(published by the Committee for Defense of Public Education in 1941, with text by Louis Lerman and forward by Franz Boas). "...Emerging from the carnage of World War I, and the economic upheaval of the Depression years, by the late 1930s both fascism and anti-Semitism were on the rise in Germany; in Franco's Spain, the Civil War pitted Fascists against Republicans, and in America, Father Coughlin and the Christian Front spewed what we would call today, 'hate speech' against Catholics, Jews, immigrants, Negros and Communists. To speak out against fascism, to be a voice for progressive values like worker's rights, equality, social justice and peace, was to become a target for an anti-Communist witch hunt a generation before Joseph McCarthy asked people to 'name names'.
This book is a chronicle of one such hunt, by the Rapp-Coudert Committee between 1940 and 1942, looking for 'subversives' in New York State schools and colleges. Lives and reputations were ruined; one man went to jail for not naming names."
Post a Comment