A friend of mine and I were having a discussion about the President. During the discussion I mentioned that the President reminded me of Joe McCarthy. That’s him on the left. Joe McCarthy was a junior senator from Wisconsin. In the 1950’s during the heyday of the Cold War, he began what is known as the McCarthy hearings. McCarthy was adamant that the US government had been infiltrated with Communist spies and sympathizers. As he defamed and ruined the careers hundreds of Americans with his often baseless accusations, members of the Senate stood by silently, afraid that the next accusation would be leveled at one of them. That’s my nexus, anyway finally in 1954 CBS produced a show called “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy,” by Edward R. Murrow. It would prove to be the beginning of his downfall. Shortly after the broadcast, McCarthy turned his attention to the Army and began investigating them for communist subversion. Needless to say, they blew him out the water. Have you ever heard of the saying, “Have you no sense of decency?” It came to the forefront of the American lexicon during the hearings when it was asked of McCarthy by Army lawyer Joseph Welch, whom McCarthy had accused of being a communist during the hearing. See what I mean.. Anyway, after the hearing the senator’s popularity took a turn for the worst and after censure by the Senate, his political career came to an end. McCarthy died at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, which was formerly called the Bethesda Naval Hospital, in 1957. His official cause of death was acute hepatitis, although some people attribute his death to alcoholism. He was 48 year old.
Like I said, as the Senate let the infamous investigations go on for several years unchecked, one of the victims caught up in his web of deceit was a woman called Annie Lee Moss. Moss had worked her way up through the government, first as a cafeteria worker, then a clerk in the General Accounting Office and finally got a civil service job with the Army Signal Corps. She came to Washington DC in the early 1940’s and within 10 years was making $3000 a year. That’s about $2,1000 a year in today’s money. That’s was a very good position for a black woman in those days. The average black family made $1869.00 in 1950 which equates to around $11,000 in today’s money. Now, the average white family was making around the same thing as Moss and you know that wasn’t going to stand. No siree Bob. In 1947, a couple years after Harry Truman gave the go ahead to drop the first atomic weapon on Japan, he instituted what was called the “Loyalty Review Program.” The program was designed to root out communist influence in the federal government. It investigated over 3 million government employees and just over 300 were dismissed as security risks. Moss had previously been investigated and had passed their checks. However after being promoted to the army’s communications office, she was reinvestigated. This time they suspended her and recommended her dismissal. She appealed the decision and in January of 1951 she was reinstated by the Army Board.
Well, for the next 3 years Annie with her black self, set in that office with them people doing her job and minding her business. But the hate was real. Even after all those years, there were people in that office who would not accept that a black person was their equal. Now, I can’t prove it and history doesn’t say it, but I would bet a “hunert ta one,” that somebody dropped a dime to the McCarthy Committee. So I have not found an instance where McCarthy expounded on his view of African Americans, however, if you believe that McDonald’s sales hamburgers, than you and I can agree that there was rampant racism in the halls of Congress in the 1950’s and the fact that Congress didn’t bat an eye when blacks were told to return home and acquiesce to the American racial order after WWII… well that makes me want to say Dixie. Okay let’s get back o Annie. Now you may find this strange, but somebody said there was communist infiltration at the Army Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey… and where do you Annie worked?
Moss and her attorney, George E.C. Hayes, appeared before McCarthy’s committee on March 11, 1954, at a session open to the public. Hayes was a Howard University law graduate and had worked with Thurgood Marshall handling a companion case in Brown v Board Of Education. McCarthy had made headlines with the case, claiming that Moss was “handling the encoding and decoding of confidential and top-secret messages”. Of course it was not true and refuted by the Army which said Moss handled only unreadable, encrypted messages, and had no access to the Pentagon code room. Now remember earlier we talked about about racism in the Congress and how through conjecture I proposed someone had set her up? Okay… a racist setup is when someone subpoenas you to come in front of their congressional committee to answer questions about your patriotism and then leaves after introducing you. Yes, McCarthy left the proceeding. I believe because he thought it was beneath his station to talk to Black Americans and he had fulfilled his part in the setup. He handed over questioning to his chief counsel Roy Cohn. If this name sound familiar, its because he was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the 1970’s. After being disbarred by the New York Supreme Court for unethical conduct, Cohen died a few weeks later from Acquired Immune Deficiency (AIDS) on August 2, 1986.
Moss had been implicated in the “Red Scare” by Mary Stalcup Markward, who, working as an informant for the FBI, had joined the Communist Party from 1943 to 1949. Markward held such positions as membership director and treasurer for the party. She reported regularly to the FBI, gave them copies of party documents, membership lists, and detailed accounts of meetings and activities. On one of the membership list Markward had turn over to the FBI was Annie Moss’s name. Now back in the day many blacks were members of unions. A lot of unions had casual affiliations with members of the party communist. Many black were also drawn to the communist ideology of social and economic equality. The unions shared their membership rolls with the communist and the communist recruited and sent publications to the members on the unions rolls. During the hearings when Moss was questioned about Karl Marx, she said she never heard of him. Support for Moss was growing and peaked when John Crosby wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, “The American People fought a revolution to defend, among other things, the right of Annie Lee Moss to earn a living, and Senator McCarthy now decided she has no such right.” Even in McCarthy home state of Wisconsin, it was reported that “Wisconsin folks saw her as a nice old colored lady who wasn’t hurting anyone and they didn’t like their senator picking on her”.
Well after reading this sofar, you might think that things went well for Annie Moss, but that saying that no good deed goes unpunished.. well lets just say they didn’t say that for nothing. Although Annie’s casual acquaintance and interaction with the communist party was minimal at best, she was still acquainted with them. During the investigation Moss had been suspended. The investigation and hearing lasted about a year having begun in March 1954. Although Annie was not fired, in January 1955 she was reinstated, but not as a Communications Clerk with the US Army Signal Corps. Instead she was rehired to a non sensitive position in the army’s finance and accounts office, where she started and where she remained until her retirement in 1975. She died in 1996, aged 90.
References:
- Wikipedia
- History.com
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