1953

January–March

 * January 30, 1953

McCARTHY'S LEGIONS

The "police action" in Korea isn't going so well, but back on the home front, eternal vigilance protects us from the peril of communism.

All week, a special legislative committee has been hearing about subversive influences in Tennessee schools. Sims Crownover, representing an American Legion post, has testified that a 17-year-old history textbook used in Nashville is riddled with "pacifistic tendencies" and "plays right into the hands of the communists."

Legionnaire Bill Liddon has gone further, revealing that he knows of "a man teaching in Nashville who has been run out of the California school system for un-American activities."

Mary French Caldwell of the Tennessee Federation of Women's Clubs has offered a list of other questionable textbooks. "We are prepared to face accusations of witch-hunting, Red-baiting, textbook-burning and strangling academic freedom," Mrs. Caldwell announces.

Just as the hysteria is reaching a crescendo, however, today's Tennessean calms it. An investigative report finds that the local groups have been manipulated by a New York pamphleteer whose organization was labeled "fascist" by the Justice Department. The committee clears the history text. But the Legion's Crownover still has a beef about the book: "It left out any reference to the finer points of war. The communists want us to think war is the worst thing we can have."

--by Tom Wood

Sources: Nashville Banner, Nashville Tennessean, 1/27-2/1/53

(Originally published in Nashville Scene, 1/28/93)