Dorothy Loeb, labor columnist at the Daily Worker
Many employers listened closely to the FBI and anti-red advisers. They fired people who were identified as communists.
After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, in June, 1941, my mother got a job in NYC as a labor columnist on the Daily Worker. This photo was used to make the thumb nail that went at the top of her column. She’s 34 or 35 years old in this photo. Because she was a public communist and journalist, she was the organizer of the communist section in the Newspaper Guild — the union of writers, editors and ad workers. After I was born, in 1945, she took a job as a publicist for the American Social Hygiene Association (the anti-venereal disease non profit). Because she worked under her married name of Dorothy Millstone, it took the FBI and its allies a while to put things together.
This is a report from the files of the Church League of America a rabidly anti-communist group closely associated with the FBI and with the publisher of “Counterattack” and “Red Channels” I don’t know if you’ll be able to read it. It says “July 8, 1947. A highly confidential source of information [this usually means an FBI agent,] advised me ovr the weekend that Dorothy Loeb was formerly a columnist for the Daily Worker and was at present a section organizer for one of the local CP groups was working full time the [as it happens nonexistent] National Health Association [My mother was actually employed by the ASHA, see above] Dorothy L. Milestone [sic]” The letter goes on relate all this a left-wing plot to promote the non-profit Health Insurance Plan over for-profit insurers. It took them a while to get their facts straighter but in 1949 my mother had been fired.
Were your parents or other people you know targeted for firing by blacklisting groups like this one? The files, by the way, of the Church League, make for fascinating reading.
Red Diaper Baby Diary 
Hi Daniel.
Just read all the posts and love them. You know I’ve done some writing on this period. Do you know my article “Is Family Devotion Now Subversive?” in NOT JUNE CLEAVER..? more to say about all this.
Glad you are writing, and getting the photos and letters up.
Regards,
Deborah
I didn’t know. Will look for it (and you) shortly.
Dan:
My dad, Iz Friedman, was a baker and a member of the CP. During the ’50s, he was warned by his local union (Bakery and Confectionary Workers) not to march in the May Day parade. He didn’t, although he (and I) walked on the sidewalk looking for my mom who was marching.
Shortly thereafter, my dad was brought up on trial by his local and excommunicated (would that be the correct word?) from the union. Since he was no longer in the union, he lost his job despite the fact that his boss, a progressive, offered him a foreman’s job, which he refused since he was a “union man.” He was unemployed for a period of time until picked up by a second BCW, a more progressive organization (eventually the two locals merged)
I vote for “expelled” though, being bakers, maybe they meant to deny him the communal wafer. Did you stay close to the Bakers’ union Lew? They seemed so lost and confused by the Stella D’Oro strikers. Did you ever get to march in the May Day parades?
Our old friend Jim Zarichny was hounded out of the mid-west. He was told to go to NY or CA if he wanted to be left alone.
He never talked to me much about his time (I guess but remember not clearly) in Michigan. I was just thinking about you. Some of the files I was looking at concerned Frank Ryan and his brother Jack.
Unbelievable. (not really)
Which part, Cindy, are you astonished by? The files of the Christian League provide a very interesting look at what the very far right, the FBI and their allies. I haven’t gotten to some of the odder things yet. Before I went to college, I dated a girl whose father was an FBI agent. She was worried (rightly as it turned out) that he knew everything she was doing.