governor Cellucci—joined in on the talk about was the issues behind them.” chorus to sing: Those issues were evidently on Walter “Did he ever return? No, he never returned O’Brien’s mind until the end, according to And his fate is still unlearned . . .” his daughter Julia, who recalls that her fa- By the end of the song, everyone in the hall ther would be asleep, “but in the middle was standing and singing. That was when the of the night I’d hear him say: ‘I’ve got to rightful name was restored to the final verse: get these petitions signed.’” Walter died in 1998 at age eighty-three. Laura died two Now, citizens of Boston, don’t you think it is a years later at age seventy-nine. scandal That the people have to pay and pay? Vote for Walter A. O’Brien and fight efore he died , Walter O’Brien led one the fare increase final campaign. In 1995, the Massachu- Get poor Charlie off that M.T.A.! setts legislature established a commis- B Julia O’Brien says that she felt that the cer- sion to recognize “a woman who through her actions has made a major contribution to the emony “validated my parents’ activism and all Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Despite they went through.” Sam Berman admits “there his poor health, O’Brien mounted an effort was a pleasure in feeling that something that from his home in Maine, calling all his old came out of our left-wing past is now part of friends in Massachusetts and asking them to Boston history.” He also says that he “got a lobby on behalf of Florence Luscomb. The charge out of Governor Cellucci singing campaign was successful. Unable to choose along—even though I’m sure he didn’t know just one woman, the commission decided to the background of the song.” honor six, including Luscomb. It would be nice to think that this ceremony The ceremony to dedicate a memorial to helped to restore Walter O’Brien’s place in

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Boston history. But that didn’t happen—as evi- other former mayors stare down at patrons from denced by the fact that when the Charlie Card the wood-paneled walls. Every month, Doyle’s was launched five years later by the next Mas- hosts a meeting of the ROMEO Club (the ac- sachusetts governor, O’Brien and the Boston ronym stands for Retired Opinion Makers Eat- Peoples Artists were once again ignored. ing Out), whose members are all former politicians, judges, and journalists who covered ournalism is said to be “the first draft of the Massachusetts State House and Boston history.” During the Red Scare years, Bos- City Hall. At a recent meeting, with more than J ton newspapers were filled with stories de- thirty members in attendance, the names of scribing the accusations by the investigators James Michael Curley, John Hynes, “Sonny” and the testimony and protests by those called McDonough, and even George Oakes—all of before them. Front page photographs showed the other candidates in the 1949 mayoral politicians pointing fingers and citizens profess- race—came up during the usual freewheeling ing their innocence or demanding their rights. discussion. It was as if these men might walk Live television broadcasts showed protesters in the door at any moment and be greeted by being hauled from courtrooms. Since then, their old friends. little has been written to remind people that After lunch, with no introduction or expla- any of this ever happened in Boston. Many of nation, the original Boston Peoples Artists’ ver- those who were caught up in the Red Scare, sion of “M.T.A.” was played for those on both sides, prefer that it all be forgotten. assembled. Smiles creased the lined faces of But historians have a larger obligation to help the ROMEOs as they immediately recognized us learn from the past—especially from an era, the tune and the opening lines. Soon, all of with its struggle between idealism and ideol- them were heartily singing along. Everyone ogy, civil liberties and national security, that has knew the words to the chorus, and many of many parallels with today. them knew the words to all the early verses as The Fill-a-Buster is a bustling sandwich well. But there was more head nodding than shop across the street from the Massachusetts singing during the last verse. When the song State House, where legislators and lobbyists was over, these vintage politicians and report- gather to grab a quick bite before rushing back ers were asked to name the Boston mayoral to the now smoke-free rooms of state govern- candidate for whom the song had been writ- ment. Not long ago, two of Boston’s most highly ten—and whose name was mentioned in the regarded local historians ate lunch together last verse of this version of the song. None of there, taking a break from teaching a summer them could do it. course on Boston history to elementary and Like the name of Walter O’Brien, the les- secondary school teachers at the nearby Bos- sons of Red Scare Boston seem to be, in the ton Athenaeum. Each of these men, professors words of the song, “still unlearned.” • at local colleges, has a long list of books to his credit. Both are “public intellectuals,” very in- Peter Dreier teaches politics and public policy volved in civic life, and called on regularly to at Occidental College and is co-author of The comment on all aspects of the city’s past. But Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City. when asked what they knew about Boston’s Jim Vrabel is author of When In Boston: A Time Red Scare period, one admitted that he knew Line & Almanac and co-author of John Paul II: A “nothing at all,” and the other acknowledged Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man. that he was only “vaguely” aware that “some- Publication of this article was made possible in part by the Yip thing had gone on.” Harburg Foundation. In addition to the people quoted in the A few miles away from the State House sits article, the authors wish to thank the following for their help Doyle’s, a bar and restaurant in Boston’s Ja- during our research: Ross Altman, Barbara Brown, Tom Cart- maica Plain neighborhood, and a popular gath- wright, Ron Cohen, Ed Cray, Lew Finfer, Dick Flacks, Josh Freeman, David Green, Robert Hannan, Betty Katz, Larry Katz, ering place for those interested in local politics. Gail Malmgreen, Mark Moss, Dave Samuelson, Allan Shaw, Photographs of James Michael Curley, JFK’s Lillian Shubow, Richard “Specs” Simmons, Shira Stark, Gary grandfather John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, and Stewart, Robert Wechsler, and Jim Whitters.

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