Snoops & Secrets

The 1940-1942 Rapp-Coudert hearings in New York’s state legislature ended as the United States entered World War II with the Soviet Union as an ally. But they provided the model for the anti-communist investigations of the post-war period, and in the long term for investigations being carried out today by different government agencies.

Picking up again later in the 1940s, the investigations went local, carried out by city agencies and educational institutions around New York state – and for that matter in cities across the country. The Board of Education and the Board of Higher Education dismissed some teachers and professors in the late 1940s, while congressional hearings helped drum up public concerns over communism, setting the stage for the Cold War fears that dominated the next decade. Some teachers and college professors were caught up in both the Rapp-Coudert hearings and in those from the late 1940s-early 1960s that are the main focus here at Snoops & Secrets.

Superintendent William Jansen testified in some of these late 1940s congressional hearings. So did Board of Ed member George Timone, who was a key figure in driving the New York investigations. Jansen, some of his aides, and Board investigators handled things at first, with Saul Moskoff taking over as the legal issues became more complex. (For additional background on this time frame, see  https://snoopsandsecrets.com/2012/08/26/teachers-under-investigation/ ).

The investigations followed a perhaps more legally rigorous, and more carefully planned, pattern once Moskoff took over in mid-1951. His files now held by New York’s Municipal Archives provide a clear record of his organizational prowess and his determination to root communists out of the school system. (It would be interesting – and useful – to know if any such detailed records exist in the other cities where these investigations took place.)

These sessions took place in an office suite Moskoff designed (specs are in the Municipal Archives), and according to procedures he laid out. In some cases, different assistant superintendents conducted follow-up questioning of uncooperative teachers in their offices in further efforts to get them to provide information.

Future posts will continue to draw on the teachers’ words and archive records in describing the investigations in more detail.