As the saying goes, past is indeed prologue — and that can be either daunting or inspiring.
That was a subtext this week when professor and historian Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall presented her latest research at the Carlsbad City Library on Monday morning. Her work has turned up obscure and nearly-forgotten stories around the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, part of a notorious government effort to investigate Hollywood writers and actors for “disloyalty” in the 1950s.
Sepinwall says the research shows that HUAC seemed less concerned about communism than it was with Hollywood actors and writers — many, if not most of whom were Jewish — who used their prominence and status to openly discuss American bigotry and inequality.
“Anti-Black racism and antisemitism is what was seen as ‘subversive’ rather than any actual communist ideology,” said Sepinwall, using three movies that came out in the latter half of the 1940s to illustrate her point. Before the United States entered World War II, prominent American voices dismissed the mass incarceration and slaughter of Jewish people (and many others) as a minor “Jew-Nazi altercation.”
By 1947, classic films “Crossfire,” “Gentleman’s Agreement,” and “Body and Soul” came out, each examining the issue of American anti-Blackness and antisemitism through different themes and perspectives. The directors of each, Edward Dmytryk, Elia Kazan, and Robert Rossen, were each brought before HUAC committees.
Dmytryk became known as one of the Hollywood Ten — blacklisted film industry professionals who served prison time for refusing to offer up information — while Kazan distinguished himself as a cooperative “friendly witness” who named names, which dogged his reputation in Hollywood until his death in 1999.
Body and Soul’s director Robert Rossen was also harassed by the federal government, refusing to name names before the HUAC committee.
But it was the actors who got some of the worst of the harassment. “Body and Soul’s” John Garfield, a working-class child of Ukrainian Jews whose star was in the ascendant in the 1940s, refused to name names in his testimony and was blacklisted as a result. He was called to testify in 1951 and was dead of a heart attack within 18 months at just 39 years old.
Three other actor friends of his had recently died, including Canada Lee, the civil rights activist and actor who played opposite Garfield in “Body and Soul,” who had suffered a massive heart attack just days before Garfield’s.
The parallels with the Red Scare and now, when “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has become a taboo phrase and antisemitism and racism run rampant over every aspect of American culture, are difficult to miss.
But that is also an opportunity to take a clear-eyed look at what the United States has been and what it could be in the future, Sepinwall said. “First of all, it’s important to remember that DEI is not a recent invention,” she said. “And there were times in the 1940s when DEI involved white Christians speaking up against prejudice against Jews….”
“History reminds us that when we talk about American ideals, we should not automatically assume that these are not anti-racist ones,” she added. “When people say about some xenophobic initiative, ‘This is not America,’ we should recognize that this is also America.”
The lesson inherent in history is that humanity is not doomed to repeat its mistakes — if humanity can learn from them.
“This is something deeply rooted in Jewish tradition,” Sepinwall said. “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
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