The Life and Lies of Paul Crouch: Communist, Opportunist, Cold War Snitch

5. Questioning Communism, 1938–1947

98 • 5 QUESTIONING COMMUNISM, 1938–1947 Still enthralled by the siren song of Communism despite failure, illness, and brief moments of doubt, Crouch left his Carolina home for Alabama in 1937. The next decade would prove as challenging as any period in his life, and his faith was tested like never before. While he remained devoted to the cause for much of that era, the tests became ever more severe and by 1942 finally proved too much. As war clouds brewed, opened up, and eventually exploded on American shores, Crouch dropped the rose-colored glasses and saw his ideology for what it really was. The ideologue would finally escape the chains of the ideology, but freedom would prove as perplexing as anything he faced as a Communist Party member. Crouch arrived in Alabama in part to oversee the establishment of a new magazine entitled the New South. Its purpose was to influence liberals and progressives and, as such, after the first two editions and despite being funded by the national CPUSA, the magazine did not note it was a Communist organ. Among the liberal and progressive issues Crouch covered in the paper was the formation of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW). The group called for shorter hours, worker compensation laws, desegregation, abolition of the poll tax, antilynching legislation, aid to farmers, uniform federal voter registration laws, state level graduated income taxes, and state level Wagner Acts to protect unions from management meddling.1 Crouch did more than cover the SCHW; he was one of six avowed Communists to attend its first organizational meeting held on November 20, 1938, in Birmingham, Alabama. Despite the presence of twelve additional “covert Communists,” as well as Crouch’s future assertions that “behind the scenes a CP steering committee was constantly busy” and that everything the SCHW did “had the approval of the Central QUESTIONING COMMUNISM, 1938–1947 • 99 Committee [of the CPUSA],” the reality was more prosaic.2 Indeed, Southern party leader Rob Hall claimed at the time that Communists played only a minor role in the meeting. As Thomas Krueger, author of the SCHW history writes in And Promises to Keep, “the Communist party . . . took a friendly interest in the Southern Conference, nothing more.”3 Even Crouch, when writing about the organizational meeting for the New South, asserted, Southern progressives are proud of the South, of the splendid role played by our ancestors in the Revolutionary War and the establishment of our Nation. They are proud of the scenic beauty and the great natural resources found in the South. It is because they love the South that they wish to abolish illiteracy, poverty and starvation and disease from our land. There are differences of opinion on details, but there is no reason why a common program cannot be worked out for improving the conditions of the Southern people and making our South a better place in which to live with conditions inferior to no other part of the Nation. He continued, The abolition of poverty, equality of opportunity, and intelligent use of resources and means of production can only be achieved through fundamental changes of the economic system for which the South and the Nation are not yet ready. But considerable improvement is possible now, and a minimum program upon which all progressives can agree will do much to raise the Southern people above the starvation level and to give them such cultural and material advantages as are enjoyed in other sections of the country.4 Crouch perceived that the SCHW would serve the interests of the Southern working class and bring together the various liberal groups who hoped to help that class. He did not view it as a revolutionary organization . This perception would change, and his association with the SCHW would have future consequences, but in 1938 it was only one of several issues keeping Crouch busy. He also stayed busy dealing with internal party squabbles. This time, however, Crouch was not the cause of the squabble but rather the one 100 • THE LIFE AND LIES OF PAUL CROUCH to help quash it. In 1938 he learned that a Georgia Communist member was gossiping about the party, spreading rumors about its activities, and otherwise undermining its efforts. Crouch met with Southern party leader Rob Hall and then traveled to Georgia to meet with state leader “Comrade Taylor” to determine who the gossip was and how to handle...