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³ Hartman, , Education and the Cold War, 5–6. In the past three decades, historians have increasingly challenged the idea that the 1950s were characterized by complete political consensus and social conformity. For further information on this subject, please see Brinkley, Alan, Liberalism and Its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Buhle, Paul and Wagner, Dave, Hide in Plain Sight: The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950–2002 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Isserman, Maurice, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (New York: Basic Books, 1987); May, Lary, ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989); McMillian, John and Buhle, Paul, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003); Roy, William G., Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); van Minnen, Cornelis A. and van der Bent, Jaap, van Elteren, Mel, eds., Beat Culture: The 1950s and Beyond (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1999). These works engage with issues pertaining to American society as a whole. The corpus of literature examining the nuances of political protest in the 1950s, particularly that of the civil rights movement, is too large to list here.Google Scholar

⁴ Mickenberg, , Learning From the Left, 6–7, 11.Google Scholar

⁵ Denning, Michael, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1996), 4, 9, 464.Google Scholar

⁶ Cohen, Ronald D., Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 40. Though Asch ran the company, Distler had the title of president to avoid legal complications from his recent financial disaster.Google Scholar

⁷ Moe Asch Interview with Tony Schwartz, part 2 (undated), CDR-518–1, transcript 1, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; David K. Dunaway Interview with Moses Asch, 8 May 1977, 2, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

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⁹ Goldsmith, Peter, Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), 98–99, 101–102.Google Scholar

¹⁰ “So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh” was a Woody Guthrie composition about the miseries of the Dust Bowl.Google Scholar

¹¹ Landeck, Beatrice, liner notes for Who Built America: American History Through Its Folksongs, Folkways Records and Service Corp. (1949), 1, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

¹² Asch even argued that the relationship between Daniel Boone and the American Indians was symbiotic and based on trust and cooperation that was eventually ruined by settlers taking his land and the French and Spanish offers of weapons to reclaim his property; this, of course, led to the armed conflict with the American Indians who fought back to protect themselves.Google Scholar

¹³ Liner notes for Frontier Ballads, FP5003 (FP 48–5, FP 48–6), Folkways Records and Service Corp. (1954), 2.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Whitfield, Stephen J., The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 10.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Foster, , Red Alert, 1–2; Hartman, Education and the Cold War, 81.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Foster, , Red Alert, 85, 95; Hartman, Education and the Cold War, 104–106.Google Scholar

²⁰ Zoe Burkholder argues that anticommunists were also active in parochial education during the 1950s. She cites compelling evidence that Catholic educators and politicians in Boston and New York City actively subverted lessons promoting tolerance for Jews and African Americans. Many Catholics in New York City engaged in a letter writing campaign against intercultural education in particular, opposing the teaching of racial tolerance on the grounds that it was a form of communist indoctrination. See Burkholder, Zoe, Color in the Classroom: How American Schools Taught Race, 1900–1954 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 153.Google Scholar

²¹ The Patriot Plan notes written and researched by Charles Edward Smith, Narrated by Wallace House with Kenneth Buckridge, produced by Moses Asch (1958), Folkways Records and Service Corp., 1, folder: 5710, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

²² Smith, , The Patriot Plan, 2, 3, 5, 12, folder: 5710, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

²³ Mickenberg, , Learning From the Left, 233–34. Julia Mickenberg argues that education during the Cold War, specifically American history, became viewed as a way to instill “strong national loyalties” among American school children.Google Scholar

²⁴ Burkholder, , Color in the Classroom, 151. Burkholder explains that this attitude extended to interracial mixing, as a common question during loyalty investigations of state employees was if they “entertained individuals of another race at the home.” An answer in the affirmative was enough to condemn the respondent as a subversive. Julia Mickenberg also explains that textbook companies omitted references to race to appease the southern regional market, Learning From the Left, 252.Google Scholar

²⁵ Throughout his career, Asch produced records that emphasized the importance of African-American history and civil rights activism. In 1960, Folkways produced Socialism and the American Negro, a speech that W. E. B. DuBois gave to the Wisconsin Socialist club. The following year Asch released an album consisting of an oral account of DuBois’ autobiography and interview that he conducted with DuBois, appropriately titled: W. E. B. DuBois: A Recorded Autobiography, Interview with Moses Asch. During these years Asch began to document the civil rights struggles as well. In 1960 he released an album of songs that Guy Carawan (music director of Highlander Folk School) compiled from the Sit-In Movement, The Nashville Sit-In Story: Songs and Scenes of Nashville Lunch Counter Desegregation (By the Sit In Participants). In 1961 he recorded an album of songs from the civil rights movement performed by Bill McAdoo as well as an album of recordings that he conducted with the civil rights groups, the Montgomery Gospel Trio and the Nashville Quartet, called We Shall Overcome: Songs of the Freedom Riders and the Sit-Ins. Google Scholar

²⁶ Unprocessed material, folder of conference invitations in Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

²⁷ Goldsmith, Peter, Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), 234.Google Scholar

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²⁹ Letter from Peggy Brogan to Moses Asch, 27 March 1960, unprocessed material in Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³⁰ Du Wors, Richard E. and Weist, William B., “Records in Sociology,” in The Recording as a Teaching Tool: A Bulletin for Parents and Teachers, ed. Berg, Esther L. and Freedman, Florence B. (New York: Folkways Records and Service Corp., 1955), 5; Cartwright, Marguerite, “The Use of Records in Intercultural Education,” in The Recording as a Teaching Tool, 5; Cass, Angelica W. “Using Records of Folk Music in Adult Education,” 5; Brown, Esther, “Ethnic Dance in the Integrated Curriculum: Integration,” 10, Folder: “Folkways Catalogues,” Box: 3, Peter Goldsmith Collection, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³¹ Burkholder, , Color in the Classroom, 153, 169.Google Scholar

³² Mickenberg, , Learning From the Left, 245.Google Scholar

³³ Edward Smith, Charles, The Coming Age of Freedom, Folkways Records Album No. FH 5006 (1959), 1, Center For Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

³⁴ Bonner, David, Revolutionizing Children's Records: The Young People's Records and Children's Record Guild Series, 1946–1977 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 100–103.Google Scholar

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³⁷ Dunbar, Andrew J., America in the Fifties (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 115. Stephen Whitfield does note that by the end of the fifties public opinion had begun to turn against the anticommunist crusading. HUAC largely fell from grace as politicians such as Harry Truman and James Roosevelt criticized it and students protested hearings in 1960 in San Francisco. See Whitfield, Stephen, The Culture of the Cold War, 124. Yet, anticommunist groups still leveled significant political power and the entertainment blacklist continued to operate.Google Scholar

³⁸ Asch, , “Folkways Records and the Ethics of Collecting: Some Personal Reflections,” 6.Google Scholar

³⁹ Mickenberg, , Learning From the Left, 4–5, 15–16, 142.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Shelton, Robert, “Fad to Staple: Disks Reflect ‘Arrival’ of Folk Music as Part of Country's Popular Arts,” New York Times, 28 April 1963, 144.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Anthony Scott, John, “Folklore and Folksong in Education,” New York Folklore Quarterly 17, no. 4 (Winter 1962): 294–95.Google Scholar

⁴² American History in Ballad and Song, Vol. 1: Junior High Social Studies, Album 5801, (1960), prepared by Albert Barouch and Theodore O. Cron, 1, 3, 8, Folder 5801: “American History, Vol. 1,” Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴³ Mickenberg, , Learning From the Left, 234–35.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ American History in Ballad and Song: Vol. 2 Senior High School Social Studies, prepared by Albert Barouch and Theodore O. Cron (1962), Folkways Records Album No. FH 5802 FraSC, Folder: 5802: “American History, V. 2,” 9, 14–15, 16–17, 21, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Foster, , Red Alert, 185.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ American History in Ballad and Song: Vol. 2 Senior High School Social Studies, 8–10, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid, 13–17.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Letter from George G. Dawson to Folkways, 29 March 1960; Letter from Dan Harris to Marion Distler, 27 August 1960, unprocessed material in Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Gilbertson, Edmund, American History in Ballad and Song, Vol. 1 review, The Little Sandy Review, No. 9, 20.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Higham, John, “Multiculturalism and Universalism: A History and a Critique,” American Quarterly 45, no. 2 (June 1993): 210. Higham notes that through the late 1950s, history textbooks did mention the hardships ethnic groups faced but explained them via stereotypes and the disadvantages that plagued different groups. The hope was that all of these lumps in the American dream would then be smoothed in the national melting pot.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ Taylor, Verta, “Social Movement Continuity: The Women's Movement in Abeyance,” American Sociological Review 54, no. 4 (Oct. 1989): 761–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵² At the time of this article, the complete ledgers of Folkways Records from the 1950s were unavailable. The Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has just begun the accession of the ledgers of Folkways Records. However, Asch was notorious for keeping vague and incomplete records, such that the exact amount is very difficult to determine. Even in Goldsmith's extensive biography of Asch and Richard Carlin's study of the company, Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways (Smithsonian Books: 2008), there is no mention of the financial records regarding the educational albums.Google Scholar