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This section of America, Vol. 2 traces the middle and latter of 1948,
from the establishment of England's national health care system, through
the beginning and end of the band The Weavers, fear of the Iron Lung,
and the 1948 fall Presidential campaign where any American who didn't
know it learned that the popular vote does not appoint a president.
1948
The National Health Service in England!
At last the National Health Service
was implemented in England!
in which every citizen was given free medical care
"from cradle to grave"
–The Labor-led Parliament had voted it in in '46
but it was stalled as the public (and doctors, etc.) debated
its implementation
To his lasting credit in the time-track
Truman proposed one for the USA that year
but the right wing (and the AMA) grrr'd it to death
Apartheid
'48 was the year that the 20% white
was separated from the
80% black
in South Africa
The Weavers!
The Weavers! were founded
by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert
& Fred Hellerman
they made records and toured
while black listings & FBI investigations
twisted their vim
till they disbanded in 1953
because by then there was no place
they could rent to perform
(The Weavers reformed in '55 till '63
–though Seeger left in '58)
A Black Mountain Summer
The summer at Black Mountain college
was organized by Josef Albers
John Cage & Merce Cunningham were asked to come
plus Buckminster Fuller and Willem de Kooning
It was one of those summers
like The Summer of Love
Monet's first waterlilies
or the premiere of Hamlet
you might like to visit in a Time Machine
Its origins were rooted in the
grove of olive trees near Athens
where Plato taught
–the genius of cross-meshing out of doors
mind feeding mind
art art
and creativity creativity
in a tiny college living in a "constant state of crisis"
on the edge of the ever-moving palette knife of '48.
De Kooning had sold nothing in his spring show
Merce had left the Martha Graham company
& had not yet formed his own
Robert Rauschenberg was on hand
for the discipline of Albers.
The faculty was scraping by on rainbow stew
& happy to get room & board
and a beautiful summer
in North Carolina.
Fuller at 52 was best known for his Dymaxion house & Dymaxion car
which had failed to get backing – someone was killed in an accident
& he had not been able to get mass production $ for the house
He was experimenting with sleep patterns
sleeping a half hour every six hours
apparently around the clock
Students worked hard
to erect what was to be Fuller's first geodesic dome
of venetian blind slats
which turned out to be too thin.
Merce taught a class called Technique of Dancing
& choreographed a few student dances
Someone built some Orgone Boxes
John Cage put on the
Amateur Festival of the Music of Erik Satie
whose feature was a production of
Satie's "The Ruse of Medusa" on August 14
translated from the French by M.C. Richards.
& a cast which included Fuller, Elaine & Willem de Kooning, Merce,
Cage, Arthur Penn
Beginning that fall
a bard from DC named Charles Olson
began coming once a month to give lectures
Fear of the Iron Lung
My mother shuddered at "Dog Days"
when she forced us to take afternoon naps
She was afraid of Wildwood Lake
with its nearby septics
Wouldn't let us swim there
Didn't want us watching the powerboat races
out of fear
we'd wake up prone in the hospital
in an iron lung
from polio
HUAC HUACs Again
August
The Republican controlled HUAC began a series of hearings
starring ex-commies Elizabeth Bentley and
Whittaker Chambers
the latter then an employee of Time Magazine
The 47 year old Mr. Chambers
said from '24 to '37 he'd been in the Communist Party
He fingered out Alger Hiss, and Hiss' younger brother Don and
six other former New Dealers
as an underground group org'd in th' '30s by the CP
Hiss had been in the State Dept
& accompanied Roosevelt to the Big Three Yalta conference
as an advisor in '45
He had presided over the founding session of UN
as general secretary
& now in '48 Hiss was president of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.
Hiss demanded a face-to-face confrontation
with his accuser
in front of the HUAC
whereat he categorically denied the Chambers allegations.
The newly elected Congressman Richard Nixon
filched miles of self-serving ink
stirring up com-mania
through leaks & releases.
He worked it as a
journalistic boxing match:
Hiss, president of the leading organization for world peace,
vs.
Chambers, senior editor at Time
but first a word from our sponsor
the National Military-Industrial
Left-Liberal Suppression Society.
The Confrontation took place on August 17, 1948
Hiss said Chambers was a free lance writer who had
identified himself as George Crosley.
Hiss had sublet a pad in '35 to Crosley who'd said he was going to
write about the munitions industry hearings
(Hiss had worked for the famous Nye committee
which put on the hearings)
Chambers repeated the charge that he had worked with Hiss
in a clandestine commie group that had no espionage function
but rather wanted to influence policy by getting commies
into key gov't gigs
Hiss filed a $75k lawsuit for slander in Federal Court in Baltimore
(Who was Chambers? Chambers was hired by Time in '39.
Before that he'd worked as clerk at NY Public Library
and at a bookstore
He was a translator of French and German books.
Published four short stories in '31 in New Masses
and a poem in the Worker in '26
and short tales elsewhere)
and now, as I type this on a winter day in Woodstock, NY
with the release of oodles of documents from
the secret police of Russia
it's possible, even likely, but not yet certain,
that Hiss was in fact
an agent, at least in some of his psyche,
for the Soviets
September 22
The President raised his voice from Independence, Missouri
& bewailed the House Un-American Activities Committee
He said that HUAC was more unAmerican
than those it attacked
(It was around that time that HUAC chair J. Parnell Thomas
was indicted for being a crook
and was soon in prison)
Fall 1948 Campaign
Henry Wallace was running for President
on the Progressive Party ticket
& Truman did what good Democrats have often done
coopted the Left/Liberal
by changing his dance steps
from hokey-pokey right
to hokey-pokey left.
He de-emphasized the Cold War
attached himself to a strong civil rights plank in the Platform
called again for National Health Coverage
price controls to help consumers
protection for small farmers
& repeal of the union-hating Taft-Hartley Act.
At the one-room school I attended in Missouri
there were rock and mudball fights
among the children of
Democrats & Republicans
with the Democratic boys chanting
"Phooey on Dewey!
Phooey on Dewey!"
Public opinion polls said Dewey was going to win
George Gallup's final poll on October 30
gave it to Dewey 49.5 to 44.5 percent
The Wallace Campaign
There was massive red-baiting
of the Henry Wallace-Glen Taylor Progressive Party ticket
by liberal democrats
especially by a group called the
Americans for Democratic Action
Communists were welcomed into the 1948
Henry Wallace coalition–
& Southerners who hated blacks
formed the States' Rights Democrat party aka the Dixiecrats
and ran Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for pres
"Keep America Human with Truman"
was one of Harry's posters
Democrats Sweep
November 2, 1948
Many Americans believed the
popular vote
appoints the president
but election night '48 almost showed
how the "electors"
could have given it to Dewey.
All night Truman surged in the popular count
but trailed in the electoral college
till dawn when
he won the State of Illinois
& measured his victory.
Final tally: 303 electoral votes to Truman
189 to Dewey
Thurmond 30
Wallace zero
Popular count: Truman 24.1mk to Dewey at 21.9 mk
Henry Wallace at 1.15 mk
Strom Thurmond, States-Rights Democrat 1.169mk
& the Democrats won both houses of Congress!
(Wallace won 509,559 votes in NY
and the state went to Dewey)
Labor
In the end America's working people
particularly those in unions
voted for Harry
to stanch the assault on the New Deal
and the crushing of labor
"Labor did it,"
Truman said in Kansas City
the day after the voting
–to be continued–
America, A History in Verse, Volume 2, 1940-1961 has recently
been published by Black Sparrow Press. Volume 1 (1900-1939),
was published in 2000 by Black Sparrow Press.
More America, A History in Verse Vol. 2
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