Before presenting my review of the book, I included a number of editorial comments that were posted about this work on amazon books. It is clear that most found Marsden's new book powerful and stimulating. I did not. For the contrast in views, I first present excerpts from the reviews by others. Following will be my review - part 1.--Hugh Murray
Washington Post “[A] fascinating and unusual book.... [Marsden is] one of the most esteemed
intellectual historians of his generation.... Marsden’s book shines as a
clear...introduction to the dominant intellectual voices of the era.” Wall Street Journal "[Marsden’s] critique of the consensus culture of the 1950s is original and
persuasive,…” Christianity Today “[A] compelling study.... [The Twilight of the American Enlightenment]
is short, elegantly interpretative, and strongly argued. Marsden writes for an
audience of ordinary, thoughtful readers. The prose is a treat: consistently
clear, sprightly, and filled with memorable stories.... The legendary Marsden
wit sparkles throughout, as do the one liners....” The Nation “Persuasive.... Marsden is, more than any other living scholar of our religious
history, a vital and engaged chronicler of the often-tangled byways of
dissenting Protestant faith and the ur-American quest for a higher cosmic
purpose.” Foreign Affairs “Marsden has the rare ability to describe complex controversies in clear and
concise prose...." Los Angeles Review of Books “A brilliant little book.” Choice “Marsden provides a tightly woven narrative that explains both the promises of
the enlightenment project and its limitations in navigating within a rapidly
growing religiously pluralistic framework.” Democracy Journal “[Marsden’s] book cuts through the rhetoric of the culture wars to identify
some of the basic intellectual problems that divide conservatives and
liberals.” The Weekly Standard “[A] thoughtful new book....” Touchstone “Few...can account for the changes as lucidly, or with such lightly worn but
impressive scholarship as Marsden exhibits in this book.... I cannot capture in
a short review the breadth of Marsden’s sweep, or the authority with which he
weaves many threads of evidence into an unmistakable pattern of meaning.” Christian Century “[A] brief, highly readable treatise.” Books and Culture "George Marsden’s latest book has about it the deceptive simplicity of a master
at work.” Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought “If you’ve read Marsden before, you’ll recognize him here: careful, generous,
modest in his claims and earnest in his convictions.... Marsden deserves a lot
of credit for trying to write history for a wider public, narrating a past for
useful guidance for serious moral and civic reflection today.... We need more
of this kind of work, not less.” Post and Courier “The inability to accommodate diversity among religions, and between religion
and secularism, is the issue that Marsden engages. He does so with erudition
and profundity.... [I]t is an important book written by one of the significant
intellects of our day and it is worth reading, even twice.” City Journal "Marsden rightly argues in his new book that American political culture has been
shaped by an alliance between Protestant Christianity and Enlightenment
rationality.” Historical Conversations “Throughout, the writing is done gracefully, and complex issues are treated
clearly. This is an engaging and accessible book for anyone willing to think
through important issues.” BreakPoint “[T]he history that unfolds in The Twilight of the American
Enlightenment is wonderfully illuminating for our present day.
Understanding the processes by which our present world came to be can only
assist current leaders in finding equitable solutions to our national
problems.” Publishers Weekly “[A] penetrating study of post-war intellectual ferment.... Marsden
provocatively diagnoses the decay of a liberal ideology unmoored from
philosophical foundations, a decay, he contends, that set the stage for the
cultural revolution of the 1960s and a resurgent religious right in the 1970s.
Marsden’s erudite, sophisticated, but very accessible study reveals the
suppressed spiritual hunger of a secular age.” Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk
Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism “Piercing and succinct yet astonishingly elegant,…” Barry Hankins, Professor of History, Baylor University, and author Wilfred
M. McClay, G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty,
University of Oklahoma "In this compact but powerful analysis of American life and thought in the
years since the Second World War,…”
Grant Wacker, Duke University, author of Heaven Below “Another masterpiece.”
THE TWILIGHT OF THE
AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT:
THE 1950s AND THE
CRISIS OF LIBERAL BELIEF
By George M. Marsden
(New York: Basic Books, 2014)
Review by Hugh Murray
Insipid and
evasive! Marsden’s book described the
American Enlightenment of the 1950s, which was essentially a blending of
mainstream Protestantism with a scientific rationality fused to form the
intellectual consensus of the post-WWII era.
I contend the “consensus” was forced, the Protestant dominance
questionable, the “science” often ideological, and his choice of the
intellectual figures debatable. Worse,
Marsden fails entirely to discuss convulsions that shook some of the most
powerful international institutions of that time. Even one of his points, could the American
consensus continue after people ceased to accept “natural law,” is a rehash of
Nietzsche’s 19th century critique of socialism – that socialism was
Christianity without faith. And without
that faith in Christianity, why have any interest in improving the lot of
mankind? Of course, Nietzsche’s question
went unanswered in the 19th century, and remains so today.
Subtitled: “The 1950s and the
Crisis of Liberal Belief,” Marsden omits all mention of the volcanic eruptions
of the era that was to change liberalism and its opponents. Nowhere does Marsden mention the election of
Pope John XXIII in October 1958 or the Second Vatican Conference he convened in
the early 1960s and how this would alter the Catholic Church, American protest,
and liberalism. The objection that
Vatican II lies outside the book’s scope is answered by Marsden himself: “I use
‘the 1950s’ as a term that is synonymous with this broader midcentury culture,
although the vast majority of my examples come from within the decade.”(pp.
xiv-xv)
Let me illustrate
my objection. One day in the 1950s I was
chatting with a friend of my age when she blurted out, “Oh, I met a Protestant
today!” As I attended public school, I
encountered Protestants every day and for me, it was literally
unremarkable. But my friend was enrolled
in Catholic school (as were about a third of all pupils in my city of New
Orleans in the 1950s.) After school,
perhaps she and her friends played basketball with the local Catholic Youth
Organization. If she didn’t, there were
many other appropriate activities for young Catholics. She and I lost contact for 5 decades. In the present century, I lunched with her, her sister, and her
brother. They had recently returned from
their first tour of Ireland, where they had an enjoyable time. They did inform me, however, that many of the
Irish were quite angry with the Church resulting from the sexual scandals of
some priests. My friends, themselves,
had been shocked when those allegations surfaced in the media. I
asked, when we were all young in the 1950s, hadn’t they heard of rumors and
jokes about priests? No, they had
not. To them, it was all a new, horrible
shock. To me, it was more like old news,
new only in that it was discussed in the media and not in whispers or in
bemused gossip. In the 1950s they lived
in a bubble, - a protective bubble, but a bubble none the less.
I do not
maintain that Catholics were the only people in such bubbles – far from
it. I recall reading of a left-winger
drafted into the army in WWII, where he learned that for most Americans a “party
line” referred to a shared telephone number, and not the latest pronouncement
of Stalin in the Daily Worker. Indeed, one can argue that most organizations
and institutions, including the family, seek to insulate its members from outside
influences and “dangers” by means of a bubble.
For most of us, the family is the primary bubble.
The bubble
not only protected, it encumbered upon members certain responsibilities. In graduate school at Tulane U. in the early
1960s I had a friend, another grad student, from Missouri. He was a fan of the Cardinals (baseball) and
had studied as an undergrad at Rockhurst U. (Jesuit) in St. Louis. In New Orleans he met and became engaged to
an attractive young woman. One problem,
however – she was Protestant. The
marriage could go forward when she agreed to raise the children as Catholics; a
precondition for a Catholic wedding.
Then, she had 2nd thoughts about raising her children as
Catholics. Result: they had none; the
engagement was broken and the wedding called off. He would not marry someone who refused to
raise his children as Catholics. He soon
found a Catholic girl whom he married. (In
those days, one could still use the term “girl” for adult women, even for some in
their 60s, and most would have been flattered by the usage.)
One
consequence of John XXIII and Vatican II was the erosion of the Catholic bubble. Long-accepted rules of the Church were
abandoned, bringing greater freedom, but also causing confusion, and sometimes
anger. Catholics questioned more as
their ancient, and rock-like Church seemed to be rocking amid the change swirling
around them. Some of these changes were
related to the election of Roman Catholic John Kennedy to the American
Presidency. While Catholics had long
been activists in labor unions, now some expanded their social activism. Marsden quotes historian Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. about the New Deal, but fitting for the Kennedy era as well: The whole point…lay
in its belief in activism, its faith in gradualness, its indifference to
ideologies…”(59) Some young Catholics
would soon be joining with Black Protestants and white Jews in civil rights and
later anti-war protests. In the 1950s it
would have been inconceivable for nuns to march alongside Black
integrationists, or for priests to break into draft boards and spill blood on
files. Lay people were now active too,
like Viola Liuzo, who was killed in Alabama for her protest against segregation. Unthinkable in the 1950s, but televised in
the 60s. Thus, the turmoil in the Church,
that began at the top, would have ramifications on the ground in the US as the left-liberal
elements were strengthened with new energy, new recruits, and new approaches
from the Catholic fold. Although Marsden
discusses at length the religious right of the 1970s and 80s, he utterly
ignores the storms that followed the loosening of the reins by John XXIII.
The
Catholic Church was not the only powerful, international organization that
tried to reinvent itself during this period.
In February 1956, two years before the election of Pope John XXIII,
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in a secret speech to leading Communists from
throughout the world, charged his predecessor, Josef Stalin and the Party he
led, with crimes including murder. When
news spread, the Communist Parties lost large percentages of their memberships
in some countries, including the CPUSA. (But
in terms of influence, the CPUSA was already but a fragment of its former self.) Nevertheless, the revelations that the Party
could commit murderous “errors,” must have caused many of the few who remained
to ask, “Should I always obey Party directives?” Later that same year Khrushchev answered that
question. If some thought that the
Communist International movement was to undergo a major “reset,” Khrushchev responded
with Soviet troops and tanks when a rebellion against the Communist government
erupted in Hungary. The window for
questioning the Party leadership slammed shut in Budapest. And just a few years later, with Vatican II,
the Roman Catholic Church was stirring confusion and self-doubt among many of
its flock, opening the doors to protest in the US and Liberation Theology later
in Latin America. And Khrushchev’s
speech would contribute to the causes of a major rift in the Communist world;
the split between Moscow and Beijing. There
is little reason for Marsden to mention Khrushchev’s speech, but he certainly
should have discussed the events in the Catholic earthquake that was shaking
bubbles.
Marsden
concedes that “this historical analysis [in this book] has concentrated on the
legacy of Protestantism as the most influential group shaping American
culture…”(171) Was this true in the
1950s? I admit, my home city was unusual
in the number of businesses closed on Good Friday and All Saints’ Day. And perhaps, nowhere else in America could
priests and nuns, attired in clerical garb, ride the city buses and streetcars
for free. Indeed, Protestant ministers
would fume against the city’s pro-Catholic policy, because wearing the everyday
attire of businessmen; they had to pay the 7-cent fare. Of course, turn on the radio any Sunday, and
one could hear the Protestant ministers’ revenge: New Orleans was Sodom,
Gomorrah, Babylon all rolled into one.
New Orleans was a Catholic enclave surrounded by the Protestant Bible
Belt of blue laws, laws requiring closings on Sundays, and prohibiting sales of
alcohol in many counties until well into the 1960s. In most of the South, Marsden is correct – the
dominant culture was Protestant.
However,
was Protestant culture still dominant for America as a whole? Although losing ground to television, theaters
still attracted million to movies in color, in Panavision, and even in
3-D. Actors may still encounter trouble
for saying it, but clearly it is not Protestants who dominate Hollywood. Jews made Hollywood the “dream factory” where
the aspirations and ideals of America, and even the world are portrayed and
created. Since the early 1900s it has
been predominantly the invention of and dominated by Jews. In the 1920s and early 30s, when Biblical
epics displayed too much flesh, demands for censorship grew. The Democrats, busy repealing Prohibition,
caved and permitted censorship of the film industry. The Catholic Legion of Decency would threaten
to boycott films that did not meet their standards, so American films became
tamer from the early 1930s until the mid1960s.
Marsden notes that during this era, priests were invariable portrayed as
kind, strong, righteous men. He notes
how some Protestants denounced Burt Lancaster in the 1960 film “Elmer Gantry,”
which was a most unflattering portrait of a minister. Much later, Hollywood would disparagingly
depict priests and ministers. Yet, when
is the last time you saw a film mock a rabbi?
Marsden
assumes that Protestantism was still dominant in American culture in the
1950s. Was it? Writing in 1969 sociologist and the later
Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that the public
schools of New York “had transformed two generations of Jewish immigrants into
the intellectual elite of the world’s most powerful nation.”(Hugh Graham Davis,
The Civil Rights Era, pp.
310-11) He did not mean that they became
the intellectual elite in 1969. Who was
moving up the ladder in academia, entertainment, publishing, films; who chaired
the Radio Corp. of America, which established NBC and its off-spring ABC, but
Col. Robert Sarnoff; who founded CBS but William Paley? The academedia complex was coalescing, and
most prominent in this matrix were Jews.
There was a
major setback. In the 1930s Jews had
been far more likely to drift from hatred of Nazism and fascism toward the Left
and Communism. Probably no other ethnic
group in the US had supplied so many recruits to the CPUSA than had the
Jews. Of course, not all Communists were
Jews, and certainly, not all Jews were Communists, but Jews were
disproportionately involved in the CP and its front groups. It was “The Way We Were” for many Barbara
Streisands, if not for their Robert Redfords (the film of 1973 about the earlier
decades). Joining the CP had consequences
following WWII as the Cold War began and Communist spies were identified. The Rosenbergs were executed as traitors, and
there was fear that many more Communists had infiltrated government and were
using their positions to aid and abet the international threat. It was not merely the loss of A-bomb secrets
(which was bad enough), but the
suspicion that Communist agents in the State Dept. or other govt. agencies had
blocked aid to Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists in their war against Mao
and the Communists. Republicans asked,
“Who lost China?” implying it was lost by
foreign agents inside the American govt.
While many in the liberal establishment then, as Marsden does now,
dismiss the efforts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, was McCarthy the villain depicted
by Hollywood and academia? Showing
blinders even further, Marsden writes: “Catholics,…, only rarely gained a voice
in the cultural mainstream prior to the eve of the Kennedy era.”(xviii) Wrong.
Catholics had voices, like that of Sen. McCarthy, and the liberal
establishment clearly knew his voice.
But they hated it, mocked it, sought to destroy it; destroyed it. He was as welcome among liberals then as Rush
Limbaugh is today. Catholics had a voice
then; conservatives have a voice now.
Liberals know it and seek to silence it.
In effect,
Marsden agrees with historian Richard Hofstadter that McCarthy exemplified the
“paranoid style” in American politics.
Was McCarthy paranoid? In early
2012 Russian leader Vladimir Putin thanked the Western scientists who supplied
the Soviet Union with atomic secrets at the beginning of the Cold War. He assured his audience, it was not just
microfilm, it was suitcases of material.
And we know now it was not merely Gold, Greenglass, the Rosenbergs, and
Fuchs (he was gentile), but Theodore Hall (born Holtzberg) was a most important
spy for the Soviets, - one who was never caught. Furthermore, the leader of the Manhattan
Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, had in the 1930s contributed money to the CP,
his wife, brother, and one mistress were all members of the CP, and there was
suspicion that he had divulged secrets to the Soviets. In 1954 Oppenheimer lost his security
clearance, though he was never found guilty of spying. On the conservapedia website, it is alleged
Oppenheimer was a secret member of the CP during the Manhattan Project and was
helpful to the Soviets. If Putin was
speaking the truth in 2012, who was filling the suitcases? Paranoia?
Or another failure of liberals to take proper precautions?
Catholics
did have a cultural and political voice before John Kennedy was elected
President, and that voice sounded a lot like Sen. McCarthy. He did go after Communists. He did go after
people whom he thought might provide information to the Soviets. JFK’s younger brother, Robert worked for the
McCarthy committee from Dec. 1952 to July 1953, when he was replaced as chief
counsel by Roy Cohn. McCarthy’s choice
of Cohn may have been a way to deflect the left-wing charges that McCarthy was
an anti-Semite. Because many of those
called before his committee were Jews (who may have been members of the CP), it
was harder to make the leftist smear stick when Cohn was his chief
counsel. But the Left cares little about
facts when it can mobilize huge protests.
Thus, masses rallied in Paris against the “anti-Semitism” in America
illustrated by the executions of the A-bomb spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,
but the Paris plazas were devoid of protests against Stalin when he was in the
process of purging Jews from the CP leaderships in the new “People’s
Democracies” of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s.
McCarthy’s accusations angered the liberal elite sufficiently
that President Eisenhower, a Protestant liberal Republican, threw his political
weight with the liberals in the US Senate, so that the majority voted to
censure Sen. McCarthy. That vote is usually
considered the turning point, the punch from which he never recovered. There were other issues besides the Communist
past or present of those subpoenaed before his committee, including firing
homosexuals as security risks, an investigation of a military base in the
Alabama about such “unnatural” activities, and then the rumors concerning Cohn
and his close buddy, David Schine. But
the Left never forgave them for exposing Communist activities in government,
and to this day McCarthyism is a dirty word in the academedia complex. But the chief reason for McCarthy’s fall was
his insistence on resurrecting the past, often the Communist past (and possibly
CP present), of some called before his committee. Many liberals in the 1930s had sympathized
with the Soviet “experiment,” and wanted no reminders. The left and liberals were determined to discredit McCarthy by
portraying him as paranoid.
Catholics had a voice besides McCarthy’s, - that of one of
the best orators in the country in the 20th century, Bishop Fulton
J. Sheen. (Two other great orators of
the century were the Protestant Rev. Billy Graham, and the actor turned
politician, Ronald Reagan.) Sheen’s
weekly television sermon. “Life is Worth Living,” which ran nationally from
1952 until 1968, was one of the nation’s most popular shows, and viewed by many
who were not Catholics. Sheen’s charismatic
presence, his use of the pause and logic, made powerful television without
color, without special effects, without canned laughter. Sheen, Graham, and Reagan would rouse
Americans as few have since.
But before Bishop Sheen appeared on television, Catholics had
had another powerful voice, the “radio priest,” Father Charles Coughlin. Turning a weekly local broadcast on WJR in
Detroit into a national program in 1930, Coughlin was clearly moved by the
Depression, and sought the get the government to improve conditions. He was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt in
his run for the Presidency in 1932, and was heard by up to 30 million listeners
each week. Though he certainly appealed
to Irish Catholics, his appeal extended far beyond them, and he received some
80,000 letters a week. By 1934 Coughlin
was dismayed by the slow progress of FDR’s New Deal, and its granting so much
power to the Federal Reserve. Coughlin
began to condemn FDR and support instead maverick Louisiana Democratic Sen.
Huey Long. However, when that populist
reformer was assassinated in the Louisiana capitol building, the rising 3rd
party was suddenly bereft of its natural leader. Coughlin had also created the National Union
for Social Justice (Obama is probably envious that this title was taken before
he could use it.) and supported the Union Party of 1936, which received fewer
than a million votes.
When Coughlin returned to the radio, the Spanish Civil War raged
between the left-wing Republic and the rebellious fascists led by Gen. Francisco
Franco. Unlike Hemingway and the left-wing
elite, Coughlin supported the anti-Communist Franco. (Those who admire Gaudi’s Sacred Family
Cathedral in Barcelona might recall that the Spanish “Republicans” destroyed
many of his plans for this masterpiece.)
Even some of the foreigners who fought for the Republican cause in
Spain, like George Orwell, came to believe the Republican government was a
Communist-dominated regime.
When in November 1938 news arrived of Kristallnacht and the intensified Nazi persecution of Jews in
Germany, Coughlin reminded his audience that it was the Christians who had first
been persecuted by the Communists in the Soviet Union. He also railed against the international Jews
and published in his weekly Social
Justice, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Coughlin began to support policies similar to
those of Hitler and Mussolini, so when America entered WWII against those
dictators, the National Assn. of Broadcasters set new requirements that effectively
banned him from the airways. Then
pressure on the church forced him to confine his duties to that of a local
parish priest – and no more.
Before America’s entry into WWII, many, if not most Americans
preferred to remain neutral during the conflict. Because Poland had been ravaged by Hitler’s
Blitzkrieg on its western border, and followed by Stalin’s attack in 1939 from
the east, many Poles in the US were committed to the victory of the Allies, led
by Britain. However, in the US, most
ethnic Catholics came from nations that by 1939-40 had leaders who were pro-fascist. Marshall Petain’s France, Italy, the new
Croatia, Austria (absorbed into Germany), Hungary, the new Slovakia, the
remnants of Bohemia-Moravia, Spain, Portugal, and later Argentina, were all
Catholic. And none of them were
democracies. Of course, many Irish-Americans
would oppose the English, and many German-Americans were also Catholic. The Catholic ethnics from these nations may
not have supported the policies of their homelands, but they did not want war against
those homelands either. Col. Lindbergh
and the America First Committee had much support, until the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor. Once the US was at war,
these ethnics were drafted and fought against the Axis, doing their duty, even
if with less enthusiasm than some of the recruits from the coasts.
When the war ended, their stifled voices began to rise. Strangely missing from Marsden’s book is any
mention of the highly influential The
Future of American Politics (1952) by Samuel Lubell. Lubell stressed that the ethnics whose loyalty
had been questioned during WWII were now eager to prove their patriotism by exposing
the Communists who led America into war; who insured that lend-lease materials
had a higher priority for the USSR rather than for American or British troops;
who provided Stalin’s scientists with secrets so they could quickly develop the
A- and H- bombs; and who prevented American aid from reaching anti-Axis, but
anti-Communist leaders like Chiang in China and Mihailovic in Yugoslavia. Most of these ethnics were working class and
some in trade unions, yet many deserted the Democrats and voted for Eisenhower
because of what they deemed as Democratic treason. The suppression of the Catholic and other
churches behind the Iron Curtain simply encouraged these ethnics to stick with
the Republicans and many found McCarthy refreshing. They wanted strong action against the
Communist governments. While the liberal
establishment preferred George Kennan’s proposal of “containing” the Soviet
empire, the Catholic ethnics often preferred those who urged rolling it back. As President, Eisenhower governed as part of
the liberal establishment. He accepted a
divided peninsula to end the Korean War; he did not intervene when the East
Berlin workers rose against their Communist regime in 1953; and though American
shortwave radio encouraged it, America stood idly by when the Hungarian rebels
against the Communists in 1956 were crushed by Soviet troops. In other parts of the world, Eisenhower
actively engaged in rolling back perceived threats to the US, overturning
left-wing governments in Iran and Guatemala, helping more conservative
governments combat and suppress guerrilla operations in the Philippines,
Malaysia, Indonesia, and parts of Africa.
But in Europe, Ike was content with containment.
In 1960 Catholics hoped for a larger voice in national
affairs when Irish Catholic Sen. John Kennedy ran for the Presidency against a
Quaker, Republican Vice-President, Richard Nixon. The only other time a major party had
nominated a Catholic for the highest office in the land, was in 1928 when New
York Gov. Al Smith ran against the first Quaker to run for President on a major
ticket, Herbert Hoover. That was a nasty
campaign, with considerable anti-Catholic emotional appeals, and even renewed
strength of the Ku Klux Klan (whose threats prompted Father Coughlin to begin
his radio career). While Smith carried
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, he lost the rest of the North, and even some of
the “solid” Democratic South, like North Carolina which had not gone Republican
since Reconstruction. Hoover won in a
landslide. In an effort to prevent a
recurrence of the anti-Catholic bias in 1960, Kennedy assured Americans that if
elected he would retain the strong wall of separation between church and state
in America. The Pope would not reside in
the White House. Despite such
reassurances, many remained skeptical about electing a Catholic. For example, as late as summer 1960 the
pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta was still supporting Nixon the
Protestant for President rather than a Catholic. But in
October 1960, after Martin L. King, Jr, was arrested in a sit-in, John
Kennedy’s brother Robert telephoned the authorities to get King released. With that, King, Sr. endorsed the Catholic
Kennedy. Kennedy defeated Nixon by a
slim margin.
How would the first Catholic President conduct America’s
foreign policy? Kennedy decided to
continue with a roll-back effort initially developed for Nixon on the presumption
that he would win the White House. Nixon
didn’t, but Kennedy okayed the project anyway.
Just months after his inauguration, in spring 1961 at the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba, American backed Cuban exile forces fought to topple Fidel Castro. When it quickly became evident the small
force did not have the massive support of the Cuban people promised by the US
intelligence agency, and when Kennedy refused to up the ante, the invasion failed.
This raised Castro’s popularity, and made
Kennedy a hated man among many of the Cuban exiles. Kennedy also failed to act when the East
German government chose to halt immigration to the West by erecting a secure
border, including a wall through the center of Berlin.
Kennedy’s failure to eliminate the Castro regime in Cuba
would cause further problems for America, the Soviets, and the world. In the Western Hemisphere, suddenly it was no
longer roll-back, under Kennedy, but containment of Communism only 90 miles
from Miami. Meanwhile, there was strong
Catholic support for the Catholic dominated government in South Vietnam, and
Kennedy increased the US military presence there from 900 to 15,000 “military
advisors,” but there is still debate whether he was preparing to withdraw them
in late 1963. As it was, on 2 November
1963 the Catholic President of South Vietnam and his brother, head of the armed
forces, were both assassinated, with CIA foreknowledge. On 22 November 1963 Kennedy was assassinated
in Dallas.
Marsden discusses the crisis of liberal belief. He fails to understand that the crisis of
belief occurred when liberal policies, once implemented, failed.
Communists had been quite active in the American labor
movement, and its members were some of the most successful in organizing the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
Sometimes overlooked, the Communists were also extremely important in
the civil rights movement(CRM), beginning around 1931 when they struggled
against the liberal NAACP for control of the Scottsboro rape defense. Hiring top attorneys, investigating the case
thoroughly, even building a toy-train replica of the freight upon which, allegedly,
many rapes occurred, the Communists held mass rallies and sent the mother of
two defendants to Europe where she spoke about her innocent children and the
attempt of the racist Alabama judicial system to railroad her boys to the
electric chair. The CP and its front
groups persuaded many leftist intellectuals of the day, like Albert Einstein
and theologian Martin Buber, to sign petitions to free the Scottsboro boys. There were trials and retrials – one of the
white women “victims” changed her story, to deny that the Blacks had raped her
or even had sex with her. The other
white woman stuck to her story of rape, but whenever the Communist-hired
defense attorney tried to catch her in a contradiction, she suddenly
“disremembered” precisely what happened.
In one final appeal to the jury, the prosecutor summed up his case,
“Don’t sell Alabama justice to Jew money from New York!” At another point, a court official called a
Black about to sit in the witness chair “a thing.” The all-white juries found the Black
defendants guilty with each new trial, and the then conservative US Supreme
Court twice heard appeals and ruled for the defense, so that Communists gained
Constitutional guarantees for all with the right to counsel and that race might
not be used to exclude Blacks the jury rolls.
Building on this and other cases, Communists in the South
gained a reputation as courageous and knowledgeable opponents of racism. They were active, through their front groups
in numerous local causes, but their struggle against Southern segregation reached
a peak during the 1948 election campaign which featured former Vice President under
FDR. Henry Wallace running for President on the new Progressive Party ticket against
another former VP also under FDR, Democrat Harry Truman. The other major contenders were New York Republican
Gov. Thomas Dewey, and States’ Rights Democrat (Dixiecrat) South Carolina Sen. Strom
Thurmond. Truman, who earlier in his
career may have been a member of the KKK, now sought the Black vote and was
portrayed as a champion of civil rights.
Truman was the first US President to address the convention of the
NAACP, and in effect won the endorsement of that “non-partisan”
organization. To make the policy even
clearer, when one of the founders of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du Bois endorsed the Progressive
Wallace rather than Truman, Du Bois was promptly fired from the liberal
organization.
Yet, those Southerners most inspired by the ideal of racial
equality, who may have joined with Communists and certainly supported the
Progressive Party of 1948, expressed their hopes in the Wallace Progressive
movement. The new Progressive group, not
only had the support of many CIO unions, it also had the endorsement of
Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC, the first snick, which had hosted the
famous Black actor, singer Paul Robeson), the Southern Conference on Human
Welfare, the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, and the
Council on African Affairs. When Paul
Robeson, an official of the Progressive Party by then, toured the South for
Wallace, young men in New Orleans had to sit on the stoops with baseball bats
to defend the home where he stayed. In
Baton Rouge, when the landlady discovered Robeson was staying in a house she
owned, she demanded the tenants vacate immediately. Police intervened, and said the tenants could
remain till the end of the month.
Wallace’s running mate, Democratic Sen. Glen Taylor from Idaho also
campaigned in the South where he was scheduled to address a SNYC gathering in
Birmingham. The US Senator was then
arrested by Police Commissioner Bull Connor because he entered through the
Black entrance to the building. Taylor
had intentionally defied Birmingham’s segregation ordinance. SNYC, Bull Connor, integration, arrests. Does it sound familiar? In the 1960s, it would be SNCC, Bull Connor,
integration, arrests. And in October 1948
Wallace himself embarked on a Southern campaign tour. In “liberal” North Carolina threatening mobs
rocked his car (Nixon would have a similar, terrorizing experience when he
visited South America in 1960).
Sometimes Wallace got out and tried to speak, and was pelted in the face
with rotten eggs and tomatoes There was at least one stabbing, and battles
with anti-left picketers who used their sticks in the scuffles. At some ball parks, Blacks and whites could
gather and listen to Wallace and then join in as Pete Seeger led in singing
political anthems. Because Wallace
refused to address segregated audiences, in some places, he chose not to
speak. He was invited to speak on some
local radio programs, and depending on the hostility of the crowd en route, he
might ignore his prepared speech to talk in simple terms, how segregation was a
“sin.” This tour is overlooked by
historians for political reasons – it embarrasses those who are committed to
the Democratic Party. Ignored or not,
the Henry Wallace Progressive Party campaign was in reality the beginning of
the larger civil rights movement.
Wallace and his supporters displayed enormous courage at that time. On the other hand, for the militant
integrationists, their hopes of 1948 were dashed when Wallace received only
2.4% of the national vote. Wallace was a
very courageous politician. He was not a
Communist. However, if Wallace had won
the election, the man whom he most likely would have chosen as US Secretary of
State was also likely on the Soviet payroll.
Truman won, and he was determined to destroy the agitators. Truman had his Attorney General issue a list
of subversive organizations (belonging to one might get you fired). Many of these groups in the South were
front-groups, a coalition of Communists and non-Communists working for specific
goals in each organization. And these
were often the only militant integration organizations. They had supported Wallace, and Truman was
out to destroy them. And destroy them he
did, the SNYC, the SCHW, the NNNC, the CRC, and the CAA, etc.. All of these integration organizations would
cease to exist by the mid1950s. And for
emphasis, Truman had the 82 year-old Du Bois handcuffed and arrested as a
foreign agent. (Eventually, the charges
were dismissed.)
In the South
persecutions of the Commie n-s and n-loving integrationists increased. Even the anti-Communist, liberal NAACP was
tainted in the atmosphere. Many now
called it the National Assn. for the Advancement of the Communist Party. By the late 1950s, even the liberal NAACP was
made illegal in Louisiana. SNYC, Bull
Connor, integration, arrests. But with
the defeat of the Progressive Party, with Truman’s destruction of SNYC and the
other integration organizations, Bull Connor could rest easy by the
mid-50s. The Commies had been defeated.
For contrast, I recall attending a Billy Graham rally in
Pelican (baseball) Stadium in New Orleans in the mid1950s. His sermon was quite moving, and many in the
audience rose at the end to “accept Christ.”
There were Blacks in the audience, but they all sat on the side in a
segregated section. The superb orator
Graham was not going to disrupt his main message by raising the race issue like
Henry Wallace and the Progressives. Of
course, New Orleans was Catholic, with a large Catholic school system, which
was segregated. While most Protestant churches
were completely segregated, all white or all Black, Catholic churches were not. But Blacks sat in the back pews and received
communion only after all the whites had taken theirs. And when in New Orleans some Jesuits spoke up
against segregation, they were reminded that before the (Civil) war, the
Jesuits had owned slaves too.
After WWII Hollywood and the radio-television networks agreed
to a blacklist barring accused Leftists and Communists from the media. Among the more famous were the Black one-time
all-American football player, turned singer/actor Paul Robeson, and the
Weavers, a singing group whose hits included “Good Night Irene,” “On Top of Old
Smoky,” and “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena.” Pete
Seeger was one of the Weavers, and he watched their records disappear from the
juke boxes and record stores. The
Hollywood 10 openly defied the Congress and refused to answer questions about
their possible connections to the CP, and they lost jobs, and some had to move
to other countries to find work. Some of
the writers wrote screenplays under pseudonyms.
Decades later, Hollywood and TV would generally portray these Communists
as persecuted heroes. But some, like
actor Burt Parks, who reluctantly cooperated with the un-American activities
committee, naming the names of Communists, also suffered at the box-office for
ever having been mixed up with the radicals.
Others, like Elia Kazan, defied the Communists, named members of
Communist cells, and Kazan went on to direct some of the most poignant films to
come from Hollywood, like “On the Waterfront,” (1954) in which one of the big
questions is should one become an informer.
Yet, the Left never forgave Kazan for “snitching,” and decades later in
1999 when Kazan received an honorary award from the Academy Awards, many of the
Leftist members literally stood and turned their backs at the ceremony when
Kazan was called to the stage. Not all
who had been on the Left suffered during this period. Lucille Ball in California in the 1930s had
registered to vote as a Communist. Some
have alleged that she was quite active in the Party. The CP was strongly anti-racist, and
undoubtedly for many reasons, Ball married an Hispanic from Cuba, band leader
Desi Arnez. Somehow, in 1951, Ball managed
to get both of them on a television series as a married couple. This was the closest to a mixed marriage on
TV at the time. It was also hilarious,
and the series soared to number one in 1950s television.
There were some anti-Communist dramatic series, but they
generally differed little from the b-crime programs. Same with the movies. One exception was the 1955 film, “Trial,”
about an alleged rape of a white girl by an Hispanic in California. The Communists quickly move in to handle the
defense, hiring liberal good-guy Glenn Ford as an innocent front man for their cause. The Party cynically manipulates the race
issue, raising money by using the mother of the boy at rallies, and in the end
sabotaging the defense so the youth will die.
That will prove to the world the injustice of the American legal
system. One television series was
interesting, “I Led 3 Lives,” in which a normal American man seemingly living a
normal American life is secretly a member of the CP, and beyond that, is
secretly an informer for the FBI. The
program’s layers of deception provided many plot twists, and it was akin to a
political version of “The Fugitive.”
Strangely, one of the most effective anti-Communist movies of the era
never mentioned the Party – it was the sci-fi favorite, “Invasion of the Body
Snatchers.” The fear aroused in the
audience was about someone close, a co-worker, a friend, a lover, looks the
same but is suddenly very different, not himself. In the film, the danger was alien body
snatchers; in America of the era, the danger was alien “mind” snatchers, infecting
minds with Marxism.
Perhaps the most subversive popular film of the era was
overtly apolitical. Not rebel with a red
cause with a Barbara Streisand carrying a picket sign, but “Rebel without a
Cause,” (1955) the story of 3 teens from middle-class families. But each had conflicts; for all of their
families were dysfunctional. At one
point, all 3 (James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo) found refuge in an empty
mansion for a few hours to form their own early mid-50s commune. Also most unusual for that era, it was clear
that Mineo was homosexual and attracted to Dean. The film was subversive in depicting the
middle-class family as oppressive and suggesting an alternative. Seeds of the 60s were laid in the 50s.
Although CP influence had been curtailed in Hollywood, there
were undoubtedly still some who opposed the Cold War and hoped for peace with
Stalin’s empire. In addition to sci-fi
programs on TV and in films, in which peace could be stressed as a better
alternative to continued re-armament and nuclear “chicken” (chicken was the one
word that turned the teens in Rebel into homicidal brutes), that might end with
annihilation of all.
A similar theme present in American culture following WWII
was pacifism: “Should one fight?” One
great and one good film exemplified this modified challenge to the continued
Cold War arms race. It was not shown in
the obvious contest of the Reds vs. the West, but rather in the terms of a
traditional American minor religion, the Quakers or Friends. In these films the Quakers sought to uphold a
long-held principle of some smaller religions that war was wrong and one should
abstain. The 1952 film “High Noon” is
set in the old West. The town marshal,
Gary Cooper, has just married a Quakeress (Grace Kelly), resigns his post, and
leaves town with her to become a storekeeper.
He turns back when he learns that a criminal whom he captured was
released on a technicality, and will arrive in town on the train at high
noon. The criminal is a good shot, has a
small gang, and has vowed revenge on Cooper.
Cooper recovers his badge and seeks to round up a posse to defend the
town before the train arrives.
Meanwhile, Grace has decided she is leaving on that train, and hopes
that he joins her and avoids the looming gunfight. If they depart together, she thinks they can
avoid violence. As noon and the train approach,
Cooper has been unable to convince anyone to help against the gun-toting
gang. Cooper is alone. He has some shoot-outs with the group,
killing a few but he too is wounded.
When Cooper seems lost, Grace unexpectedly shoots one of the
villains. In the end the bad guys are
all killed, Cooper throws away his badge in disgust, and the newlyweds depart
the town. The Quaker view is presented,
not as bad, but as impractical. And in
the end, the wife uses a weapon too.
The 1956 film, “Friendly Persuasion” also concerned Quaker
attitudes toward war. Again, Gary Cooper
plays, this time as the father of a Quaker family, this time located in the
southern part of Indiana in 1862, when Confederate forces invade the area. The family opposes slavery, but does not
believe in killing for that or any other cause.
The father Cooper, waivers, but the bigger issue in the film concerns
his son, Anthony Perkins. Perkins does
not join the Union Army, but when Confederate troops come to his farm, Perkins
too takes up the gun and shoots against the invaders. I do not mean that the pacifist position was
shown as the winning one, but it was presented with respect as an alternative.
Most Americans did not seek a Cold War;
many Americans retained an ideal of peace.
But in the crunch, Americans would fight against the Communists or any
other aggressor. War
films and TV of the era showed the enemy to be North Koreans, Soviets,
sometimes Chinese, and more frequently the Axis powers of WWII.
I do not mean that the pacifist position was shown as the
winning one, but it was presented with respect as an alternative. Meanwhile, the Communist and Progressive
leadership of the civil rights movement of the late 1940s had burnt out with
persecution. Some pondered a new
approach. When war loomed in the late
1930s a non-religious pacifist group was organized, the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. In the early 1940s, an
off-shoot of FOR was begun to specialize in trying to apply non-violent methods
to reduce or end racial discrimination, and so the Congress of Racial Equality
was born. Both FOR and CORE were tiny,
pacifist sects trying to survive in America during WWII. By the mid-50s, some of the Progressives were
thinking of applying creatively some of the methods of non-violence. One center where these methods could be
explored was the Left-wing camp in Tennessee, Highlander Folk School. In 1955 that is where a seamstress from
Montgomery was trained, and when she returned home, and applied the lessons
learned, the Montgomery boycott began.
And so with Rosa Parks began the next phase of what is normally called
the Civil Rights Movement. This was the
meeting, the new coalition of the former Progressives (and CP folk) applying
Gandhian, Quakerish methods to change race relations in the South, along with
younger people who had no direct connections to “subversive” organizations, and
also some very religious people. Churches
provided sanctuary for many CR activities, and some houses of worship paid the
price by being burnt to the ground. But
my purpose here is not to recount the history of the CRM, but note one aspect
consciously omitted back then so as to play down any links to the CP, as that
would have made it more difficult to gain popular support. Today those links are downplayed or forgotten
because it is assumed that most people prefer the myths, and legends, instead
of the reality. This is probably one
reason the govt. files on Martin Luther King, Jr. are still kept from the
public (like many of the files on the John Kennedy assassination, and on King’s
assassination).
Finally,
Marsden envisioned the American Enlightenment of the 1950s as still a
combination of Protestant culture and scientific humanism. Just how scientific was this
Enlightenment?
END OF PART 1, PART 2 OF THE REVIEW WILL POST IN ABOUT A WEEK
