Red Scare in the Green Mountains: The McCarthy Era in Vermont 1946-1960

If our universities produced more graduates who could write as well as Rick Winston, America would have more historians and fewer investment bankers. And we would all be better off. Winston recounts the rise and fall of McCarthy and his acolytes in one state during one historical period to illuminate a threat that has once again reared its ugly head.

Reading Rick Winston’s excellent account of Vermont’s Red Scare of the 1940’s and ‘50’s, I was reminded of Shirley Jackson’s horror story, “The Lottery,” in which a small Vermont town (Bennington, perhaps) conducts its annual ritual of choosing a citizen for its villagers to stone. We don’t know exactly the origins of the ritual, only that the villagers blindly go along with it, stoning a poor girl to death who unluckily has drawn from a box a paper marked with the dreaded black dot. They make no particular fuss about it. It’s a tradition, you see.Underlying scares like those fostered by the McCarthy era is suspicion, suspicion that neighbors and/or outsiders are up to something, something like the Lottery in which the consequences, if not aired out and exposed, could prove deadly to innocent, unsuspecting people.Vermont’s consequential brush with “Red” rumors like those that swept Washington not that long ago are fair warning of the dangers of allowing Internet lies and conspiracy theories of today go unanswered and unchallenged. As you read this meticulously researched account of this corner of Vermont’s relatively recent history think of the ugly consequences of neighbors who so carelessly and maliciously throw stones.

I just finished reading Rick Winston's remarkable new book, "Red Scare in the Green Mountains." By putting a sharp lens on the state of Vermont it is perhaps a microcosm of what was happening in the country as a whole.I tend to read biographies about well known people so to have my eyes open to little known individuals with outsized courage and integrity was fascinating.,It left me wondering, however, what was going on in other states, especially since Winston states that Vermont actually got off rather lightly. Of course I'm familiar with McCarthyism in New York and Hollywood but how did it affect the other 57 states?I did not find the first chapter to be the most riveting, but I imagine Winston wanted to keep the story chronological so that's where it needed to start. I'm glad I kept reading and I especially found the portraits of Bernard O'Shea, aka "Bun" and Carmelita Hinton, the founder of the Putney School, to be especially appealing.This is a rare book written by a meticulous citizen historian who shares his fascination with and first hand interest in the evil of McCarthyism in the state of Vermont. As Winston says in his introduction, "My hope is that illuminating this period in our past will help us both understand the historical forces at work today and give us the inspiration to survive and thrive in treacherous times." Amen.

This is an excellent book about a surprising subject, since who would have guessed that liberal, progressive Vermont was once haunted by McCarthyite paranoia? But in a clear, compact account of the political culture of the state, the heroes and villains involved, and the lessons of decent forbearance to be drawn, Rick Winston makes the whole subject come alive--with relevance, too, for our own time. Quite nicely, the book also includes brief sidebar inset essays and portraits that fill out the story and its context without impeding the narrative flow. And what a great title! It just about lights up the sky!

In these difficult times, this is a book about how Vermonters dealt with McCarthyism. As Winston says, he offers nine episodes that illustrate the full range of responses to the McCarthyite witch-hunt, from principled opposition to demagoguery to timid acquiescence to it, There are lessons here for us all as we once again face challenges to a robust democracy, to a free press, to an independent judiciary. This is definitely a book for our time.