Roughly fifty years after the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)
purged communist-led unions from its membership, the Southwest Labor Studies
Association met in San Francisco from April 29 to May 1, 1999, to reconsider the
history and implications of this event and, more broadly, to attempt to untangle
the connections between and among McCarthyism, anticommunist liberalism, and the
political trajectory of organized labor during the postwar era. Bringing
together labor activists, union members, and academics, panels considered these
themes from a number of perspectives and methodological approaches. Papers
focused on such topics as the dynamics of political repression, the
effectiveness of liberal anticommunist politics for organized labor, and the
role of the state in shaping the labor movement.