The Red Scare In Wayland Robert Mainer 0 ©Copyright 2003 by Robert E. Mainer Foreword Soon after my wife and I arrived in Wayland in 1962, we attended a neighborhood party. As so often happens, the men gathered around a table of snacks in the kitchen while the women chatted in the living room. One of the men mentioned a recent development in the “cold war” between the Soviet Union and the United States – I cannot now recall the specific event, there having been so many in those days. The conversation subsequently drifted into a discussion of the anxieties created by the adversaries’ gambits. My neighbor then observed that at least in Wayland, people were no longer looking for Communists behind every tree and bush as they had been doing in the 1950s. That was the first time I heard about Anne Hale and her dismissal from a teaching position in the Wayland Schools because of her earlier membership in the Communist Party. From time to time after first learning about Miss Hale’s collision with the 1950s anti-Communist hysteria, I would hear or read about references to her case. For example, in 1981, The Town Crier’s 30th Anniversary Edition contained a “Crier Flashback” reprise of the matter. Gradually, however, the Anne Hale story faded from the memories of the Wayland citizenry. For example, in November, 2002, following a Sunday morning church service, several fellow parishioners and I were discussing the cost of standing up for one’s principles. I mentioned the Anne Hale case. My reference to her name drew only blank looks from my listeners. While providing a quick synopsis and answering questions about the case, I began to realize that not only did the others not know about Miss Hale, but also they were too young to have first hand knowledge about the anti- Communist witch-hunting that took place a half-century ago. In the weeks following that Sunday morning experience, I fretted that because of the inevitable deaths of people who resided in Wayland during the 1950s, the Town gradually is losing the color that personal witness can add to black and white facts. Moreover, a few inquiries demonstrated that there is no single repository of documents about the Hale matter. To obtain the complete story, one needs to read the contents of files gathering dust in several different archives and libraries. It was for these reasons that I decided to make a contribution to the Wayland Historical Society by researching the Anne Hale story and compiling the collected information into a reasonably comprehensive recounting of this fascinating piece of Wayland history. The result appears on the pages that follow. Robert Mainer 45 Hillside Drive Wayland, MA 01778 January 12, 2003 1 The Red Scare In Wayland On the night of June 8, 1954, the Wayland School Committee1 convened a public hearing to determine whether Anne P. Hale Jr., a second grade teacher in the Wayland Center School, should be dismissed because of her membership in the Communist Party between 1938 and 1950. The proceedings filled eight June evenings and attracted audiences ranging up to an estimated 700 attendees2 before ending on June 25. The Committee then reviewed the evidence produced during the hearing, prepared a report of its conclusions and fired Miss Hale. For readers too young to have witnessed the anti-Communist witch-hunting of the late 1940s and early ‘50s, and for those of us who lived through the period but find our recall dimmed by the passage of a half-century of time, some background will illuminate the sources of the passion invested in the hunt for Reds – a popular label for Communists – and their “pinko” sympathizers. Two contributing factors during the years following World War II explain a great deal of the fervor: relationships between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (“USSR”), and the U.S. political landscape. Notwithstanding a cool and distrustful relationship between the US and the USSR prior to World War II, expediency caused the two nations to become allies in the war against Germany and Japan. With the war’s end, US-Soviet relationships again became uneasy and steadily worsened as the Soviets took advantage of post-war political- economic instabilities in countries where it saw opportunities to extend its influence and to further the Communist cause. Among those opportunities was Korea, which from 1910 to the end of World War II had been under Japanese colonial rule. After Japan’s defeat, the victorious allies divided Korea into two zones of occupation separated by the 38th parallel: the Soviet zone (North Korea) and the U.S. zone (South Korea). In 1948, the Soviets installed a Communist government in North Korea, while the US assisted South Korea in setting up a democracy3. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations intervened with a “police action” in which the United States and several other UN member nations rushed to South Korea’s aid. US troops were thus engaged in combat with a Communist nation’s army that was in turn advised and supplied by two major Communist powers – the USSR and China. As in all wars, each side demonized its enemy. Consequently, the American public quickly associated the North Korean’s brutish fanaticism with their “godless Communism” and saw the war as a struggle between a God fearing people and a Communist conspiracy to impose an atheistic totalitarianism on nations unable or unwilling to defend themselves. 1 The three-member Committee comprised William A. Waldron, Chair, Harvey C. Newton and Cornelius J. Maguire. Rexford Souder was Superintendent of Schools. 2 Only about 100 attended the last few sessions. Wayland’s population at the time was about 7,000. 3 As it turned out, South Korea’s experiment in democracy was short lived and by the 1960s the country was ruled by what for most purposes was a military dictatorship. 2 Active hostilities on the Korean peninsula ceased on July 27, 1953 – only eleven months before Wayland’s School Committee brought charges against Anne Hale for her association with the Communist Party. It must have crossed the minds of people hearing those charges that Communists very recently had been killing American soldiers. The American political scene provides a second lens through which to view the mindset of people who, in the late 1940s, saw themselves as patriots fighting the “Red Menace.” The 1946 elections gave the Republican Party control of Congress for the first time in more than a decade. Searching for ways to discredit their political adversaries, Republicans began to accuse the Democrats of being soft towards Communism and its threat to American ideals. The accusation played well in the press. President Truman responded by insisting that loyalty oaths be required of all Federal employees and, anticipating that domestic Communism would be an issue in the 1948 elections, vowed that any government employee found to be a Communist or Communist sympathizer would be discharged. Truman’s vigor in stating his position served to make plausible the possibility that Communists were to be found in the Federal government. The fact that the US had developed the atomic bomb added a large measure of paranoia to public worries about espionage that might enable the USSR to get its hands on our atomic secrets. Wily politicians are quick to seize upon an issue that can be ridden to enhance their party’s stature and, at the same time, add to their personal power and self- aggrandizement. J. Parnell Thomas, a Republican Congressman from New Jersey, was a wily politician. In 1947, Thomas revived the House Un-American Activities Committee (“HUAC”)4 and launched a series of investigations into Communist infiltrations into the Federal government, into labor unions and, with a fine appreciation of how to pique public interest, into the Hollywood motion picture industry. In the latter investigation, the HUAC compiled information suggesting that a number of Hollywood writers, directors and actors were or had been members of the Communist Party or had contributed funds to the Party. In September, 1947, Thomas’s committee subpoenaed 41 film industry people to appear before it. Of the 41, eleven were suspected of being, or having been, dues paying, “card carrying” members of the Communist Party. One of the eleven, playwright Bertolt Brecht, left the country to return to his native Germany after his appearance before the HUAC, leaving ten – the “Hollywood Ten” – to continue to face the Committee’s ongoing inquiry. Adding to the public’s fascination with the HUAC’s activities was a group of Hollywood stars organized by Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall, into the “Committee for the First Amendment” for the purpose of demonstrating support for the Hollywood Ten. Unfortunately for Bogart’s group, the Hollywood Ten behaved badly before the HUAC and embarrassed Bogart and the members of his committee who had traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the hearings. In 1952, the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, chaired by Senator Pat McCarran, joined the probes of Communist infiltrations into various organizations and government agencies. Both the House and the Senate investigations began to publish lists of names that included persons who had not had the benefit of due process prior to finding themselves on a list of suspects. Within the motion picture industry, such a list became known as the Blacklist. To protect their public images and to avoid further 4 The HUAC had been relatively dormant during the later years of World War II. 3 accusations about harboring Communists, Hollywood studios fired over 300 people whose names appeared on the Blacklist.