The Crucible, Harvard's Secret Court, and Homophobic Witch Hunts Amy D
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Brooklyn Law Review Volume 73 | Issue 1 Article 10 2007 The Crucible, Harvard's Secret Court, and Homophobic Witch Hunts Amy D. Ronner Follow this and additional works at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr Recommended Citation Amy D. Ronner, The Crucible, Harvard's Secret Court, and Homophobic Witch Hunts, 73 Brook. L. Rev. (2007). Available at: https://brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/blr/vol73/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at BrooklynWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Brooklyn Law Review by an authorized editor of BrooklynWorks. The Crucible, Harvard's Secret Court, and Homophobic Witch Hunts Amy D. Ronnert INTRODUCTION In Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Danforth, chief jurist in the Salem witch trials, admonishes: But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time-we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it. I hope you will be one of those.1 Judge Danforth fanatically heeds a view of the world as tidily partitioned into deific benevolence and diabolical evil. At the end of the play, triumphant Danforth, in the name of absolute morality, executes John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse, and other innocent people. Although Miller's tragedy occurs in seventeenth-century Salem, it is also intended to be a critique of the atrocities committed by Miller's contemporaries. In the 1950s, when the t Professor of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law. J.D., 1985, University of Miami; Ph.D. (English Language and Literature), 1980, University of Michigan; M.A., 1976, University of Michigan; B.A., 1975, Beloit College. I dedicate this Article to Brett Barfield to thank him for having been my special student, for becoming such a superb lawyer and loving father, and for continuing to be my loyal friend. I also would like to thank John Hernandez for giving me a copy of William Wright's Harvard's Secret Court and for nagging me to read it. I would also like to thank not only my research assistant, Elizabeth Matherne, for her patience and dedication, but also my mentor, Professor Bruce Winick, for helping me integrate therapeutic jurisprudence into my thought process. Most importantly, I thank the love of my life, my husband, Michael P. Pacin, M.D., who not only encourages and supports all of my endeavors, but also respects all of the time I spend behind closed doors writing. 1 Arthur Miller, The Crucible, reprinted in THE CRUCIBLE: TEXT AND CRITICISM 94 (Gerald Weales ed., Penguin Books 1996) (1953) [hereinafter Miller, The Crucible; subsequent citations to this collection (hereinafter WEALES ANTHOLOGY) refer to the pagination therein]. 217 BROOKLYN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 73:1 play was written, McCarthyism gripped America in a brutal crusade to purge it of suspected Communists.2 In the throes of such hysteria, our government hunted down innocent people, branded them disloyal, and denounced them. The targets, after losing their friends and jobs, became social outcasts. During that era, thousands of people were fired from positions in federal, state, and local government as well as from private employment. Many others were prosecuted under the Smith 2 See generally Joseph R. McCarthy, Communists in the State Department, 96 CONG. REC. 15, 4159-62 (1950), reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 406, 408 (speaking of "those who are a threat to this Nation," and stating "[iut is an example of the extent to which men honored with high positions will go to conceal communism, men whose shadows hover like vultures over the corpse of China and whose actions rip at the backbone of freedom in America") (from a speech originally given May 25, 1950, at the Catholic Press Association convention); Henry Steele Commager, Who Is Loyal to America, HARPER'S, Sept. 1947, at 193-99, reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 395, ("[Ilncreasingly Congress is concerned with the eradication of disloyalty and the defense of Americanism, and scarcely a day passes that some Congressman does not treat us to exhortations and admonitions, impassioned appeals and eloquent declamations."); Irving Louis Horowitz, Culture, Politics and McCarthyism: A Retrospective from the Trenches, 22 WM. MITCHELL L. REV. 357, 365 (1996) ("McCarthyism is another word for intolerance backed by power."); Geoffrey R. Stone, Free Speech in the Age of McCarthy: A Cautionary Tale, 93 CAL. L. REV. 1387, 1403 (2005) (During the age of McCarthyism, "tens of thousands of innocent individuals had their reputations, their careers, and their personal lives destroyed [and] most civil libertarians, most lawyers, most public officials, most intellectuals, and most others who should have known better, including the justices of the Supreme Court, dithered over what to do."). Several of Miller's contemporaries and other critics have noted the parallel between The Crucible and McCarthyism. See Brooks Atkinson, At the Theatre, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 23, 1953, at 15, reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 192, 192 (alluding to The Crucible's "current implications."); Lee Baxandall, Arthur Miller: Still the Innocent, ENCORE, XI, May-June 1964, at 16-19, reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 352, 357 ("Miller behaved at the height of the McCarthy period with greater courage than did many of his companions in peril; and his play The Crucible was, all things considered, an admirable counterstroke."); Eric Bentley, The Innocence of Arthur Miller, in WHAT Is THEATRE? INCORPORATING "THE DRAMATIC EVENT" AND OTHER REVIEWS 1944-1967, at 62-65 (1968), reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 204, 205 (discussing the "debate as to whether this story of seventeenth- century Salem 'really' refers to our current 'witch hunt.'"); Harold Hobson, Fair Play, THE SUNDAY TIMES (London), Nov. 14, 1954, at 11, reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 227, 227 ("Arthur Miller keeps one eye steadily fixed on the present anti-communist investigations in the United States."); Robert Warshow, The Liberal Conscience in The Crucible, in THE IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE 189-03 (1962), reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 210, 221 (Arthur Miller "has set forth brilliantly and courageously what has been weighing on all our minds; at last someone has had the courage to answer Senator McCarthy."). ' See Stone, supra note 2, at 1400 ("More than 11,000 people were fired from federal, state, local or private employment for alleged disloyalty. More than a hundred were prosecuted under the Smith Act because of their involvement in the Communist Party. One hundred thirty-five were prosecuted for contempt of Congress .... Fear of ideological condemnation swept the nation."); see also Seth F. Kreimer, Sunlight, Secrets, and Scarlet Letters: The Tension Between Privacy and Disclosure in ConstitutionalLaw, 140 U. PA. L. REV. 1, 20 (1991) ("The McCarthy apparatus did not touch everyone, but for those who ran afoul of it the impact was brutal. Even citizens 20071 HOMOPHOBICWITCH HUNTS Act because of alleged Communist involvement, and still others were held in contempt of Congress when they refused to 4 cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. As this reign of terror burgeoned, the country's intellectuals, scholars, teachers, and artists also became prey.5 Arthur Miller was one of the writers blacklisted, and, as Professor Geoffrey R. Stone explains, "[1]ike the Puritans in the Salem witch trials, [the red hunters] demanded public denunciation, purgation, humiliation, and betrayal."6 Although McCarthy's dark epoch technically spanned five years, the 7 devastation would last for more than a decade. Today's legal scholars have revived the study of McCarthyism, which, as Professor Seth F. Kreimer explains, "has become a term of opprobrium, of classic political impropriety,"8 and they raise the specter of one "repugnant" man "stir[ing] up fear, confusion, and suspicion, then us[ing] it as a license to trash basic civil liberties."9 Such commentators, like Miller himself, are cognizant of the fact that it "help[s] to know our past if we are to cope well with our present" and that history is innately redundant.1 who were not called before loyalty boards or investigating committees felt what would later be called a 'chilling effect.'"). 4 Stone, supra note 2, at 1400; see also Kreimer, supra note 3, at 20 ("In 1954, as Senator McCarthy's power began to wane, a national opinion survey found that 41% of a national sample felt that 'some [or all] people do not feel as free to say what they think as they used to,' although only 13% said they personally were chilled.") (citing SAMUEL A. STOUFFER, COMMUNISM, CONFORMITY, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES: A CROSS SECTION OF THE NATION SPEAKS ITS MIND 78-80 (1955)). 5 See Stone, supra note 2, at 1400 ("Red-hunters demanded, and got, the blacklisting of such writers as Dorothy Parker, Dalton Trumbo, James Thurber, and Arthur Miller."); Gerald Weales, Arthur Miller: Man and His Image, in AMERICAN DRAMA SINCE WORLD WAR 113-17 (1962), reprinted in WEALES ANTHOLOGY, supra note 1, at 343, 343 ("When [Miller] appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities ... there was a dignity in his refusal to give names, in his willingness to describe his past without apologizing for it... 6 Stone, supra note 2, at 1400. 7 Id. at 1403; see also Kreimer, supra note 3, at 21 ("[T]he striking thing about the enterprise which Senator McCarthy embodied was that it achieved, strictly through the use of information, a substantial impact on citizens' lives, the discourse of the republic, and the exercise of the First Amendment rights of speech, belief, and association.").