"If We Remain Silent" – The Story of L.A. County's Cold War Loyalty Checks
“No person in the classified service…shall be appointed or reduced or removed or in any way favored or discriminated against because of his political or religious opinion or affiliations.” –Los Angeles County Charter, Section 41
In the summer of 1948, a social worker named Orilla Winfield received a letter from Arthur J. Will, the superintendent of charities for Los Angeles County. It read in part:
Dear Mrs. Winfield:
You are hereby notified that effective on the 26th day of July, 1948, at 5pm, you are permanently discharged from your position in the county as a social case worker without further notice. Your discharge is based on the grounds that you have been guilty of insubordination. The specific facts constituting the grounds of insubordination are as follows:
On the 28th day of May, 1948 you were personally presented by me or my duly authorized agent with a form containing an oath and affidavit commonly known as the loyalty oath, and ordered to immediately execute the same in full, signing your name thereto and swearing or affirming to the statements therein made. You then and there refused to obey this order.
Subsequently, on the 23rd day of July, 1948 you were advised that failure to execute paragraphs A, B and C of said oath and affidavit would result in your discharge at 5pm on the 26th day of July, 1948. You have failed and refused to execute paragraphs A, B and C of said oath and affidavit within the time specified….
The letter went on to state that Winfield had ten days to request a hearing on the charges before a civil service commission. She was not the only person to receive this letter. Sixteen other county workers were fired on the same day for their refusal to sign the loyalty oath. The county’s decision to require such on oath came on the heels of President Truman’s Executive Order 9835, also known as the “Loyalty Order,” which he signed on March 22, 1947. The order was inspired by the dawn of the Cold War and the public’s increasingly paranoid fears that communists would infiltrate American institutions and attempt to collaborate with the Soviet Union. A pamphlet entitled “If We Remain Silent,” printed by the United Defense Committee of Public Employees Against Loyalty Checks, explains what happened next:
Treading manfully in the path marked out by the President’s loyalty order, the five members of the Los Angeles County’s governing Board of Supervisors on April 1, 1947, played a grim April Fools jest on the rights guaranteed 20,000 county employees in the Federal Constitution and in the County Charter. Unanimously, the five supervisors directed chief Administrator Wayne Allen and County Counsel Harold Kennedy to draft legislation designed to investigate the political beliefs and affiliations of the 20,000 employees. By August 15, a recommended “loyalty check” was submitted to the supervisors…and by August 26, the “loyalty check” in the form of affidavits to be sworn to by the 20,000 employees was ordered, [the] first local “loyalty check” in the nation.
There was an immediate public outcry against the planned “check,” and the battle raged throughout the winter of 1947-48. The American Civil Liberties Union and local labor unions became involved and attempted to stop the oath through the courts. Despite their protestations that the check violated the US Constitution and the Los Angeles County Charter, the county proceeded with its plans. And so, on May 5, 1948, all 20,000 Los Angeles County employees were presented with the following packet, which included a letter, an oath and an affidavit:
TO: COUNTY EMPLOYEES
FROM: LOYALTY CHECK COMMITTEE. SUBJECT: LOYALTY CHECK
By order of the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County dated August 26, 1947, a committee was created consisting of the Civil Service Commission, and the County Counsel. This Committee has been instructed to determine whether any county employee advocates the overthrow of the constitutional government by force or violence.
This is not a witch hunt. Each step the committee is to take is specifically outlined, and the actions of the committee are so restricted that it may not start secret activities on its own behalf.
There is transmitted an oath and affidavit (including list of organizations) which you are requested to execute before a Deputy County Clerk.
Very truly yours,
Wayne Allen
The loyalty oath that employees were expected to parrot read as follows:
I {blank} do solemnly swear {or affirm} that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office or employment of which I am about to enter or am now engaged SO HELP ME GOD.
Section B of the check required that country workers affirm that they had not, since 1941, been a member of any political party or organization that advocated the overthrow of the government. Section C concerned the use of aliases. But it was Section D that many considered to be blatantly illegal, intrusive, and undemocratic. County workers were required to swear:
That I have never been a member of, or directly or indirectly supported or followed, any of the hereinafter listed organizations, except those that I indicate by an X Mark.
The list included 142 organizations, borrowed from a list compiled by California state Sen. Jack B. Tenney, then chair of the Join Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities in California. The list contained the names of organizations like the American Communist Party. But it also included organizations promoting social justice, racial equality, women’s rights, education reform, and civic betterment. Groups targeted included the League of Women Shoppers, Mooney Defense Council, Civil Rights Congress, California Labor School, Citizens Committee for Better Education, Hollywood Cultural Committee, Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions, Hollywood League for Democratic Action, Hollywood Theatre Alliance, Los Angeles County Political Commission, Los Angeles County Trade Union Commission, Motion Picture Cooperative Buyers Guild, and the Motion Picture Democratic Committee.
In a coordinated action, 104 dissenting county employees agreed to sign the affidavit’s first three sections but refuse to sign Section D, nicknamed the “Tenney section,” therefore sparing their jobs and enabling them to continue to fight the “loyalty purge” within the county government. Sam Barland, international representative of the United Public Workers Union, explained that this was part of the strategy of the newly formed United Defense Committee of Public Employees Against Loyalty Checks, a committee comprised of targeted county workers and their union allies:
The group is signing the first three sections under protest and with the understanding that their action in no way condones the witch-hunt atmosphere in which the seemingly innocuous paragraphs have been foisted upon them. Ordinarily we would be proud to swear our allegiance. It is only in this concrete situation of questioning the right to belong to civic and labor organizations and hold private opinions, with the demand for signing made under the threat and shadow of a witch hunt and purge, that we opposed the entire loyalty procedure.
Seventeen county employees refused to sign the check in “order to crystalize the civil liberties” issue.
Seventeen county employees, including Orilla Winfield, refused to sign the check in its entirety, in “order to crystalize the civil liberties” issue. They were officially fired, and their last day was July 26, 1948. Matilde Moore, one of those fired and the chair of the United Defense Committee, told a reporter, “those remaining gave us sendoff parties, speeches, kissed us goodbye, some cried, took up collections for the defense committee, told us we’d be back and congratulated us for not weakening.” On July 30, the United Defense Committee held their first official meeting, attended by 15 of the 17 fired and over 100 supporters, in the county Hall of Records. Moore explained their position:
We are against all forms of loyalty checks. They represent an attack upon civil liberties and a direct attempt at thought control serving to intimidate people in exercising their constitutional rights of freedom of speech, press and affiliation. We hold that loyalty checks, masking under the guise of patriotism, are in reality a device to divert the people from the real issues at hand, such as inadequate housing, high prices and the growing war danger.
The committee picketed government buildings and distributed letters, pamphlets, and fliers. It challenged the legality of the check in state court, and the 17 fired workers continued to fight. On August 8, 1948, Winfield petitioned the county for a public hearing concerning her dismissal. She listed several key points explaining the illegality of her dismissal, including:
The said Loyalty Order is void on its face and as authoritatively construed, and my discharge is unlawful, for the reason that they deprive me of my freedom of speech and press, belief and conscience and abridge my right to free association, to petition for redress of grievances, contrary to the first and fourteenth amendments of the Constitution of the United States and Article 1, section 8, 9, and 10 of the Constitution of the state of California.
She requested “reinstatement to my former position without loss of seniority or other rights and privileges, and with full compensation for all loss of earnings caused by said discharge.” On September 23, 1948, the county heard ten cases, including Winfield’s, and ruled that their discharge was justified.
During the late ‘40s and into the ‘50s, hundreds of L.A.-based teachers, activists, and entertainment industry professionals would be blacklisted due to their “unsavory” affiliations, both real and imagined.
The United Defense Committee persevered in their legal challenge. Their case, Hirschman vs. Los Angeles County, with the fired county workers acting as plaintiffs, advanced in 1952 to the California Supreme Court, which ruled against the fired workers in a 6-1 vote. In the meantime, and much to the committee’s horror, loyalty checks had only grown in popularity. In 1949, the city of Los Angeles followed suit with its own loyalty purge, firing 23 city employees. During the late ‘40s and into the ‘50s, hundreds of L.A.-based teachers, activists, and entertainment industry professionals would be blacklisted due to their “unsavory” affiliations, both real and imagined. The cycle of intolerance and fear ignited by the Cold War would spiral for many years to come, shattering lives and making thousands in Los Angeles County fearful of promoting or proclaiming their most deeply held beliefs.
Decades later, we can remember this particular episode thanks to the preservation efforts of the Southern California Library, a community library and archive located in South Los Angeles. Founded more than 50 years ago, the library holds extensive collections that document community resistance in Los Angeles and beyond. All the materials quoted above were sourced from the library’s collections – specifically the papers of social workers Orilla Winfield and Ruth Altman Spiegel, who both sacrificed their jobs to stand against loyalty oaths.
