Rick Winston - Red Scare in the Green Mountains: The McCarthy Era in Vermont 1946-1960

In praise of Red Scare in the Green Mountains

Gracefully written, full of wonderful, well-chosen details.... Focusing on the witch hunt era in one state, with just enough national background to put the stories in context, Winston depicts the politics of demagoguery and resistancea topic that couldnt be more timely for all Americans today.

Marjorie Heins, author of Priests of Our Democracy:

The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge

...sheds a new light on a dark chapter in American history. We are introduced to leaders who deserve their place in history, such as Congressman William Meyer and Professor Andrew Nuquist... a well-researched picture of Vermont in the McCarthy era

Madeleine Kunin, former Vermont governor,

author of The New Feminist Agenda

Rick Winston has written a highly informative book that expanded my knowledge of Vermont during the 1950s and during the McCarthy years. It is well-written and immediately drew me in. I recommend the book to all those interested in the Vermont experience, McCarthyism, or our efforts to protect our rights in challenging times.

Gregory Sanford, former Vermont State Archivist

... shines a penetrating light on and compellingly recreates the little-known story of how valiant Vermonters rallied to withstand the pressures and distortions of the McCarthy Era. Strikingly relevant for our own era.

Tony Hiss, author of The View from Algers Window

... an important story about how hate and fear preached by national figures impacts people living in small towns across America. To understand how a demagogue can lie, scapegoat and bully his way to power, it is enlightening to revisit how residents and leaders of the small state of Vermont both collaborated with and fiercely resisted the anti-communist witch hunts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

David Goodman, author and host,

The Vermont Conversation

... a fascinating exploration of the way McCarthyism and related right-wing fear-mongering played out in a state that is commonly thought of as uncommonly liberal. The reality... is that intolerance, xenophobia and fear of un-American ideas are ugly stains on the history of all Americaeven in the state that produced Bernie Sanders.

Mark Potok, expert on the radical right and former

Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Red Scare in the Green Mountains is quite compelling and establishes the story, with its now barely known opponents, and supporters, of McCarthyism, as one to read today. For the nasty, life-tearing, reputation-ruining, anti-commie campaign of 70 years ago has many similarities to what were being swept along in with the Trump administration. As Im sure some of Winstons characters thought or said, This cant happen here, it can. And will, if the momentum that the Republicans nationwide are now riding like power-drunk horsemen of the apocalypse is not brought to a halt.

Joe Sherman, author of Fast Lane on a Dirt Road

A fascinating and highly readable history that shines a light on how Vermont wrestled with one of the most important American political episodes of the 20th century.... reveals the remarkable intersections of Vermont and national politics as each influenced the other in the spiraling rise and precipitous fall of McCarthyism.... shatters the illusion of a bucolic state immune to the Red Scare and offers important lessons for our times.

Prof. Woden Teachout, author of Capture the Flag:

A Political History of American Patriotism

Rick Winstons inspiring text takes us back to the dark days of the downward turn of American politics toward repression and persecution, but also of extreme bravery of many of New Englands best, under terrible political pressure. Anyone interested in the effects of the McCarthy Era and its opponents will find an alarming but also moving saga here.

Paul Buhle, co-editor, Encyclopedia of the

American Left, and author of Marxism in the United States

Red Scare
in the Green
Mountains

Red Scare in the Green Mountains

Vermont in the McCarthy Era 19461960

RICK WINSTON

Rootstock Publishing

First Printing: July 25, 2018

Red Scare in The Green Mountains: Vermont in the McCarthy Era 1946-1960

Copyright 2018 by Rick Winston All Rights Reserved.

ISBN-10: 1-57869-007-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-57869-007-7

ISBN-13: 978-1-57869-013-8 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018934830

Published by Rootstock Publishing an imprint of Multicultural Media, Inc.

www.rootstockpublishing.com

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and revival systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

A Sinister Poison: the Red Scare Comes to Bethel originally appeared in Vermont History, and is reprinted with the permission of the Vermont Historical Society; The Vermont Press and Joseph McCarthys Downfall originally appeared in the Walloomsack Review, and is reprinted with the permission of the Bennington Museum.

Email the author at for interviews and readings

Art and Book Design: Mason Singer, Laughing Bear Associates

Author photo by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

Printed in the USA

To my parents,

Julia Kaufman Winston and Leon Winston

Contents

Leon and Julia Winston, circa 1935

Preface

REFLECTIONS OF ARED DIAPER BABY

T he origins of this book date back to a conference held in Montpelier in 1988, Vermont in the McCarthy Era. I was one of three organizers of the event, along with Michael Sherman, then director of the Vermont Historical Society, and the late Richard Hathaway, professor of history at Vermont College. Looking back over the list of panelists, I see that the conference happened just in time; William Hinton, Robert Mitchell, Martha Kennedy, Rabbi Max Wall, and Arnold Schein are among those who have died since then.

As stimulating as the conference proved to be, I never lost the sense that we had only scratched the surface. The intention of this book is to both explore some subjects that were not covered at the conference and also to give a greater shape to our findings.

As for the origins of my own interest in this topic, that has everything to do with my own parents experiences during the Red Scare. My parents, both children of Eastern European immigrants, came of political age during the turbulent Depression years. Like many Jews of their background, they found a place for their idealism and union activity (in their case, the New York City Teachers Union) in the Communist Party. Then, as the political climate changed, they were, as Philip Roth put it, impaled suddenly on their moment in time, caught in the trap set to ruin so many promising careers of that American era.

If there were such a thing as a typical childhood spent in the shadow of the Red Scare, mine was one. There were Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger 78s; a very secular Jewish atmosphere; a left-leaning summer camp; a subscription to the left-wing