338 ChaPter^6
Even then, however, some of McCarthy’s followers carried on his mission
of slander and false accusations. HUAC called the famous folk singer Pete
Seeger, whose music was decades later the subject of an album by Bruce
Springsteen, who refused to answer questions or name names in 1955. He
was held in “contempt of congress” in 1957 and sentenced to a year in
prison, but had that verdict overturned on appeal. In 1957, a group of the
Senator’s associates in the entertainment industry had formed AWARE, an
organization dedicated to getting rid of Communists, and they went after
John Henry Faulk, a CBS radio show host in Texas who told folksy stories in
the style of Mark Twain and never mentioned politics on the air. Faulk him-
self, however, was a leftist, was a friend of people like Alan Lomax, a music
collector who recorded people like Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and had
opposed the Korean War. When AWARE went after him, he was furious, and
even angrier when they told him they would leave him alone if he paid them
$10,000. “I’m going to fight them, damn it! They’re a bunch of crooks, a
pack of goddamn hypocrites who play at politics in order to line their pock-
ets,” he claimed, “Fuck ‘em where they breathe.” As for the payoff, Faulk
vowed “I won’t pay them one thin dime.” He had, however, reluctantly
signed a CBS loyalty oath and the company would not defend him, in fact
canceled his show and took him off the payroll. Faulk did get vindicated
some years later when he won a $3.5 million libel suit against AWARE. He
did not see any of the money, but had proven how reckless and dangerous
McCarthyism was.
The Cold War at home involved more than government committees, laws,
and mentally unstable senators, though. Religion, race, and gender also played
a role. While there was a tradition of ministers setting up tents and preaching,
especially in the south, one reverend in particular, Billy Graham, combined his
evangelical ministry with politics and became perhaps the most famous reli-
gious figure in American history. To Graham, the cold war was about more
than politics–it was an epic struggle between “good” Christians and “evil”
atheists. Graham in fact became so popular, and so useful to the anti-commu-
nist cause, that he was invited to the White House and asked to support
American policies by every president from Eisenhower onward. If one was not
a good Christian, it went without saying, it was hard to be a good American.
The government also used charges of “subversion” to go after labor,
African- Americans, and women who sought expanded rights. Unions may