The postwar Second Red Scare successfully smashed the American left. But in the midst of its devastation, a small number of old leftists refused to be shut up by the climate of fear. Without their heroism, the New Left could never have emerged.
Political participation is key to resisting efforts to prohibit the discussion of “controversial” ideas. Those flexing their political muscle to regulate what gets taught in classrooms understand this. Those of us doing the teaching need to as well.
In legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are introducing bills to curtail what educators — in public schools and universities — can say and teach about racism and sexism. It's a new McCarthyism...
How a new investigation into a 1951 spy trial exposed long-running injustices committed in the name of US security. The Rosenbergs’ story is as relevant to our times as it was 70 years ago.
The United Electrical Workers was one of America’s mightiest unions. Many leaders were leftists who challenged corporate power, so UE was decimated by McCarthyism. The union survived and UE's model of militant, democratic unionism can revive labor.
Reader Comments: Unite to Defeat Trump; Lynchings, Racial Violence; Trump's Arms Race; Problem When So Many Police are Vets; Teachers Union: Cops Out of Schools; Labor and Police; McCarthyism and Black Freedom Movement; Southern Communists; Roy Cohn;
An earlier generation of civil rights struggle saw things differently. They, and their opponents, understood that black equality required a fundamental transformation of American society.
In the postwar-Cold War period U.S. corporations used anti-communist hysteria to attack the labor movement. Salt of the Earth - tells the story of heroic Mexican American mineworkers, and the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers.
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