Goldstein speaks on continuing significance of blacklist

The list impacted ideas of loyalty at a federal and state level.

By David Conway

Published Oct. 30, 2009

The School of Public Affairs turned an eye to the past this Thursday as it hosted a lecture discussing an attorney general's blacklist that played a role in U.S. domestic affairs during the red scare in the 1940s and '50s.

The lecture was given by Robert Goldstein, former political science professor at Oakland University and author of the book "American Blacklist: The Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations."

Goldstein called the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organization the most important element of President Harry Truman's institution of a federal loyalty program.

"The real key criteria was the authorization of AGLOSO," Goldstein said. "The real determination for employment was whether people had, as the document stated, membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association with organizations that the attorney general determined was communist, fascist, totalitarian or subversive."

Goldstein said AGLOSO was important in ramping up the intensity of the federal red scare because the list was made public and because there was no process for adding organizations to the list.

"It cast a spell on freedom of thought, freedom of association and freedom of speech," Goldstein said. "The real message was, 'You don't want to get involved with anything that could be viewed as communist in the United States.' "

The persecution of these organizations did not stop at the federal level. State and local governments and private organizations established rules prohibiting their employees from participating in groups on the attorney general's list.

When federal employees were charged with disloyalty, they were entitled to hearings and given charges, Goldstein said. Because the FBI was reluctant to reveal their informants, there was rarely a witness to cross-examine. In a number of cases, employees were fired for associations with a relative or spouse who was involved with a subversive organization.

"Some of these charges were along the lines of, 'Sometime in your life, you murdered a man in Philadelphia. Can you prove you didn't?' " Goldstein said.

Goldstein said the lack of discussion about class in America, the unwillingness to criticize wars in Vietnam and Iraq and the absence of a single-payer health care system could be traced, in part, back to AGLOSO.

"The legacy of this stuff explains the mess we're in about health reform," Goldstein said. "The fear of being accused as being a socialist meant that both Clinton and Obama felt the need to preserve the health insurance industry in the system, leading to solutions that are overly complex and still labeled socialism."

Craig Stevenson, Associated Students of the University Missouri Board of Directors chairman, said the event taught him a lot about the government's actions at that time.

"I enjoyed the discussion," Stevenson said. "I came in not knowing a whole lot about blacklists, so most of this was new information to me."

Barton Wechsler, Truman School of Public Affairs director, said Goldstein approached him about speaking at MU, a request the university was happy to accommodate.

"Professor Goldstein proposed that he make this a stop and it sounded like an interesting subject," Wechsler said.

Goldstein traced his focus on the attorney general's list back to his dissertation as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. He said the topic carried a particularly strong significance with him.

"It's an interesting subject and I could feel some of the overlap from it in the '60s," Goldstein said. "I think, to an extent, you can still feel it today, too."