The Other Blacklist

The Other Blacklist
Author: Mary Washington
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231152701

Revealing the formative influence of 1950s leftist radicalism on African American literature and culture.

The Other Blacklist

The Other Blacklist
Author: Mary Helen Washington
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231526474

Mary Helen Washington recovers the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American culture, few include the activities of radical writers and artists from the Black Popular Front. Washington's work incorporates these black intellectuals back into our understanding of mid-twentieth-century African American literature and art and expands our understanding of the creative ferment energizing all of America during this period. Mary Helen Washington reads four representative writers—Lloyd Brown, Frank London Brown, Alice Childress, and Gwendolyn Brooks—and surveys the work of the visual artist Charles White. She traces resonances of leftist ideas and activism in their artistic achievements and follows their balanced critique of the mainstream liberal and conservative political and literary spheres. Her study recounts the targeting of African American as well as white writers during the McCarthy era, reconstructs the events of the 1959 Black Writers' Conference in New York, and argues for the ongoing influence of the Black Popular Front decades after it folded. Defining the contours of a distinctly black modernism and its far-ranging radicalization of American politics and culture, Washington fundamentally reorients scholarship on African American and Cold War literature and life.

Blacklisted!

Blacklisted!
Author: Larry Dane Brimner
Publisher: Boyds Mills Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2018-10-09
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1684371449

A Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book NEW FROM 2018 SIBERT MEDALIST LARRY DANE BRIMNER! Here is the story of 19 men from the film industry who were investigated for suspected communist ties during the Cold War, and the 10--known as the Hollywood Ten--who were blacklisted for standing up for their First Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate. World War II is over, but tensions between the communist Soviet Union and the US are at an all-time high. In America, communist threats are seen everywhere and a committee is formed in the nation's capital to investigate those threats. Larry Dane Brimner follows the story of 19 men--all from the film industry--who are summoned to appear before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities. All 19 believe that the committee's investigations into their political views and personal associations are a violation of their First Amendment rights. When the first 10 of these men refuse to give the committee the simple answers it wants, they are cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted.

Blacklist

Blacklist
Author: Sara Paretsky
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2004-08-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101550597

V. I. Warshawski explores secrets and betrayals that stretch across four generations in this New York Times bestselling novel from one of the most compelling writers in American crime fiction... “A thoughtful, high-tension mystery.”—The Washington Post Book World “A genuinely exciting and disturbing thriller.”—Chicago Tribune As a favor to her most important client, V. I. agrees to check up on an empty mansion. But instead of a mysterious intruder she discovers a dead man in the ornamental pond—a reporter for an African-American publication whom the suburban cops are quick to dismiss as a suicide. When the man’s shattered family hires V. I. to investigate, she is sucked into a Gothic tale of sex, money, and power, leading her back to McCarthy-era blacklists and forward to some of the darker aspects of the Patriot Act. As V. I. finds herself penned in to a smaller and smaller space by an array of people trying to silence her, and before she can untangled the sordid truth, two more people will die—and V.I.’s own life will hang in the balance.

The Broadcast 41

The Broadcast 41
Author: Carol A Stabile
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1906897867

How forty-one women—including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne—were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s “Red Scare.” At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. The ostensible reason: so-called Communist influence. But in truth these women—among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee—were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to the traditional portrayal of the American family on the airwaves. This book from Goldsmiths Press describes what American radio and television lost when these women were blacklisted, documenting their aspirations and achievements. Through original archival research and access to FBI blacklist documents, The Broadcast 41 details the blacklisted women's attempts in the 1930s and 1940s to depict America as diverse, complicated, and inclusive. The book tells a story about what happens when non-male, non-white perspectives are excluded from media industries, and it imagines what the new medium of television might have looked like had dissenting viewpoints not been eliminated at such a formative moment. The all-white, male-dominated Leave it to Beaver America about which conservative politicians wax nostalgic existed largely because of the forcible silencing of these forty-one women and others like them. For anyone concerned with the ways in which our cultural narrative is constructed, this book offers an urgent reminder of the myths we perpetuate when a select few dominate the airwaves.

High Noon

High Noon
Author: Glenn Frankel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2017-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 162040950X

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Searchers, the revelatory story behind the classic movie High Noon and the toxic political climate in which it was created. It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just thirty-two days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favorite film, celebrating moral fortitude. Yet what has been often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. (His co-authored screenplay for another classic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, went uncredited in 1957.) Examined in light of Foreman's testimony, High Noon's emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance. In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel tells the story of the making of a great American Western, exploring how Carl Foreman's concept of High Noon evolved from idea to first draft to final script, taking on allegorical weight. Both the classic film and its turbulent political times emerge newly illuminated.

Show Trial

Show Trial
Author: Thomas Doherty
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231547463

In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. Hundreds of artists were shown the door—or had it shut in their faces. In Show Trial, Thomas Doherty takes us behind the scenes at the first full-on media-political spectacle of the postwar era. He details the theatrical elements of a proceeding that bridged the realms of entertainment and politics, a courtroom drama starring glamorous actors, colorful moguls, on-the-make congressmen, high-priced lawyers, single-minded investigators, and recalcitrant screenwriters, all recorded by newsreel cameras and broadcast over radio. Doherty tells the story of the Hollywood Ten and the other witnesses, friendly and unfriendly, who testified, and chronicles the implementation of the postwar blacklist. Show Trial is a rich, character-driven inquiry into how the HUAC hearings ignited the anti-Communist crackdown in Hollywood, providing a gripping cultural history of one of the most transformative events of the postwar era.

A Shadow of Red

A Shadow of Red
Author: David Everitt
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN:

Tracing the mayhem caused by a handful of anti-Communist watchdogs who in 1950 created the blacklist in radio and TV, David Everitt makes clear that the conflict over free speech was not a simplistic morality tale of persecutors and the persecuted, as routinely portrayed. The blacklisters, though excessive and destructive, were not deluded hunters of an imaginary menace. A Shadow of Red is a cautionary tale about civil liberties in a time of emergency, and a vivid example of the polarized political battle over who controls the media, a battle that continues to this day.

Blacklist

Blacklist
Author: Alyson Noel
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062324578

Fans of Pretty Little Liars will crave the mystery and suspense in the second book of #1 New York Times bestselling author Alyson Noël’s Beautiful Idols series, where celebrity worship is a dangerous game. Wannabe reporter LAYLA, aspiring actress ASTER, and fledgling musician TOMMY joined the Unrivaled nightclub competition for the same reason—they knew winning it would change their lives. They just never imagined that somewhere along the way they’d become entangled in the disappearance of mega starlet MADISON BROOKS. Now each of them is smack in the center of a media frenzy that threatens to take all of them down. Banding together to clear their names, the fierce adversaries become temporary allies and vow to dig up the truth. But when Layla, Aster, and Tommy team up with an unsuspecting insider, they will find that some secrets are best kept in the grave.