MARTIN DIES FEARS INTEGRATED CAST[E]S, SO THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT MUST DIE! HUUAC VERSUS FTP: A STUDY IN BLACK

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MARTIN DIES FEARS INTEGRATED CASTES, SO THE
FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT MUST DIE!HUUAC VERSUS
FTP A STUDY IN BLACK WHITE

• By Clara Palacio

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Congressman Martin Dies of the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAAC) was a white
supremacist and segregationist.
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Hallie Flanagan was a committed Progressive. As
head of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) she
would not tolerate racism.
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Hallie Flanagans project supported a Negro
theatre unit, ensured that Black performers
received equal pay for equal work, and insisted
that audiences for Federal Theatre performances
not be segregated.
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Still from clip of Voodoo Macbeth on Youtube
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• The two clashed when HUAAC investigated the
  Federal Theatre Project in 1938. Dies feared and
  fought anything that challenged the status quo in
  race relations. A fanatical anti-Communist
  crusader, he assumed that Flanagan must be a
  dangerous Communist subversive, like those
  championing the cause of the Scottsboro Boys.

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In 1931, nine Black youths had been accused of
raping two white women while riding a train
passing through Alabama. This trial reopened the
wounds of Civil War sectionalism and became a
cause for Communist agitation.
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The Communist Party assumed the defense of the
real-life Scottsboro boys.
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• Progressive liberals also championed the
  cause in two dramatic productions Stevedore and
  They Shall Not Die.

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Stevedore is a fictionalized story of a Black
dock-worker and union organizer falsely accused
of raping a white woman in New Orleans. In the
play, the incident stirs up a white lynch mob,
but also forges black white solidarity among
the union men.
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They Shall Not Die was loosely based on the
transcripts of the actual Scottsboro Trial in
Alabama. It focused on the racism and
anti-Semitism of the prosecution and jury. It was
not a Federal Theatre Production.
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Stevedore, on the other hand, had been produced
by the Federal Theatre Projects Negro unit in
Seattle, Washington. HUAAC Chairman Martin Dies
cited racially-charged dialogue from this play
and testimony by friendly witnesses complaining
about interracial mixing at cast parties and
events as proof that the FTP had fallen under the
spell of Communists and their sympathizers.
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• Hallie Flanagan was later quoted in the New
  York Times as saying that HUAAC was afraid of
  the Projectbut not for the reasons they
  mentioned on the floor of the Congress. They were
  afraid of the Federal Theatre because it was
  educating the people of its vast new audience to
  know more about government and politics and such
  vital issues of the day as housing, power,
  agriculture and labor. They were afraid, and
  rightly so, of thinking people.