1950s history
A01=Jane S. Smith
academic freedom
anonymous accusers
anticommunist witch hunt
archival research
Author_Jane S. Smith
Blacklist Education
Board of Education investigations
Category=DNBH
Category=JNB
Category=JPVR
Category=NHK
Category=WQH
childhood memory
classroom censorship
Cold War history.
communist subversion
contemporary relevance
educational history
educational impact
educational policy
educational void
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family legacy
family papers
freedom to teach
hidden histories
historical suppression
history of education
ideological control
Jane S. Smith
McCarthy era
municipal files
New York City public schools
paid informers
personal narrative
political purges
political repression
political scapegoating
public education crises
restricted archives
social panic
teacher firings
teacher interrogations
teacher resignations
thought control
unreported hearings
Product details
- ISBN 9781978845053
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jul 2025
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In A Blacklist Education, a mysterious file of family papers triggers a journey through the dark days of political purges in the 1950s. Jane S. Smith tells the story of the anticommunist witch hunt that sent shockwaves through New York City’s public schools as more than a thousand teachers were targeted by Board of Education investigators. Her father was one of them-a fact she learned only long after his death.
Beginning in 1949, amid widespread panic about supposed communist subversion, investigators questioned teachers in their homes, accosted them in their classrooms, and ordered them to report to individual hearings. The interrogations were not published, filmed, open to the public, or reported in the news. By 1956, hundreds of New York City teachers had been fired, often because of uncorroborated reports from paid informers or anonymous accusers.
Most of the targeted teachers resigned or retired without any public process, their names recorded only in municipal files and their futures never known. Their absence became the invisible outline of an educational void, a narrowing of thought that pervaded classrooms for decades. In this highly personal story, family lore and childhood memory lead to restricted archives, forgotten inquisitions, and an eerily contemporary campaign to control who could teach and what was acceptable for students to learn.
Beginning in 1949, amid widespread panic about supposed communist subversion, investigators questioned teachers in their homes, accosted them in their classrooms, and ordered them to report to individual hearings. The interrogations were not published, filmed, open to the public, or reported in the news. By 1956, hundreds of New York City teachers had been fired, often because of uncorroborated reports from paid informers or anonymous accusers.
Most of the targeted teachers resigned or retired without any public process, their names recorded only in municipal files and their futures never known. Their absence became the invisible outline of an educational void, a narrowing of thought that pervaded classrooms for decades. In this highly personal story, family lore and childhood memory lead to restricted archives, forgotten inquisitions, and an eerily contemporary campaign to control who could teach and what was acceptable for students to learn.
JANE S. SMITH's books include The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, winner of the Caroline Bancroft Prize in Western American History, and Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.
