by Leslie Brody
Their quest would take them away from families and friends for about three weeks. Bob was supportive, but some of the other husbands complained, seeing themselves as “the real sacrificers.”
The women’s gallant company included Eve Frieden, whom Decca dubbed “rollicking, jolly” Evie, a voluptuary in contrast to dour, top-rank politico Billie Wachter, whose piety and asceticism made for a female Sir Galahad. Finally, there was Louise Hopson, whom Decca called the “Youth Comrade” and whose quiet character seemed to mark her as the first likely snack for locals.
The four-woman delegation set out with the expectation that the national campaign, as organized, would at minimum provide them basic information describing the state of the trial and assign them some particular project. Collectively, they had only a rudimentary knowledge of the area, so they would need maps, contacts, and, of course, lodging. But when they reached the campaign’s first gathering point in Saint Louis, they discovered that the four of them “were the whole delegation, the generals and soldiers of this great nationwide call to action.” Decca knew the resources of the CRC were stretched thin across the country, but there were not even leaflets to distribute and no guarantees of protection for anyone.
Decca saw this for the amateur operation it was, but there was something to be said for acting without all the creaky machinery of a big offensive. One could be more flexible and responsive to the situation on the ground, a guerrilla, unless perhaps like Sir Galahad, you had a harder time improvising.
Early on, the fellowship suffered an immediate clash of temperaments. Billie was a local leader and, as such, tried to assert her authority. It seemed she disapproved of gossip, of joking, of incorrect language. Decca thought they might be allowed a little fun; this was a road trip, not a suicide mission. Evie sided with Decca, but “the Youth Comrade said not a word.” In any case, it would have been hard to get a word in edgewise.
The four crusaders rode into hostile terra incognita in the full armor of postwar, Southern ladies: lightweight dresses, hats, gloves, and stockings. None of them knew the city of Jackson. This expedition may have felt to Decca a little like going to Spain without Esmond, but she could rely on the memory of his single-mindedness, watchfulness, and craft in their battle against “Klan doctrine.” As long as they stayed, there was always the threat of real danger, including (as they would later discover) a police department more responsive to the residents’ fear of strangers than the protection of white ladies, no matter how straight their stocking seams.
During the course of eleven days, they would speak to more than 150 people, including ministers, club women, community organizers, and one Nobel Prize winner in literature. They buttonholed teachers at a conference, canvassed door to door, and found somewhat to their surprise that McGee and his accuser’s consensual affair had been common knowledge, not news at all and unlikely to stimulate a popular revolt. Timid voices told the women from California not to shake things up, that in Jackson, they would pacify the monsters in their own way.
Decca was elected the group’s scribe, which meant that before submitting her reports to the People’s Daily World for circulation back home, the group looked them over and offered “collective criticism.” But despite Galahad’s frequent requests for revision, Decca found the discipline of a deadline and word count exciting. She had been for some time sharpening her writing skills on leaflets, press releases, and memos. Her personal letters were wry and understated for the most part, but her memos florid, full of the L-speak (left-wing political rhetoric) she would later satirize to the hilt.
Toward the end of their sojourn and in an effort to claim some material success, Decca and her comrades decided to take their case to the “King of Yoknapatawpha County.” In 1950, William Faulkner was the recent Nobel Prize winner in literature. His position in American intellectual society was nonpareil. After their two-hour chat, during which Faulkner held forth with the women in “murky eloquence,” Decca had quotes galore on sex, violence, and race and even a few sympathetic words about Willie McGee. The next day, she returned just to make sure Faulkner approved his wording. What did he think, this master of solitude and sumptuous language, of Decca’s well-honed press release? He read the newspapers; he’d been in Britain during the war, so he must have known of the Mitfords. He offered her a drink; she sipped while he read casually, pencil in his hand. A comma from a Nobel laureate is worth something, but he wasn’t known for freebies. At their second meeting, Faulkner, either having thought more about it or becoming annoyed by his visitor, said, “McGee and the woman both should be destroyed.” “Oh, don’t let’s put that in,” Decca said, tucking her notebook away. After that encounter, the sisterhood raced home. She wrote to her mother about the entire experience: “We drove a total of 7700 miles, in my new car. It was the most thrilling experience I ever had.”
Back from the front, Decca continued to organize. She helped plan another tour for Rosalee McGee, this time with American-born, internationally regarded cabaret sensation Josephine Baker. About three weeks before McGee’s scheduled execution, she and others organized a motorcade. This uniquely Californian 1950s mobile protest demonstration included a convoy of about a hundred cars with pennants and banners; the convoy drove around Oakland to the areas where supporters of the campaign lived.
At that time, Decca’s friends the journalist Buddy Green and lawyer Dobby Walker (the former Dobby Brin Marasse, now remarried and using her new husband’s name), were in Mississippi. Buddy wanted to call a demonstration of other black supporters all across the South to march to the governor’s mansion. This visionary project anticipated the march to Selma by fifteen years, but the Communist Party leadership was fearful that Buddy’s plan “would end in a massacre” and withheld their support. (Decca, siding with Buddy, felt herself at odds with the party line.) Early on in the demonstration, something went awry, and Buddy was arrested. Dobby’s delegation was in Jackson at that time to lobby the governor’s clemency board. She and her companions were also arrested, and at their arraignment, they saw Buddy across the segregated courthouse.
Bella Abzug, the future congressional representative from New York, and co-counsel John Coe persuaded the judge to drop charges against the white women if they agreed to leave Jackson by midnight. Dobby and her friends refused to do so unless Buddy and his companions were also released. Once the deal was struck, the women stayed until the Memphis train arrived and Buddy and the others were safely on board. Then Dobby drove back west through Dallas to California. Decca was moved by her friends’ bravery.
On May 8, 1951, Willie McGee was executed. In his last letter to Rosalee, he wrote: “Tell the People the real reason they are going to take my life is to keep the Negro down in the South. They can’t do this if you and the children keep fighting.”
CHAPTER 17
IN 1951, THE Civil Rights Congress was having a bad year. The Smith Act trials (there were several around the country, including one in Los Angeles) had drained its national treasury. The National CRC under its trustees had raised money to post enormous bonds for all the Smith Act defendants, and its trustees were hauled up before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to produce the names of funders and contributors. One of these trustees was the writer Dashiell Hammett, whose refusal to cooperate earned him a five-month jail sentence for contempt at age fifty-seven. Hammett’s prison stint broke his health; he died at the age of sixty-six.
At the end of July, on the day the Los Angeles Smith Act trial defense rested, J. Edgar Hoover released a supersecret intelligence report revealing a Communist Party plot to overtake the government and occupy the country. The Los Angeles press ran the story in massive-font headlines for days. It was, as Dalton Trumbo wrote, “not a good time in which to stand trial for a political belief that had been up-graded to treason.” Back in Oakland, one of Bob’s law partners at the time, Ed Grogan, was at City Hall when he passed two cops perusing the headlines about the revealed secret Communist plot. One cop said t
o the other, “Do you think Treuhaft really wants to overthrow the government by force and violence?” “Well, no,” was the reply, “but I think he’s trying to get somebody else to do it.”
In Oakland, Decca returned to the routine of family life and her job at the CRC in a time when civil rights were being violated in so many places and ways, it was hard to keep track. Her office was short-staffed, its funds earmarked for national defense campaigns. She’d seen deeds of prowess on the front lines in Mississippi, and if she was in the least bit worried about when she would feel that thrill again, she hadn’t long to wait. Her own subpoena was about to be delivered, arriving less than one month after McGee’s execution.
By June 1951, Decca and Bob had heard through the grapevine that the Committee on Un-American Activities—the California state version, otherwise known as the Little HUAC—was coming to San Francisco’s City Hall. This committee had been active from the early 1940s and, under the chairmanship of John B. Tenney, had supervised the publication of “The Fifth Report,” which asserted the Communist infiltration of California’s universities, media, and entertainment industries. Tenney himself, straight from central casting, as historian Kevin Starr describes, was “hard-drinking, paranoid, dyspeptic.” A touring musician through the 1920s, Tenney had later become president of the musicians’ union and earned a night-school law degree. Then he had won a seat in the State Senate. He had begun his political career on the Left and made a radical turn to become “the grand inquisitor of California: an ominous figure in a pinstriped double-breasted suit.” Tenney had a particularly Californian distinction as the composer and lyricist of the popular tune “Mexicali Rose,” for which the mothers of beginning ukulele players worldwide would curse him. By the time Decca’s subpoena arrived, Tenney’s overreaching behavior, particularly his habit of wildly accusing so many popular, respected, and wealthy Californians, had sufficiently embarrassed his fellow senators. They replaced him as head of the committee, but the inquisition proceeded, as it would for another twelve or so years.
Since at least one Treuhaft was going to have to stick around to look after ten-year-old Dinky, seven-year-old Nicky, and four-year-old Benjy, Bob went into hiding and managed to dodge the sheriff’s deputies. Decca’s summons required her to appear on September 11 with the membership list, the names of all contributors, and the financial books of the CRC. Decca had no intention of providing any records to anyone. She originally had a plan to try to bluff her way through, to outsmart the committee with witty rejoinders, but her lawyer persuaded her to take the Fifth: I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me. No other strategy worked to keep witnesses out of jail. Decca knew that once you spoke, you conceded your rights and were required to answer to related facts or to risk an accusation of perjury, the consequences of which might range from a contempt citation to a jail term. A recent Supreme Court decision made even taking the Fifth an unreliable defense, since “the privilege could not be invoked to prevent the records of an organization from being subpoenaed.” At any rate, there was nothing the committee didn’t already know about the CRC’s membership list. The FBI had been watching Decca at work, watching their family house, tapping their phone. The committee had duplicate copies of all the records they needed and a list of all the names.
September 11, 1951, was Decca’s thirty-fourth birthday. What better way to celebrate than to appear before the committee in a lovely Aranka hat. The public was encouraged to attend. In San Francisco, the hearing room was sectioned off, with its greater part designated for local conservative groups. The supporters of unfriendly witnesses like Decca typically filled the balcony.
She and Bob had decided that this was an important event for Dinky to attend. “Should I end up behind bars as a consequence of refusing to testify, [Dinky] would at least have witnessed my crime with her own eyes.” Decca didn’t fear her court appearance, but by all reports, she positively dreaded having to go meet her daughter’s grade school principal in order to request her absence. “She was absolutely terrified,” her daughter Dinky would remember. (The one time her children would recall her being more frightened was when she saw fire coming from the propeller of a plane they were on.) To Decca’s great relief, the principal cast proper opprobrium on HUAC for its disgraceful behavior and sent mother and daughter off with her support.
On the day of her testimony, the prosecutor started with, “Have you ever heard of or read the People’s World? Have you been director of the East Bay Civil Rights Congress since May 1950? Do you maintain a bank account for the Civil Rights Congress in the Wells Fargo Bank? Is your husband, Robert Treuhaft, legal counsel for the Civil Rights Congress?”
The marquee question was, of course, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” To this and all the other questions, Decca took the Fifth. Between committee members and witnesses, there was what by then had become a ritual ceremony of polyphonic call and response, leading to an extended state of restlessness. It was banal and boring or, as Decca said, “irksome” to resist making a witty rejoinder. The committee on its podium was all so dull and self-important. After a while, even Decca grew accustomed to the slow and tedious show. When the committee counselor (perhaps wishing to wake things up) asked her, “Are you a member of the Berkeley Tennis Club?” she replied automatically, “I refuse to answer on the ground that my answer might tend to incriminate me.” At first, she hadn’t understood the laughter rippling across the chamber. She had thought he’d asked, “Are you a member of the Berkeley Tenants Club?” which was a renters union—what was so funny about that? But the image of red Decca lobbing balls in a “bastion of posh conservatism” had awoken the audience and angered the committee. “This witness is totally uncooperative!” the chairman shouted. “We won’t have any more of her nonsense! She is dismissed from the stand!”
Her lawyer hurried Decca out of the courtroom, saying, “You got them so rattled they forgot to ask for the CRC records—now get lost, before they come to their senses.”
For weeks after, there remained the possibility of Decca’s recall. One of the letters she wrote to Muv around that time shows what a lot she was juggling: the CRC’s decline, the terrible news about Willie McGee’s execution, another Jerry Newson retrial. She wanted to make all this clear to her mother, because also on the horizon was the very real possibility of a visit by sister Debo. “Do tell her to come,” Decca wrote. “I’ll try to get a few days off.”
The only thing was, Decca wasn’t sure she would still be home. “We haven’t been cited yet for contempt,” she told Muv in a letter, “so maybe they will forget about it, but if they can prove it on you it is 6 months [in jail] for each separate refusal-to-answer, and they must have asked me 50 questions which I wouldn’t answer.”
IN THE CHINESE calendar, 1952 was the Year of the Dragon, and by geopolitical measurements, it was monstrous. Both the Eastern and Western blocs in the cold war conducted themselves like outraged, outsized, vicious lovers, willing to trample anything to get the last word. Paranoid and manic, Stalin would initiate another great purge in 1952. Prisoner numbers in the Soviet Gulag would rise to their historic peak of about 2.5 million. The social cataclysm and psychic terror, the sweeping accusations and petty tattling, the fear of conspiracies and punishments for secret injuries all coming so soon after the war meant, for so many, a peace like a numbing, unstable bog.
In the United States, more people were coming under investigation by HUAC for subversive activities. The majority of citizens in the great state of Wisconsin reelected Joseph McCarthy to the Senate. The hunt for American Communists escalated. Not only were enrolled Communists tracked and investigated, but anyone else who had ever publicly or privately espoused socialism, signed a petition, or attended a left-wing meeting—no matter how long ago—was suspect. Anyone refusing to name the names of others who had attended a meeting or signed a petition risked a prison term on a contempt charge.
The U.S. Department of State
officially withheld passports from anyone associated with the attorney general’s secret list of subversive organizations. Both Decca in her position at the CRC and Bob as a member of the National Lawyers Guild made the list. In June 1951, the Treuhafts were battling on several fronts. Everyone was under surveillance, even the children. Decca wrote to her mother: “Poor Nicholas got arrested the other day for selling tickets door to door for a Jerry Newson Defense benefit.” Decca sailed down to the police station and gave them hell. “The only trouble was Benjamin kept having to go to the loo which rather ruined the delegation.”
The Communist Party USA, fearful of the detention clause in the McCarran Act, did “what it was always accused of doing—set up a clandestine apparatus.” According to its apocalyptic scenario (with the title “Five Minutes to Midnight”), select members would go underground to build a resistance movement. Adam Lapin was one of the editors of the People’s Daily World, and once Al Richmond, its chief editor, was arrested, Lapin assumed the paper’s leadership. In the belief that they had to keep the presses running in the face of intimidation and persecution, Lapin went underground. For the next few years, he would edit the newspaper from secret locations, living under a false name, apart from his family. The severed families of these revolutionaries were less confident of the plan’s strategic value. Eva, Lapin’s wife, might not have believed the country was becoming fascist, but she stood by her husband: “If Adam felt he had to go I had to support him.” She and her children moved back to New York, where family and friends could help them. Those would be hard years.
