They are Making Lists Again--Like When J. Edgar Hoover Put Helen Keller on his Commie List

Note--There is no end of lists and the making of enemy lists by various tentacles of the Trump regime. Targets include main-stream media; individual editors, journalists, satirists; Judges, prosecutors, and investigators; leaders and rank and file members of dozens of critical organizations;  folk identified as simply being present and clashes with ICE or demonstrations and marches;  Social media users who share and circulate Anti-Trump material.  If the administration succeeds in obtaining detailed voter data from the States, it can even identify and target voters who are "the enemies of Americanism."

Despite her celebrity and status as a beloved icon Helen Keller ended up on J. Edgar Hoover's list of Communists.  She was never a party member or more than casually connected to groups suspected of being "fronts" but she was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World and of the Socialist Party as well as a long-time advocate for working people and for Civil Rights despite her privileged Southern roots.

On June 9, 1949 J. Edgar Hoover did his part to fuel the growing anti-Communist hysteria sweeping post-World War II America when he released a “confidential” Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) report that named scores of influential Americans, most of them in the movie and entertainment business as members of the Communist Party. 

Hoover developed his list after Attorney General Tom Clark in 1946 asked for the names of potentially “disloyal Americans” who might be detained in event of a “national emergency.”  The names on the list were included a year later in 1950 after the Korean War broke out in a report to President Harry Truman with the names of more than 12,000 who should be rounded up and detained after the formal suspension of the right of habeas corpus.  Truman had the good sense to thank his powerful FBI boss and promptly put the report and recommendation in the bottom drawer never to be acted upon.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover testifying before Congress about the "Communist Fifth Column."

But there were plenty, many of the in Congress and including some of the country’s most powerful media barons like the Chicago Tribune’s Col. Robert R. McCormack and Time’s Henry Luce were already clamoring for just such draconian measures.

Hollywood where the major studios were run by Jews and where many actors, writers, and creative people were politically active liberals and leftists and where there was a powerful labor union movement with sometimes radical leadership, were singled out as a virtual Commie fifth column. 

A protest rally to demand a pardon for the Hollywood Ten, film figures most of them screen writers, convicted for failing to "name names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC.)

In 1946 and ’47 the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launched high profile hearings on Communist infiltration of the film industry and subpoenaed hundreds to testify and name names.  Nineteen of those refused to do so and were named as unfriendly witnesses.  Eleven of those were called before the committee and 10 refused to answer questions.  Only German émigré Berthold Brecht relented and testified.  The others including screen writers Dalton Trumbo, Howard Koch, and Ring Larder, Jr. were indicted for contempt of Congress and eventually sent to prison and blacklisted from the industry.

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart lead a delegation at the Capitol of the Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights to protest the persecution of the Hollywood 10.  Easily identifiable are Danny Kaye behind Bogart, June Haver behind Bacall, William Holden and Richard Conti. Studio executive forced the committee to back down and some participants were themselves blacklisted.

Some of Hollywood royalty including John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Garfield, Danny Kaye, and Billy Wilder attempted to rally support for the Hollywood Ten by organizing a Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights and traveling to Washington to protest.  They came under intense attack by the Committee, the press, and by the terrified studio owners.  Bogart, spearhead and principal spokesman for the group, was forced to back track and issue a statement that the trip had been ill advised.  The group broke up acrimoniously between those who thought they should have toughed it out and those like Wilder who advised it was time “to fold our tents.”

Two years later Garfield and Kaye were among those named in the new FBI report, which was based on unnamed confidential informants and the Bureau’s own “analysis” which concluded that the Communists claimed “to have been successful in using well-known Hollywood personalities to further Communist Party aims.”  Analysis was often based on no more than the recollection of an informant seeing an individual at a meeting years earlier, attendance at public functions, donations to certain charities, or signatures on some petitions.  It included pre-war support for anti-Fascist causes and war-time support of the Soviet Union—including activities undertaken at the request of the government.

Some people on the list were or had been Party Members.  Others were sympathetic.  Some were non-Communist leftists—members of the Socialist Party or the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).  Many were unionists or sympathizers with the early Civil Rights Movement.  And many were simply liberals.  It made no difference.  To Hoover all were not just the “willing dupes” of the HUAAC hearings, but active, card-carrying Communists.

Among those listed was acknowledged Socialist and IWW member Helen Keller, even then widely regarded as a sort of secular saint.  The report centered on the activities of Fredric March, a well-known liberal and an active Democrat who recently won his second Academy Award for the brilliant film about the return of World War II GIs, The Best Years of Our Lives.  March was no Communist, but he organized a group concerned about atomic weapons and critical of America’s growing arsenal.  Any one even tangentially connected to that effort, or to people connected to the effort were caught up in rippling waves of innuendo.

John Garfield testifying before HUAC.  Unlike many others in Hollywood, Garfield was exceptionally defiant and flatly refused to sacrifice his friends to "Red baiters."  He became the most famous star blacklisted.  Like many others caught up in the hysteria he was also Jewish.

John Garfield, once the brightest new star at Warner Bros. came under especially severe scrutiny and his career immediately suffered.  Already plagued with heart problems, the stress of the accusations was widely believed to be a direct contributing factor to his death of a heart attack in May of 1952. 

Other prominent people named in the report, along with hundreds of non-celebrities included writer and wit Dorothy Parker, Paul Muni, and Edward G. Robinson.  Like Garfield and Kaye they were all Jewish.  In fact, the reek of Anti-Semitism hung over the whole report.

Fredric March, Paulette Goddard, Edward G. Robinson, and Audie Murphy, America's most decorated World War II soldier, stood up to Hoover and HUAC.

The effect on careers varied.  Many of the more obscure found themselves on blacklists.  Parker lost the radio panel show jobs that provided most of her income.  Muni’s film career was essentially finished.  March and Kaye were able to keep working and had some of their best work ahead of them.  Robinson’s career was hurt, but not over.  And he was the most outspokenly defiant befitting his tough guy image.

These rantings, ravings, accusations, smearing, and character assassinations can only emanate from sick, diseased minds of people who rush to the press with indictments of good American citizens. I have played many parts in my life, but no part have I played better or been more proud of than that of being an American citizen. 

Settler Colonialism or Land Reform that Populated the Breadbasket

 

This map shows Land Districts and Offices in charge of selling Western land--a primary income source for the Federal government which helped keep taxes and tariffs low.  Some land agents, however, were corrupt and scandals common.  Individual speculators and organized stock companies borrowed money to buy vast tracts of land in the hopes of selling at inflated prices to settlers.  But most settlers could not afford the asking prices, the speculators and companies often could not pay their loans.  The result was financial failure and instability on one hand and a huge pent-up demand for cheaper land.  The Land Act of 1820 was meant to address both problems.

The Land Act of 1820 is a nearly forgotten piece of legislation passed by Congress which opened the Old Northwest Territory and Missouri to an avalanche of new settlement.  It was a byproduct of the Missouri Compromise. 

Population growth in the West was stymied by the almost constant bloody Indian warfare in the region from the end of the Revolution through the War of 1812 and by the high land prices and large minimum parcels required by the Land Ordinance of 1785. 

When a financial panic swept the nation in 1819 it became impossible for most would-be settlers to borrow the money needed to legally buy the land.  To escape high land prices mostly Scotch-Irish pioneers often pushed out ahead of land surveyors and squatted on land.  When the government caught up with them they argued that their improvements on the land should be subtracted from the cost.  They were often displaced and pushed further west. 

A deed to land in Indiana sold to James Benton McMurry in 1831 under the terms of the Land Act of 1820.  Note the document is attested to and initialed by President Andrew Jackson (or by a designee in the Executive Mansion under his authority) which was required by law for all sale of Federal land.  An example of the administrative minutia early Presidents were saddled with.

To make settlement more affordable and thus to reduce squatting, the new act reduced the minimum tract from 160 to 80 acres, a manageable family farm in the generally rich soil of the West. 

Buying land exclusively on credit—as was common among land speculators—was eliminated.  The price was reduced from $1.65 (set in 1804) to $1.25 per acre with a relatively affordable $100 down payment.  The very poorest, who probably could not even afford the necessary tools and equipment to bring the land into production, were excluded, but the cost was low enough to be manageable by many. 

Although speculators could still form land companies and buy large blocks of tracts, the recurring financial panics over the next few years drove many to bankruptcy while owner-operated farms could endure hard times on a subsistence basis.  

New Salem in Illinois was first settled in 1828 and was typical of the communities that sprang up across the West with liberalized land sale policies.  Even there not everyone could afford land.  Newcomer Abraham Lincoln from Indiana had to hire out as a wood cutter, river boatman, and store clerk.

In the end most of the farmland in the region sold at, or not much above the Federal price.  The success of the policy was astounding.  Illinois, for instance, had a population of about 55,000 in 1820.  Over the next 40 years the population doubled every ten years to almost 900,000 in 1860.  

Land sales were vigorous enough that even at the reduced price enough revenue was generated to operate the nearly skeletal Federal government. In fact, they provided enough income that they were largely responsible for the Federal Debt being completely paid off and retired—if only briefly—during the administration of Andrew Jackson.

Such a rapid explosion for population also had a dramatic effect on government as new Congressional seats were allotted with every new Census giving the West considerable regional clout.  By the eve of the Civil War the states covered by the act were no longer on the frontier.  They were well settled, prosperous, and with the advantages of easy access to markets via the great river systems and the new railroads, became the breadbasket to the nation. 

Considering UUs, Lent, and Sacrifice with Vintage Murfin Verse

These days the Unitarian Universalist Association cheerfully provides Lenten worship materials for congregations and for individual spiritual practice.  It was not always so.

Note—Awhile back I got an e-mail from a reader who found an earlier version of the post below.  He asked, “Wondered why you didn’t have Starbucks on the list?”  The answer was simple:  The poem was written about 2002 before Starbucks was as ubiquitous as it is now.  There are other tip offs to its age.  There were plenty of Volvos in UU parking lots back then.  Today not so much.  There would be hybrid or electrics now.

In 2002 practical, safe, and boring Volvos dotted UU parking lots.  Today there would be Teslas--bought before Elon Musk went MAGA, Focus, or other small green friendly car often smothered in stickers and magnets like this but the messages would be things like "Coexist", "Support Whirled Peas", Rainbow flags, and old Bernie Sanders stickers.

We are well into Lent and I was reminded that there is at least a mild rash of interest in and even observance of the season of personal sacrifice and contemplation of the Holy among my fellow Unitarian Universalists.  It was not always so.

As heirs of the Radical Reformation and step siblings Unitarianism and Universalism as they evolved in the United States instinctively rejected what they regarded as Papish trappings liturgy, and anything that stood between humans and a direct relationship with God.  While in the 19th Century both remained avowedly Christian in the Protestant tradition that meant eschewing the priesthood, Episcopal authority, the mass, saints, the liturgical calendar and holy days like Christmas or Ash Wednesday.

Springing from New England Puritanism, the Unitarians often practiced days of fasting, humiliation, and prayer in times of war or distress, they saw no reason for a special 40-day season.  After all, a good Puritan lived his or her entire life in a kind of perpetual Lent.

The Universalists preferred to joyfully celebrate the bottomless mercy of a loving God who sooner or later reconciled all souls to Him. The contemplation of this universal beneficence was enough to encourage mortal men and women to live virtuous lives to show themselves worthy of it.

Over time both traditions evolved under the influences of Transcendentalism, Free Thought, exposure to world religions via the World Parliament of Religions in 1893, and the explosion of Humanism following the First and Second World Wars.  Both tended to become less explicitly or orthodox Christian, although a wide variety of spiritual practice was found in both traditions.

Nothing could be more UU than a mug for coffee hour, often called Unitarian communion. This one expressed the feelings of many Humanists in the late 20th Century.

By the time the two united to become the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1960 a flinty sort of agnostic Humanism was the dominant strain among Unitarians and flourished to some degree among Universalists.  The larger and more muscular Unitarians soon dominated the united faith and Humanism overshadowed theism in its various guises for the rest of the century.

Humanists denied any supernatural intervention in human affairs and stressed the need for men and women to take charge of their own salvation in a broken world to create a kind of heaven on earth.  That translated into activism in matters of war and peace, social justice, civil rights, women’s equality, LBGTQ+ inclusion, and the environment.

But it also meant a bristling hostility to conventional religion among many.  In some congregations a Minister could lose his/her pulpit for using the “G word,” or citing Biblical scripture.  The old joke was that Unitarians read ahead in their hymnals to make sure that they approved of the lyric.

By the early 21st Century, however, there was a growing restiveness in the pews and a yearning for deeper spirituality largely due to rise of the women’s movement within the UUA which led to the adoption of 7th Principle, “respect for the web of existence of which we are a part.”  That gave rise to a kind a kind of pantheism, neo-paganism, Buddhist practice, yoga, and various elements of New Age Spirituality.  Inevitably it also led to a re-examination of Christian tradition and teaching.

Elements of Lenten practice--not just for orthodox Christians any more.

As an aging generation of Humanist ministers retired, they were replaced by graduates of UU Theological Schools and other seminaries who were more receptive to Christian theology and practice.  Today most UUs still identify mainly as Humanists but are more tolerant of the theists among them and are more prepared to learn from the wisdom of religions including Christianity. 

Inevitably, that has led some to examine traditions like Lent as personal spiritual practices.  Lenten themed prayers or meditations, sermons, and small group discussions are easily found online.  While Lenten practice is far from widespread, it is no longer an aberration.

About 2002 as those changes were just getting underway, I was moved to write a poem for a service at the old Congregational Unitarian Congregation in Woodstock, Illinois–now the Tree of Life Congregation in McHenry.  It was included in my Skinner House Meditation Manual, We Build Temples in the Heart published two years later.  Since then, it has occasionally popped up in services at other congregations.

Despite its length and structure, I have often called this my Zen poem.

What Unitarian Universalists Should Give Up for Lent if They Observed It, Which They Don’t, Most of Them.

 

Pews without padding, Nature Conservancy calendars.

Volvos, polysyllabic verbosity,

herbal tea, austerity,

National Public Radio, unread books in fine bindings,

isms:

    Liberalism, Buddhism. Humanism,

    Marxism, Feminism, Taoism,

    Vegetarianism, Conservationism, Transcendentalism,

    Atheism, Consumerism, Sufism,

    for Christ’s sake, Libertarianism,

Joys and Concerns, pretension,

committee meetings, Habitat t-shirts,

potluck tuna casserole, black-and-white films with subtitles,

petitions, sermons, tofu and brown rice,

drums, theology,

season tickets to anything but baseball,

liturgical dance, poetry readings,

pride:

    Pilgrim pride

    pride of intellect

    pride of lineage

    pride of lions

    the pride that cometh before the fall

bistros, pledge drives,

advanced degrees, spirituality,

coffee hour, sensible shoes,

philosophy, choir rehearsal,

arrogance, animal sacrifice,

gender-neutral hymnals, learned clergy,

natural fibers, string quartets,

whiteness, turquoise jewelry,

recycling, self-congratulation,

acupuncture, bird-watching at dawn,

yoga, Common Cause,

God, doubt,

egotism, self-denigration,

yesterday, tomorrow.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

Remembering Selma 1963 With The Selma Bridge Jubilee: All Boots on the Ground

They are calling this year’s commemoration The Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee--All Boots on the Ground which will mark the 61st anniversary of Bloody Sunday—the day on March 7, 1965, that day in Selma, Alabama when  massed Alabama State Police attacked peaceful demonstrators attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a march from Selma to the state capital at Montgomery to protest suppression of voting rights.

Alabama State Police beat SNCC march leader John Lewis, on ground center, after charging voting rights marchers trying to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma on the way to the state capitol in Montgomery in 1965.

Members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had been conducting voter registration drives in the area since 1963 and had encountered escalating violence.  After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, efforts stepped up.  On July 6 of that year SNCC leader John Lewis attempted to lead a march on the county courthouse to register voters.  He and other marchers were beaten and arrested.  A few days later a local judge handed down a sweeping injunction against more than two people assembling to even talk about voter registration.  

Two SCLC organizers arrived to join the voter registration effort.  Diane Nash like John Lewis was a veteran of the Nashville public accommodation sit-in campaign of 1960.  Her husband, Rev. James Bevel was also a seasoned non-violent activist.  Together they were two of the best the organization had.

SNCC leaders appealed to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  SCLC leaders including the Rev. James Bevel, who had been conducting his own voter registration projects, and his wife, Diane Nash, a SNCC founder who cut her teeth in the Nashville youth crusade sit-ins with Lewis, came to Selma to join the effort.  But the national organization, busy with other efforts, had not yet committed.

Finally, on January 2 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Selma bringing with him the national spotlight and officially launched a new Selma Voting Rights Movement.  Marches on court houses resumed there and in surrounding counties. 

The body of Jimmie Lee Jackson, first martyr of the Selma campaign.  After leading a night march to the Perry County Court House in Marion, Jackson was shot trying to protect his mother and grandfather from a beating by police who charged into a cafe where they had taken refuge.  His death galvanized the campaign locally but attracted little national press attention.

On February 18 a young man, a Baptist elder who had tried four times to register, Jimmie Lee Johnson was shot trying to defend his mother and grandfather from police clubs after a night march on the Perry County Courthouse in Marion.  When Johnson died of his wounds days later, Bevel called for a protest march on the state capital from Selma on March 7.  

On the day of the march John Lewis, the Rev. Hosea Williams of the SCLC, and local leaders like Amelia Boynton led about 600 marchers.  When they attempted to cross the bridge, they were met by massed troopers and ordered to disperse.  Lewis attempted to speak to the commanding officer but was shoved to the ground and beaten.  Police charged the crowd with clubs and gas.  Mounted officers attacked from the flanks.  Scenes of horrific violence were captured on film and soon broadcast on television helping to swing public sympathy to the marchers. 

King responded with a call to rally in Selma for a second march.  Hundreds from around the country, including many clergy, responded to the call.  Lawyers appealed to Federal Judge Frank Minis Johnson, who was suspected to be sympathetic, to lift the local ban on marches.  The judge took the issue under advisement but issued a temporary restraining order against resuming the march until he could make his ruling. 

With thousands gathered, King felt he had to move but did not want to alienate the judge.  On March 9 he led about 7,000 to the bridge but then knelt in prayer and turned the crowd back, a move that was harshly criticized by SNCC leaders. 

Rev. James Reeb, a young Unitarian Universalist minister, was with two others when he was beaten to death by Klansmen in Selma on the eve of a second march.  The death of a white minister did grab attention and President Lyndon Baines Johnson used it to advance the Voting Right Act of 1965.

That evening three Unitarian Universalist ministers, James Reeb, Clark Olsen, and Orloff Miller who responded to King’s call were attacked and beaten outside a Selma cafe known to be a hangout for Klansmen.  Reeb died of his wounds on March 11 in Birmingham after the Selma hospital refused to treat him. 

On hearing of Reeb’s death the Board of the Unitarian Universalist Association meeting in Boston voted to adjourn and re-convene in Selma.  UUA President Dana McLean Greeley and eventually half of the active ministers in the Association headed to the South.

The death of a white minister galvanized public opinion in a way that Jimmie Johnson’s had not.  A shaken President Lyndon Johnson submitted a Voting Rights Act to Congress on March 15 after failing to get Governor George Wallace to back off from attacks on demonstrators. 

A week after Reeb’s death Judge Johnson finally issued the long-anticipated ruling upholding the First Amendment rights to assemble and protest.  

John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, Juanita Abernathy, Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, Frederick Reese and Hosea Williams lead the March through Montgomery to the Capitol.

On March 21 the final and successful march on Montgomery set off with King, Lewis, Bevel, and Williams leading the way with a bevy of national clergy. They were protected by 2,000 Federal troops and U. S. Marshalls on the four-day march through hostile territory to the capitol. 

After a triumphant rally on the capitol steps, Viola Liuzzo, a young Detroit mother and U.U. laywoman was driving a black marcher back to Selma, when she was shot by Ku Klux Klan members.  A federal informant was in the Klansmen’s car.  She was the final fatality in the Selma campaign.  

Tennessee born Viola Liuzzo, a white U.U. laywoman and mother from Detroit marched from Selma to Montgomery often barefoot as in this photo.  She was murdered driving a Black Marcher back to Selma after the final rally at the State Capital.  She was the third of four of the Martyrs of Selma who also included Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels who was shotgunned to death on August 30 after spending a week in jail for a Lowndes County, demonstration, a part of the greater Selma campaign.

The Voting Rights Act passed Congress and was signed into law by the President on August 6.  Within a year 7000 new Black voters were enrolled in Selma’s Dallas County. 

In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark, who was responsible for much of the early violence in Selma, lost his bid for re-election.  John Lewis went on to be elected to Congress.  The Edmund Pettus Bridge is now marked as part of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, a National Historic Trail. 

The 50th Anniversary march included President Barack Obama and his family, Congressman John Lewis and other veterans of the original march and former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura.  Always outspoken, Diane Lewis boycotted the reunion march to protest Bush's inclusion. 

In the 50th Anniversary year of 2015, tens of thousands joined Congressman Lewis and other veterans of the original marches along with President Barack Obama, his family, and former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura in a symbolic and triumphant march across the Bridge.

The same year the film Selma directed by Ana DuVernay and starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and Oprah Winfrey opened to high praise, great reviews, and a slew of awards and nominations.

Ana DuVernay's acclaimed film Selma was an accurate depiction of the voting rights campaign and marches.  Unlike earlier popular movies about the Civil Rights campaigns, there was no white savior and the vision was unfiltered by white eyes.  The film also honored the work and sacrifice of ordinary folk as well as Martin Luther King and other marquee movement names.  

In 2020 Congressman Lewis, who was battling pancreatic cancer was joined by four Democratic presidential candidates—Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for the march.  In his comments Congressman Lewis said:

Fifty-five years ago, a few of our children attempted to march ... across this bridge. We were beaten, we were tear-gassed. I thought I was going to die on this bridge. But somehow and some way, God almighty helped me here…We must go out and vote like we never, ever voted before…

I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to give in. We’re going to continue to fight. We need your prayers now more than ever before.  We must use the vote as a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America…

To each and every one of you, especially you young people ... go out there, speak up, speak out. Get in the way. Get in good trouble. Necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.