442 ChApTEr 19 | Containment and ConfliCt | period eight 19 45 –198 0ApplyINg Ap® historical Thinking Skills
sKill review Contextualization and Interpretation
Read the following excerpt from Martin Halpern’s “‘I’m Fighting for Freedom’: Coleman
Young, HUAC, and the Detroit African American Community.” Determine the following with
assistance from your textbook and classroom notes as necessary:- What is Halpern’s thesis? Hint: Examine the ways in which Halpern develops both sides
of the argument, and determine the extent to which policy makers succumbed to an
either/or approach to a solution. - To what extent does Halpern’s thesis contradict American policy makers’ justifications
for Cold War domestic policy? - If you were going to incorporate a piece of evidence from this chapter to support
Halpern’s thesis, what document or documents might you choose? Justify your choice. - To what extent does this synthesis of evidence show that HUAC’s stance was over-
simplified? Hint: As you determine Halpern’s thesis, consider how HUAC synthesizes
various aspects of “left-wing” phenomena:
•
African American advocacy•
Organized labor•
Unions in support of global peaceAlthough the FBI records released under the Freedom of Information Act do not
disclose the identities of its informants, it is likely that the informant referred to by
Hoover was Bereneice Baldwin, an African American woman whose story identify-
ing twenty-eight Detroiters as Communists before the Subversive Activities Control
Board in Washington produced banner headlines in the motor city just ten days
prior to Hoover’s wire. A plan to open the Detroit hearings with Baldwin’s testimony
was dropped, however, because she was being cross-examined in Washington.^1
The idea of leading off with an African American informer was probably no accident
since committee investigators knew that its list of witnesses likely to be “unfriendly”
included a disproportionate number of prominent African American Detroiters.
Moreover, the committee’s most visible public opposition came from the Civil Rights
Congress, within which African Americans played a conspicuous role. Indeed, African
Americans were often at center stage during the Detroit hearings.
Although the committee’s general goal was to expose Communists in defense
industries, its main Detroit target was Local 600 of the United Auto Workers, which
represented sixty thousand workers at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge
complex and was the largest local union in the world. The vast Rouge complex
included sixteen buildings each of which had its own full time union officials. The
committee’s second target was a group of African American leaders, Communist and
non-Communist, who rejected the cold war consensus but retained a good deal of
influence within Detroit’s African American community. HUAC’s purpose in holding
local hearings was not to gather information relevant to national security legislation
but rather to arouse public animosity to Communists and their allies and thereby
undermine the ability of leftist individuals and organizations to function politically.
Committee member Charles E. Potter (R-Michigan) told the Detroit News that the
FBI knew the facts “but this will be the public’s first knowledge of what is going on.”^2TopIC I | the origins of the Cold War 44320_STA_2012_ch19_427-446.indd 442 16/04/15 4:37 PM