Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the implications of the Coudert probe for the history of McCarthyism, its relationship to the liberal political tradition, the damage wrought to civil liberties and, its impact on American democracy.

Bad Faith

This chapter recounts the full takeover of the AFT leadership by Counts and his liberal supporters, who by 1940, as Coudert’s inquisition unfolded, were able to push an anti-communist agenda on the entire union on the claim that communist teachers act in bad faith and must be expelled not only from the union, but from the schools as well. Supporting this campaign were liberals and social democratic intellectuals in New York City, who fashioned a justification of the emerging anti-communist crusade around the claim that communists inherently act in bad faith.

The Threshold

This chapter covers the first public hearings of the Rapp-Coudert investigation, held in December 1940 and directed by liberal Paul Windels, protégé of reformer and Fusion activist Judge Samuel Seabury. Though challenged by the teachers unions (Locals 5 and 537 of the American Federation of Teachers) and civil libertarians, Windels unfolded a sophisticated witch-hunt based on the investigative powers of the state legislature. Violating fundamental constitutional rights, including those protected by the First and Fifth Amendments, Windels forced teachers to lie about their political associations in order to avoid fingering friends and colleagues while under oath. Meanwhile, Windels built a case against the Communist party based on his and others misrepresentations—a “countersubversive” myth that teachers used their classrooms to propagandize for the party and to subvert American democracy

CCNY

This chapter returns to the next phase of the investigation, as Windels and Coudert turned their attention to City College of New York (CCNY), where they found a young history teacher willing to testify against fellow members of the Communist Party among his colleagues. With the confirmation of several other CCNY staff, William Martin Canning provided the testimony on the basis on which dozens of CCNY teachers and staff were fired.

Far from the Ivory Tower

This chapter recounts the increasingly bitter contest between communists and liberals in the American Federation of Teachers, as the Popular Front dissolved in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in August 1939. As Local 5’s offshoot, the College Teachers Union, under communist and radical socialist leadership, successfully established tenure rights for New York’s municipal colleges in 1938. The New York locals were challenged in the AFT by social democrats like George Counts, whose anti-communist campaign won the presidency of the national union, setting the stage for the Rapp-Coudert probe the following year.