Carol A. Stabile, “Women and the Broadcast Blacklist,” Communication Currents: A Publication of the National Communication Association (Volume 6 , Issue 5 – October 2011)
“In June 1950, an organization called American Business Consultants published Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, a slender volume that would become known as the bible of the broadcast blacklist. In New York City, then center of broadcast production, the publication of this volume received little attention, overshadowed as it was by the onset of the Korean War less than a week later. The first two casualties of the broadcast blacklist that followed its publication were professional women who were politically active— white actor Jean Muir and African-Caribbean musician Hazel Scott—whose involvement in civil rights was seen as evidence of their communist sympathies. By remembering the lives and work of women who, in the words of blacklisted writer Shirley Graham DuBois, have been ‘wiped out of history’ the purpose of this research is to restore the accounts of a generation of politically active professional women to broadcast history.” To read the entire article
Carol A. Stabile is director of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon and professor, UO School of Journalism and Communication, Department of English, and Department of Women’s Studies. She is currently working on a book about women writers and the blacklist.
