“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
If that question is familiar — and chilling — you’re old enough to recall a time when friends, neighbors, coworkers, even family members were asked to rat out the political affiliations of those they knew.
For decades in the mid-20th century, constitutional freedoms — of speech, association, assembly — were compromised by what came to be known as the Red Scare. At its peak in the 1940s and ’50s, thousands of Americans and American emigres were accused of consorting with communists and labeled un-American. The result: loss of jobs, social connections and respect in an era when conformity reigned.
The Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum’s newest exhibit, “Blacklisted: An American Story,” examines how a singular moment in American history continues to resonate more than 75 years later in current policies and attitudes. “This is a moment in history that people find resonant right now,” said Beatrice Gurwitz, executive director of the Capital Jewish Museum. “We were really excited about the prospect of telling the D.C. side of this story. HUAC, the House on American Activities Committee, was here [in D.C.], as was [Sen.] Joe McCarthy. And the Red Scare and the federal government is a story that affected probably many more people than were affected in Hollywood. Exploring the Jewish angle to that story is something really exciting to us.”
The exhibit, which was initially created by the Milwaukee Jewish Museum and subsequently seen at the New York Historical and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, traces the rise of the Red Scare and how the fear of communism penetrated political and business spaces around the country. As communism rose in Eastern Europe and Asia during and after World War II, politicians manipulated language and leaned into undemocratic tactics to tamp down interest in the Communist Party and adjacent groups, including unions and working writers, artists and directors in Hollywood.
In 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activity was established to uncover “subversive and un-American propaganda” to keep the country safe from undesirable ideas and activities.
Among those deeply affected by these propagandistic tactics were the Hollywood Ten, a group of Hollywood writers, actors and directors who were primarily Jewish, and who were called to testify before Congress to name friends or acquaintances they knew who had Communist Party affiliations or sentiments. The six Jews — Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, and Samuel Ornitz — all served six months to a year in prison and had difficulty finding work after their release.
Ironically, many of the men who made the blacklists in Hollywood were also Jews because the American film industry and studio system was very much a creation of Jewish immigrants, frozen out of gaining employment in other businesses. Jewish lawyers also worked on both sides of this divisive issue.
“We did some extra research to build out the stories about the federal government to give context on the magnitude of the impact the Red Scare had on the federal government,” Gurwitz said.
There was a 1947 executive order that President Truman signed promulgating a loyalty program for the federal civil service, which required millions of feds to fill out forms demonstrating their fealty to American ideals couched in white supremacy. “Over 25,000 federal employees were investigated, and 3,000 testified in front of HUAC,” Gurwitz said as she noted the magnitude of this process.
Abraham Chasanow was a federal employee at the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office. In 1953, because someone accused him of affiliating with left-wing organizations, he was suspended from his job. Chasanow and his family lived in Greenbelt, Maryland, a planned cooperative city created under the Roosevelt administration’s program to build model towns with affordable housing while providing work relief for unemployed.
A founder of Mishkan Torah, Greenbelt’s synagogue, Chasanow was a model involved citizen: He was also head of the citizens’ association, a director of the Lions Club and a Boy Scout leader. Yet he was called to testify, name names and defend himself. “Over the course of the next year,” Gurwitz said, “he marshalled 97 character witnesses to go before the security board on his behalf. He was eventually reinstated.”
Gurwitz noted that in 1954 Time Magazine reported that the hydrographic office had 13 employees who happened to live in Greenbelt. Five of them were suspended as security risks, and all five who were suspended were Jewish.
The Red Scare and the blacklists didn’t only target Jews. African Americans became targets, including opera singer Paul Robeson and jazz singer Hazel Scott, both of whom are featured in the exhibit. Other Hollywood creatives whose stories are told through their letters, quotes, photos, posters and paintings include Jewish actor John Garfield, who, though not a Communist, was harassed by FBI and called before HUAC. His family blamed his premature death at 39 on the stress he encountered.
Alvah Bessie, a screenwriter and novelist, who had belonged to the Community Party, spent 10 months in prison for refusing to testify. A case includes original stories he wrote from his cell and mailed to his then-young children, as well as letters and drawings he received from them while in jail.
It’s important to dig into this historical moment in U.S. history through a Jewish lens, Gurwitz noted. “There’s a lot of complexity in the experience of Jews during the Red Scare,” she added. “So many Jews in the early and mid-20th century associated with labor unions, socialist and Communist parties, 1930s anti-fascism, New Deal liberalism and Hollywood. And all of those became suspect a decade later. That suspicion intersected with explicit antisemitism among anti-Communist activists.”
If “Blacklisted: An American Story” resonates with current events, that’s the point. The exhibit texts challenge viewers to both put themselves in the shoes of both the victims and the purveyors of the blacklist phenomenon, through asking some pertinent questions in the exhibition text. As Gurwitz noted, “These are complicated stories that are fodder for conversation.”
“Blacklisted: An American Story” through Sept. 7, Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, 575 3rd St. NW, Washington, D.C. Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students/seniors; free for children age 12 and under. Visit capitaljewishmuseum.org/exhibition/blacklisted-an-american-story.
Special programs include an author talk with Clay Risen on his book “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America,” March 12; “Artifacts in Action,” an afternoon for educators to explore primary sources, March 19; and “Blacklists Through the Ages,” April 26.
Lisa Traiger is an award-winning arts journalist who covers the performing and visual arts in the Washington, D.C., region and beyond.
