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2. “Let the rascal speak”: McCarthyism and Student Political Activity in the Fifties
- University of Wisconsin Press
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43 2 “Let the ras cal speak” McCarthy ism and Stu dent Po lit i cal Ac tiv ity in the Fif ties When Jef fry Ka plow ar rived at the Uni ver sity of Wis con sin in Sep tem ber 1952, he was a fresh man from Brook lyn, one of sev eral hun dred stu dents from New York at the uni ver sity that year. Like many of those stu dents, he also had an inter est in pol i tics; his mother, a seam stress and Com mu nist Party sym pa thizer, was just one of many rel a tives in volved in one way or an other with the Old Left, the con stel la tion of so cial ist, com mu nist, and other rad i cal groups that had been po lit i cally in fluen tial ear lier in the cen tury but had de clined rap idly with the onset of the Cold War. Ka plow him self had been a mem ber of the Brook lyn chap ter of the Labor Youth League (LYL), which had been formed in 1949 as the youth group of the Com mu nist Party; when he ar rived at Wis con sin, he found a chap ter of the same or gan iza tion, by then the only LYL chap ter in the coun try that was rec og nized by a uni ver sity as a le git i mate stu dent group. De spite the risks that went along with mem ber ship in an avow edly Marx ist or gan iza tion in the 1950s, dur ing the height of the anti com mu nist fer vor named after Wisconsin’s own jun ior sen a tor, Joe McCarthy, he quickly joined. Ka plow and his fel lows in the league en joyed the ben e fits of Wisconsin’s rel a tive com mit ment to civil lib er ties, at least in the con text of the McCarthy era, but the op er a tions of an or gan iza tion like the Labor Youth League, of fi cially la beled “sub ver sive” by the fed eral govern ment, were still se verely lim ited. “There was a great deal of talk and a cer tain amount of show in our Mad i son days,” Ka plow re mem bers, but “if Mad i son in the 1950s was qua siu nique in 44 E “Let the rascal speak” being the only uni ver sity com mu nity not to brand us young Reds as pa ri ahs, we were none the less con strained to work quietly.” Often on the de fen sive, mem bers spent a good deal of their time try ing to prove to the rest of the cam pus “that we were not con spi ra tors bent on de stroy ing all that was holy in the American re pub lic.” In prac tice, this often meant that mem bers ap plied much of their en ergy and ideas work ing within more main stream cam pus or gan iza tions. Though con demned by some as an ef fort to in fil trate and take over these groups, Ka plow sug gests that this prac tice was a way for mem bers to work on is sues that they gen u inely be lieved in, like civil rights, peace, or ac a demic free dom.1 There was also a cer tain level of se crecy that went along with mem ber ship in the LYL, some of it al most com ical decades later. Ka plow re calls that league mem bers were as signed to teams, and even among other stu dents he so cial ized with and sus pected of LYL mem ber ship, it was under stood that he should not ask for con fir ma tion. An other LYL mem ber, Saul Lan dau, also re mem bers that mem bers were di vided into groups, or cells, as a re sult of the Com mu nist Party’s fear that a se vere govern ment crack down was right around the cor ner. Lan dau was re cruited into the league in the early fif ties by a house mate, Henry Wor tis, who would leave cop ies of com mu nist news papers and mag a zines in the bath room...