Show-Business Witchhunters Hit Paydirt (1950)
AUGUST 27 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of the dawn of large-scale anti-communist witchhunting in the U.S. entertainment industry, when NBC television fired one of its star performers, Jean Muir, because she held left-wing opinions.
Muir was not the first entertainment-industry blacklist target, but she was the first victim of what might be called wholesale blacklisting. Beginning in late 1947 and up until August 1950, show-business blacklisting had aimed at a small handful of well-known movie-industry progressives. The Hollywood 10 (which was actually 11) were severely punished with year-long prison sentences or permanent exile (in the case of Bertolt Brecht). After serving their time, all but one of the ten (who turned stool-pigeon) found it impossible to earn a living as they had previously because no one would hire them.
But entertainment industry workers didn’t generally advertise their politics, which left would-be witchhunters in the dark about who had political opinions to attack.
In June 1950, FBI files on “subversives” were leaked to a group of right-wing journalists that included a retired FBI agent and a retired U.S. Army Intelligence major with many years’ experience hunting “subversives.” In a matter of weeks, the group published a 226-page pamphlet titled “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television”.
According to Red Channels, in 1949 Jean Muir had been vice-president of the allegedly subversive Congress of American Women. She had also allegedly attended Communist study groups, had allowed Communists to use her car and to visit her house, and had met with Communist leaders. All of which clearly made her ineligible to star in a soon-to-be broadcast weekly situation comedy on NBC-TV.
After the Red Channels allegations appeared, NBC claimed to have received multiple phone calls and letters protesting Muir’s forthcoming appearance; that was all it took. Muir was the first of many, many progressives who found it impossible to work at their craft thanks to Red Channels publication of unverified information leaked by the FBI. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-26-mn-28104-story.html
Bearing Witness to Jim Crow “Justice” (1955)
AUGUST 28 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the torture and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, which ought never be forgotten. https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/aug/28
Undisciplined Deputies Sow Deadly Chaos (1970)
AUGUST 29 IS THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of a very large and militant demonstration against the U.S. war in Vietnam organized in Los Angeles by the Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War. It was generally agreed to be the largest Chicano political demonstration to have ever occurred in the U.S.
Some 30,000 demonstrators marched peacefully across East Los Angeles, but then violence broke out when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies began to use both tear gas and brute force against the marchers for no apparently valid reason. At least three demonstrators and one prominent journalist died as a result of the deputies’ deplorable lack of restraint. https://xxxxxx.org/2020-09-13/twenty-one-days-later-ventura-countys-participation-chicano-moratorium-1970
Like a Rolling Stone (1965)
AUGUST 30 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the release of Bob Dylan’s album “Highway 61, Revisited” by Columbia Records. It features Dylan (vocals, guitar, harmonica and piano), Mike Bloomfield (electric guitar), Charlie McCoy (guitar), Al Kooper (organ, piano), Paul Griffin (piano, organ), Frank Owens (piano), Harvey Brooks (bass), Russ Savakus (bass guitar, upright bass), Joe Macho, Jr. (bass guitar), Bobby Gregg (drums), Sam Lay (drums) and Bruce Langhorne (tambourine}
The album has 10 tracks: Like a Rolling Stone, Tombstone Blues, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, From a Buick 6, Ballad of a Thin Man, Queen Jane Approximately, Highway 61 Revisited, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues, and Desolation Row.
You can see and hear Dylan’s original music video of Like a Rolling Stone here: https://youtu.be/A-E78JZ-U-8?si=A81cWIDtWS3ZWt3P
What’s In a Name? (2015)
AUGUST 31 IS THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY of a crucial, but not decisive, moment in the dispute over the name of the highest peak in North America. For hundreds if not thousands of years the peak in central Alaska had been called Denali by the Koyukon Athabaskan people who lived in its vicinity.
In 1896, a gold prospector from that part of the U.S. that is south of Canada decided to call it Mt. McKinley. He was not naming it in honor of the President of the United States, who was then Grover Cleveland; he was naming it in honor of Republican presidential candidate William McKinley, who would soon beat Democratic and Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan and then take office on March 4, 1897.
In 1917, the U.S. government formally designated the peak as Mt. McKinley.
In August 2015 the U.S. government committed to calling the peak by its ancient name, Denali.
On Jan. 20, 2025, the occupant of the White House signed Executive Order 14172, "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness," which re-established the name to Mt. McKinley at the same time it renamed the then-Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. https://xxxxxx.org/2025-02-02/make-america-1897-again
This Land Is Your Land . . . . (1945)
SEPTEMBER 1 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the publication of the words and music of “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie. You can watch an 8-minute video about the Smithsonian’s rare copy of Guthrie’s original recording here https://www.tiktok.com/@cbssundaymorning/video/7536948278043200781
Familiar Sentiments (1945)
SEPTEMBER 2 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of two related events; off the coast of Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri, Japan’s Foreign Minister and its military Chief of Staff ended World War 2 when they signed the instrument of surrender. Almost simultaneously, more than two thousand miles away in Hanoi, a crowd of nearly a half-million listened to Ho Chi Minh proclaim the end of Vietnam’s occupation by France and by Japan and the resulting independence of Vietnam.
Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence starts like this:
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the nations on the earth are equal from birth, all the nations have the right to live, to be happy and free.” https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/vietnam/independence.pdf
For more People's History,
visit https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/
