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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
J. EDGAR'S FEAR OF A "BLACK PROPHET" (CIVIL RIGHTS--AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY.) ROBESON, PAUL & W.E.B. DU BOIS Typed Letter Signed, asking for signatures on a petition to President Truman protesting the banning of the Communist Party,signed by both paul robeson, and w. e. b. du bois, as well as roscoe dungee. Together with the two-page typed and mimeographed petition. Single typed page, plus two more pages, written on rectos only. New York City, March 22, 1947
we the undersigned negroes. . . In 1947, at the outset of the Cold War, there began a wave of paranoia regarding a 'sixth column' of Communists ostensibly hidden within all aspects of American Life. This atmosphere was to give birth to the era of Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC hearings. Prior to this, Truman's Labor Secretary Schwellenbach had proposed the suppression of the American Communist Party, a blatant attack on the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech. Both Du Bois and Robeson had been targets of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, who years before his obsession with Martin Luther King Jr. had feared a 'black prophet' might arise out of the black community--and Robeson was his most likely candidate.
