The Radical Hannah Weinstein

Hannah Weinstein was a blacklisted writer who left the US in 1950 with her three young daughters and founded Sapphire Films in England, a company that went on to inaugurate the costume drama craze of the fifties before returning to the US in the 1960s and, with Ossie Davis, James Earl Jones, and Rita Moreno, founding Third World Cinema Corporation. Her daughter Paula became a successful movie producer and studio executive in the US.

Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, and Ghosts

I just stumbled across this article, which combines three wonderful items: Langston Hughes, the Chicago Defender, and ghosts. Hughes was a poet and writer who was blacklisted in the 1950s and the subject of much government and anti-communist organization concern because of his powerful voice and the respect he commanded. The Chicago Defender was one of the most important African American newspapers.

Wartime Propaganda

In a recent essay, John Pilger recalls the inspiring opposition of journalists, intellectuals and writers to rising waves of fascism, authoritarianism, repression, and censorship in the US and internationally during the 1930s. Today, in contrast, he writes, what we have are "silences filled with a consensus of propaganda that contaminates almost everything we read, see and hear." 

Lillian Hellman, censored in Florida, knew a thing or two about blacklists

Author Lillian Hellman's plays have been pulled from the shelves of Orange County Public School libraries in Orlando, Florida, victims of House Bill 1069--a bill restricting everything from pronoun use to sex education and other issues deemed offensive by Florida conservatives.

Why is queer media history always about men?

The New Yorker just reviewed Paramount+'s new streaming series, Fellow Travelers. I'm so glad to see more media about the blacklist era, especially stories that explore the sordidness of anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn (who were front men for a dense network of gossips and homophobes).