Birthday Sisters Emma and Helen--More in Common than You Suspected with Murfin Verse

A young Emma Goldman  in her mug shot after her arrest for conspiring with her lover Alexander Berkman  in an assassination attempt on steel baron Henry Clay Frick.

Note—I have posted this poem before, but the two women are particular favorites of mine and I immodestly think that the poem is one of my better efforts.  I also think that they would be astute commentators on the attempted re-subjugation of women by the Supreme Court and Red State governors and legislators.  Emma, of course, a champion of free love and sexual liberation, would never have had faith in the courts to protect women.  An advocate of militant direct action, she would be loudly calling for a real revolution.  Helen, the Wobbly and Socialist, might be supposed to be more moderate, but I wonder if she really would.  She might recommend the ballot box as a defensive action, but she also saw the need for a revolution that would literally “Build a new society in the shell of the old.”

Emma Goldman, whose grave I have visited on pilgrimages to the Haymarket Memorial in Forest Home Cemetery, and Helen Keller, who has fascinated me since seeing The Miracle Worker and reading a paperback biography I ordered from a Scholastic Book Club flyer shared a common birthday on June 27.

You know, if you have visited here before, that such calendar coincidences trigger an inexplicable urge to commit poetry.

Helen Keller as a student at Radcliffe was already world famous for her astounding achievements overcoming blindness and deafness.

Most people recognize Goldman’s name as America’s most famous anarchist.  They may be surprised to learn that she was also a celebrated lecturer whose talks on theater, religion, women’s rights, and free love drew as much attention in their day as her calls to smash the state and end capitalism.

Goldman was such a compelling writer and public figure that even the capitalist press was eager to publish her fiery essays.

Keller’s profound advocacy of Socialism and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) has largely been whitewashed from her public image.  But that is changing as folks on the left slowly become aware that she was a comrade and fellow worker.

Helen Keller as a Joan of Arc type hero leading the working people of the world to triumph in an allegorical scene from her 1919 silent film Deliverance.  That was the height of the post-World War I Red Scare which saw hundreds imprisoned, the IWW and Socialist Party suppressed, and "alien" radicals like Emma Goldman deported.  Yet Helen persisted

In these dark times it is good to remember our Sheroes.  

Birthday Sisters Emma and Helen

Emma Goldman June 27,1869, Konvo, Imperial Russian Lithuania

Helen Keller, June 27, 1880, Tuscumbia, Alabama, USA

 

If I can't dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution—Emma Goldman

 

…there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.—Helen Keller.

 

You might not suspect that they were sisters.

 

Emma with her square jaw and carelessly attended hair,

            gray eyes peering through

            those old fashion pinze nez spectacles

            perched upon her nose,

            the urban smells of coal fire,

delivery horse dung and workman’s sweat

clinging to her frumpy clothes,

speech meticulously enunciated

barely betraying here and there

a Yiddish trace.

 

Helen, who would have been a delicate beauty

            in her youth

            were it not for those disconcerting,

            unfocused eyes,

            Confederate grace and slave cotton wealth

            a mantle on her delicate shoulders,

            the sweet lilt of a gentlewoman

            lost to grunts and moans.

 

But wait….    

            These two knew what it was like

            to be a stranger, an exile,

            an alien other

            and ultimately what it was like

            to be a celebrated curiosity.

 

They learned as a Jew

            and as a side show freak,

            as women, after all,

            what oppression was

            but also that they

            were not alone—

 

They swam in a sea of oppression

            and learned early

            of the solidarity of the school

            against the sharks

            that would consume them.

 

Maybe the world expected little else

            from the Jewess

            who threw her lot early

            with the filthy anarchists

            who made bombs

            and plotted  attentats

            like that job she pulled

            passing the pistol

            to her lover, for god sake,

            to plug Henry Clay Frick.

 

But the world was aghast

            when the delicate Radcliffe flower

            who had charmed Mark Twain,

            Alexander Graham Bell,

            and Teddy Roosevelt,

            raised the Red Flag

            and fell side by side

            with the laborers,

            the unemployed,        

            the despised—even the Negros!

 

The atheist anarchist

            and the Socialist Wobbly

            who dabbled in Swedenborgism

            and a mystic Red Jesus

            did not agree on details,

            they might have enjoyed

            a friendly debate

            each being a master

            of the platform.

 

But each in her own way

            was steadfast to the end

            of her long life

            for a revolution of liberation

            and the ultimate triumph

            of beauty.

 

I imagine sometimes

            that as they each

            traversed the country

            on lecture tour or

            vaudeville circuit

            if they ever crossed paths

            in say, a railway station

            in Omaha or a

            hotel lobby in Akron

            and fell into each other’s arms

            sobbing—

 

“Sister, sister, I have found you!”

 

—Patrick Murfin 

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. 

When Helen Keller Ended Up on J. Edgar Hoover’s Commie List

  

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

Note—Attacks on “enemies of the people” and suggestions that folks should be thrown in jail for protests or simply overt opposition to the Cheeto-in-Charge as well as suggestions that reporters, activist actors, and even members of Congress be physically attacked by “patriots” bring to mind an earlier dark era for American liberties.  So do suggestions to declare a National Emergency and suspend habeas corpus. May we learn from the past.

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” FBI report that named scores of influential Americans, most of them in the movie and entertainment business as members of the Communist Party. 

Hoover had 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 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.

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, had already been singled out as a virtual Commie fifth column. 

In 1946 and ’47 the powerful House Un-American Activities Committee 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 black listed.

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 principle 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 very many were simply liberals.  It made no difference.  To Hoover all were not just the “willing dupes” of the HUAC hearings, but active, card carrying Communists.

 

Among those listed were 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 had 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 had 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, 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.

The effect on careers varied.  Many of the more obscure found themselves on blacklists.  Parker lost the radio panel show jobs that had 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.