It was influential in the creation of state-level legislative investigations into communist or un-American activities.
Curated/Reviewed by Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
Brewminate
Late in 1950, at least some local American Legion organizations began to support Senator Joe McCarthy, sponsoring his appearance at an “Americanism” rally in Houston. During his speech, the senator falsely claimed there were 205 Communists in the State Department.[1] The Legion also took a McCarthyist stance on film, threatening to boycott any theater that screened director Edward Dmytryk’s Salt to the Devil (also known as Give Us This Day) (1949) because of Dmytryk’s status on the blacklist.[2]
At the Legion’s 1951 convention, it formally endorsed its “Back to God” movement.[3] When launching the program in 1953 with a national television broadcast that included speeches by President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon, the Legion’s National Commander Lewis K. Gough said it promoted “regular church attendance, daily family prayer, and the religious training of children.”[4]
The Legion’s Americanism activities continued through to the 1950s. It promoted the passage of state bills requiring loyalty oaths of school teachers, and supported the activities of anti-Communist newspaper publishers, including William Randolph Hearst, in identifying Communist sympathizers in academic institutions.[5] It was also influential in the creation of state-level legislative investigations into communist or un-American activities,[6] and staged a mock Communist takeover of Mosinee, Wisconsin that garnered national headlines.[7] Its programs were rejuvenated by increased membership after World War II, and in its 1950 convention called for members of the American Communist Party to be tried for treason. Along with the VFW, it maintained files on supposed Communist sympathizers, and it shared the fruits of its research with government investigators.[8] Local posts picketed films they perceived as anti-American, and the national organization was formally involved in Hollywood’s efforts to clear films of such influence.[9] The list of names and organizations the Legion provided to movie studios formed the basis for the Hollywood blacklist, and supported the work of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its predecessors before and during the Cold War. It was unsuccessful in applying pressure to the movie studios when the blacklist began to crumble in the late 1950s.[10]
The Legion’s political activities were opposed from an early date by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which characterized them as a danger to political and civil rights. In a report issued in 1921, the ACLU documented 50 instances of what it described as illegal acts of violence by Legionnaires.[11] In 1927, the ACLU reported that the Legion “had replaced the [Ku Klux] Klan as the most active agent of intolerance and repression in the country.[11] The Legion, for its part, branded the ACLU as an un-American organization at every convention it held between 1920 and 1962.[12] In 1952, the Legion asked for a congressional investigation into the ACLU to determine if it was a communist or communist front organization.[13]
Veterans of the Korean War were approved for membership in The Legion in 1950, and The American Legion Child Welfare Foundation was formed in 1954.
Although the Legion paid very close attention to the threat of domestic communism, it paid little attention to foreign affairs before 1945. It ignored the League of Nations. It was hostile to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 that rolled back the naval arms race in the 1920s. Pacifism was popular in the 1920s, and Legion locals ridiculed it and sometimes booed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom During World war II it accepted the wartime alliance with Stalin against Nazi Germany. As the Cold War emerged in 1946–47, the Legion paid increasing attention to an anti-Soviet foreign policy.[14] Its Counter-Subversive Activities Committee in 1946 began publishing the American Legion Firing Line, a newsletter for members which provides information on communist, fascist, and other extremist groups to its subscribers. It warned members against far-right groups such as the John Birch Society and anti-Semitic groups By the late 1950s the newsletter became much more interested in foreign affairs.[15] The Legion’s policy resolutions endorsed large-scale defense spending and the deployment of powerful new weapon systems from the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s to Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s. Harry Truman was the first Legionnaire to occupy the White House, but he came under Legion attack for waging a limited war in Korea and not following the advice of General Douglas MacArthur in attacking China. By 1961 the Legion outright rejected the policy of containment, and called for the liberation of the captive peoples in Eastern Europe. Legion members typically hailed Barry Goldwater as their hero, But like Goldwater they rejected the extremism of the John Birch Society. The Legion supported increased intervention in Vietnam As well as anti-Communist forces in Central America and Afghanistan. The Legion never saw much benefit in the United Nations, and like other conservatives worried about a loss of American sovereignty to international bodies. The collapse of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe and in Russia itself saw the Legion looking to new venues for militaristic action. Thus, it praised President George H.W. Bush is intervention in Kuwait against Iraq in 1990. After 9-11, it vigorously endorsed President George W. Bush’s strategy of a global war on terror, and it supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003. [16]
On May 30, 1969, the Cabin John Bridge, which carried the Capital Beltway (I-495) across the Potomac River northwest of Washington, was officially renamed to the “American Legion Memorial Bridge” in a ceremony led by Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the U.S. Selective Service System.[91]Main article: 1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires’ disease outbreak
In 1976, an outbreak of bacterial pneumonia occurred in a convention of the Legion at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. This pneumonia killed 34 people at the convention and later became known as Legionnaires’ disease (Legionellosis). The bacterium that causes the illness was later named Legionella.
In 1988, after over 44 years of opposing U.S. Merchant seamen from receiving benefits under the G.I. Bill, they allowed Merchant seamen to join The American Legion.[17][18] This followed Merchant seamen being granted limited veterans status by the United States Secretary of the Air Force on January 19, 1988.[19]
After a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Texas v. Johnson), The American Legion launched and funded an unsuccessful campaign to win a constitutional amendment against harming the flag of the United States. The Legion formed the Citizens’ Flag Honor Guard and it later became the Citizens Flag Alliance.[20]
Endnotes
- Carelton, Don (2014). Red Scare: Right-Wing Hysteria, Fifties Fanaticism and their Legacy in Texas. University of Texas Press. p. 3057?.
- Harper, Sue; Porter, Vincent (2003). British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference. Oxford University Press. p. 15.
- Sydney E. Ahlstrom, David D. Hall (2004). A Religious History of the American People. Yale University Press. Gastón Espinosa, ed., Religion and the American Presidency: George Washington to George W. Bush (NY: Columbia University Press, 2009) pp. 278–79
- “‘Back to God’ Drive Enlists President”. The New York Times. February 2, 1953. Retrieved February 1, 2011.
- Heale 1990, p. 111
- Ceplair, p. 120
- Ceplair, p. 121
- Heale 1990, p. 173
- Heale 1990, p. 187
- Ceplair, pp. 28, 33, 38, 121, 123, 198–200
- Ceplair, p. 38
- Ceplair, p. 241
- William A. Donohue, The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1985), p. 182
- Morten Bach, “None so consistently right: The American Legion’s Cold War, 1945–1950,” (PhD dissertation, Ohio University, 2007) Excerpt
- Ronald Lora and William Henry Longton, The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America (1999) pp 479–88.
- Timothy J Lynch, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History (2013) 1: 38–40.
- “Cabin John Bridge Given a New Name”, The Washington Post, Times Herald (Washington, DC): City Life Section, May 31, 1969
- The Boston Globe (December 9, 1987). “American Legion Still Opposes Veteran Status For Merchant Seamen”. The Journal of Commerce. Retrieved May 7, 2016.
- Brian Herbert, The Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine (New York: Forge, 2005), p. 201
- Christine Scott; Douglas Reid Weimer, Veterans Benefits: Merchant Seamen (Washington, DC, Congressional Research Service, May 8, 2007), p. 1
- “Citizens Flag Alliance”. sourcewatch.org. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
Originally published by Wikipedia, 08.12.2019, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.