A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN: COMMUNITY ANTICOMMUNISM AND THE GRASSROOTS RIGHT, 1948-1956 Matthew Glazebrook PhD in American Studies University Of Sussex January 2013 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Matthew Glazebrook UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX Matthew Glazebrook PhD in American Studies HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN: COMMUNITY ANTICOMMUNISM AND THE GRASSROOTS RIGHT, 1948-1956 SUMMARY This thesis explores the political and cultural impact of community-level conservative activists durinG the early Cold War red scare in America. It provides a comprehensive overview of a hitherto overlooked aspect of the so-called McCarthy-era — amateur counter-subversives who contributed to the national mood of anticommunism in obscure but meaninGful ways. It also establishes significant philosophical and practical connections between disparate groups — some nakedly riGht-winG, others more vaGuely "patriotic" — that demonstrate the existence of a loose but Genuine Grassroots anticommunist network. In the broader historical sense, by contextualizinG the achievements of this embryonic conservative movement, this thesis builds upon and challenges the body of literature that posits the 1960s as the essential decade in the emerGence of the modern, socially conservative Republican riGht. In the last years of the 1940s, factions within the political and legal establishment used red scare rhetoric and new loyalty reGulations to visit brief but potent misery upon their liberal and leftist enemies. At the same time, less well-connected Americans siGned up for the ideoloGical struGGle. Some were members of influential civic organizations — such as the American LeGion — whose long-held enmity towards left-wing politics found fresh urgency in the Cold War aGe; Others joined newly formed pressure Groups with the expressed aim of defendinG their towns and suburbs from Soviet-inspired subversion. Veterans Groups, school board campaiGns, reliGious bodies, and women's patriotic societies: all provided forums for local-level attacks on perceived un- Americanism. This thesis utilizes the literature, letters and ephemera of such organizations, as well as local newspaper reports, legal and political investiGations, and the personal recollections of activists, to document and analyze the most siGnificant actions carried out in the name of community anticommunism. It examines how Grassroots campaiGners worked to reshape what it meant to be American, and finds ways in which their efforts — scorned as absurdly reactionary by contemporary observers — pointed towards a shifting American political landscape. Contents Acknowledgements, p.1 Introduction, p.2 Chapter One, p.33 Peekskill Wakes Up: A Case Study in Community Anticommunism Chapter Two, p.86 One Hundred Per Cent Americans: The Veterans’ Crusade Against Subversion Chapter Three, p.138 A Counterconspiracy of RiGhteousness: Cold War Christianity and its Grassroots Conservative Legacy Chapter Four, p.188 Atom Bombs and RollinG Pins: Women, Gender and Community Activism Chapter Five, p.238 Book Burners and One-Worlders: The Grassroots Battle for America’s Schools Conclusion, p.286 Bibliography, p.299 1 Acknowledgements I am Grateful to my supervisors at the University of Sussex, Clive Webb and Robert Cook, for their advice, encouraGement and support over the past three and a bit years. Thanks must also Go to the staff and faculty at Sussex for their assistance during this project, as well as to the staff at the archives and libraries in which I researched. Several other educators have encouraGed and inspired me prior to embarkinG on this thesis, particularly Scott Lucas and Liam Kennedy at the University of BirminGham, and Andrew O’Hehir at New York University. None of this work would have been possible without financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am also thankful for all the help and indulGence I have received from various friends and family members, particularly those who offered up their beds, sofas and air mattresses durinG my two research trips to America: Charles and Linda Hunnicutt, Jade and Kevin Garrett, Jack and Nicole Glazebrook, John Matson and Elissa Spencer, and Andie Cusick. Many others have given me intellectual and emotional support, includinG Kate Nowicki, Rebecca Laurence, and my parents, Cris and David Glazebrook. Most of all I am indebted to my wife, Phebe Hunnicutt. 2 Introduction For over a decade followinG the end of World War Two, as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated from allies aGainst Nazism to entrenched Cold War enemies, the American political and cultural establishment was Gripped by a fever of anticommunism. This “red scare” took the shape of conGressional investiGations into alleGed State Department treachery, loyalty oaths for Government employees, blacklists in the entertainment industry and purGes of suspect academics. Its protaGonists came from the political and leGal classes — the red-hunting “G-men” of the Federal Bureau of InvestiGation, lawmakers who passed ever more wide-ranGinG anti- sedition measures, ambitious politicians who made names for themselves on the House Committee on Un-American Activities and likeminded bodies. Its most prominent victims were also often representative of relatively privileged social strata, at least until their patriotism was called into question. The red scare that shook the upper echelons of US society from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s has fascinated academics and the General public alike, representinG arGuably the defininG cultural phenomenon of the era in the popular mind, and, indeed, one of the most endurinG and notorious political moments of the American century. Its terminoloGy — McCarthyism, witch-hunts, red-baitinG, naminG names — has passed into general use, by-words for a 3 stranGe aGe of distrust, repression and spite: a “NiGhtmare Decade”, as the title of one scholarly history has it.1 But another version of the red scare emerGed, albeit more quietly, durinG the early Cold War: one that found a home in the front rooms, churches and community forums of ordinary America. This took more esoteric forms. On 1 May 1950, in the tiny central Wisconsin community of Mosinee, citizens staged an elaborate “communist takeover” in order to demonstrate the horrors of life in a future United Soviet States. Local war veterans bearing unloaded rifles “seized” the library, school and paper mill and “liquidated” employees to a work camp on the edGe of town. The main street cinema was “nationalized” and renamed the People’s Theater; cafeterias ramped up prices to extortionate levels while townsfolk queued good-naturedly for black bread and potato soup. Two members of the so-called “professional anticommunist” network — ex-reds Benjamin Gitlow and Joseph Kornfeder — stepped in as commissars for the newly formed and short-lived Moscow satellite. At sundown the townsfolk burned their red flags, bade farewell to a coterie of forty newspaper reporters, and returned to lives of all-American obscurity. In Houston, Texas, that same year, an amateur anticommunist overheard a radio producer discussinG Chinese history with the owner of the Chinese restaurant in which he was having dinner. The quick-witted eavesdropper left the establishment and immediately informed the police of this suspiciously red-tinged encounter: as a result of his vigilance, the radio producer and her dinner partner spent fourteen hours in jail before 1 Fred Cook, The Nightmare Decade: The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy (New York: Random House, 1971). 4 being released without charge. In towns and cities across the nation, anticommunist Groups and individuals fouGht their own little Cold Wars aGainst perceived un-Americanism: others expressed their unease more subtly, worrying to themselves, as did one New York housewife, about a younG acquaintance who “never associated with people his own aGe”, and who “had a foreiGn camera and took so many pictures of the larGe New York bridGes”.2 This second version of the red scare, representinG the anticommunism of the American community, is siGnificantly less well documented than the first. The willinG participants on the Cold War home front are recoGnized in a popular narrative of suspicion, innate conservatism and “hysteria” over exaggerated danGers of communist infiltration. But in terms of a scholarly investigation into the scope and character of the grassroots response to national fears, they are almost entirely absent. As Michael Kazin observed in his essay on “The Grass- Roots RiGht”, “We know that millions of Americans marched in Loyalty Day demonstrations, prayed reGularly for the ‘conversion’ of Russia, idolized General MacArthur after President Truman took away his command, and participated in Red-hunting activities sponsored by Groups like the American LeGion and the John Birch Society [but] we do not know, with any degree of precision, who these mobilizers and followers were.” This thesis bridGes the knowledGe Gap.3 2 Unidentified maGazine clippinG, 15 May 1950, Folder 9-773, Box 5, American Business Consultants, Inc. Counterattack: Research Files, Tamiment Library/WaGner Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University, New York; New York Times, 2 May 1950; DouGlas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We Really Were (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), p.21; Samuel A. Stouffer, Communism, Conformity and Civil Liberties: A Cross-Section of the Nation Speaks Its Mind (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992), p.178.