Critics warn Florida’s new teaching standards rehabilitate aspects of the anti-communist Red Scare

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The daughter of a Hollywood screenwriter who was imprisoned and blacklisted during the anti-communist Red Scare has decried Florida’s new social studies teaching standards that other critics have warned rehabilitate shameful aspects of the McCarthy era.

“The new Florida standards you write about are appalling,” Mitzi Trumbo said late Thursday in an email to The Associated Press. “History should never be rewritten to match the politics of the day, as history has valuable lessons to teach.”

The standards approved Thursday for middle- and high-school students by the Florida Board of Education include instruction on the use of “‘McCarthyism’ as an insult” and how using the terms “red-baiter and Red Scare” is identified with “slander against anti-communists.”

The standards soften decades of criticism of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a political movement to root out what he labelled communism in government, the Civil Rights Movement and artistic communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The public inquisitions, ideological loyalty tests and firings of that period are often viewed as a shameful chapter in U.S. history.

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union fueled concerns in the late 1940s about communist Soviet spies infiltrating American life, including the movies and U.S. government. Many of the targets of McCarthy and the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee were banned from jobs and career opportunities for a decade or more.

One of them, Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screenplays for classics including “Roman Holiday” and “Spartacus” used other names or had colleagues take credit for screenplays he wrote in the 1950s because he was on a Hollywood blacklist.

Mitzi Trumbo said she and her two siblings had “some difficult and painful experiences growing up in the 1950s” because of their father’s time in prison and the repercussions of him being on the Hollywood blacklist.

During the 1940s, Trumbo had been the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood. He also was a member of the Communist Party, supporting unions, equal pay and civil rights.

When Trumbo and nine other members of the film industry were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, they refused to answer questions about their communist affiliations and were found in contempt. Trumbo landed in federal prison for 11 months.

While blacklisted, Trumbo wrote screenplays under a pseudonym or fronted by others, including “Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One,” whose scripts won Academy Awards. It wasn’t until 1960 when Trumbo was able to get public credit for the screenplays “Exodus” and “Spartacus.” This period of his life was recounted in the 2015 film, “Trumbo,” starring actor Bryan Cranston.

Other blacklisted Hollywood figures included actress Lee Grant, singer and actress Lena Horne, and actor and director Charlie Chaplin.

Florida’s new teaching benchmarks were prompted by a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024 requiring instruction on “the consequences of communism” to prepare students against indoctrination in higher education.

“It is our responsibility to make sure future generations can thrive and they learn how to think, not what to think,” Layla Collins, a member of the state board of education, said during Thursday’s standards meeting.

The move follows the Republican-controlled Legislature’s designation of Nov. 7 as Victims of Communism Day in Florida’s public schools, to include at least 45 minutes of instruction on figures such as Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro.

Under the new standards, Florida teachers should instruct on efforts by “anti-communist politicians,” such as McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, President Harry Truman and President Richard Nixon.

Teachers also are instructed to identify “propaganda and defamation” used to “delegitimize” anti-communists.

“Instruction includes using ‘McCarthyism’ as an insult and shorthand for all anti-communism,” the new standards said. “Instruction includes slander against anti-communists, such as red-baiter and Red Scare.”

Trumbo, who exchanged emails with the Associated Press from her northern California home, said she didn’t want to be interviewed by telephone or video because she wasn’t comfortable talking about politics, “especially in today’s political climate.”

“I am glad people are speaking out about the actual history of the period and are explaining how careers and lives were destroyed by HUAC and McCarthyism,” she said, “and how dangerous such political repression is to our freedom of speech and to democracy itself.”

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