Red Hope: One award in the bag, one maybe!

Red Hope: The Blacklisting of Hope Foye, made its official debut yesterday at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival which is ongoing at the Culver Plaza Theatre, 9919 Washington Blvd. Culver City CA. On hand were Hope Foye herself, Producer-Director Constance L. Jackson, and Constance’s Co-Producer (and spouse), Attorney Michelle Patterson. I’m very proud to have been a part of this event, having done the press work beforehand, for a myriad of reasons, but primarily because my family has experienced the same kind of government repression and blacklisting that Hope Foye went through. More on that later.

Check out my past blogging on the movie at:

http://janbtucker.com/blog/2010/10/19/blacklisted-hope-foye-was-one-of-many-victims/

http://janbtucker.com/blog/2011/02/11/red-hope-nominated-for-best-documentary/

As noted above, the movie had already been nominated for best documentary, something that came as a complete yet very welcome surprise to the producers. Then, at the PAFF premiere yesterday, it was announced that Hope had just received the PAFF Lifetime Achievement Award! At 89 1/2 years old, that’s a lot of achievement.

The DVD of the movie won’t be released until after the Los Angeles Film Festival and Cannes, but a CD of the soundtrack songs and other material that Hope has recorded is now available for $22.00 from Permanent Productions [[email protected]].

Constance and Michelle are old and very, very dear friends. Constance and I met in the early 80’s in San Fernando Valley NOW (National Organization for Women) and served as only the second African American elected to the Board of Directors of California NOW (another effort I’m proud to have been a part of) in 1982. Having now met Hope, I’m sure she’ll be a great friend as well. We’d met briefly at the initial screening of the draft product at CSU Dominguez Hills a few months back but as I was having her autograph my CD’s, she told me I looked familiar.

I told Hope that if I looked familiar, it’s probably because she may have known my father, Saul Tucker. She said she did remember him from way back, and that brings me back to what happened to my family in the dark days of the red scares and the McCarthy era.

Having served his country as a civilian millwright - machinist at Hickam Field for the Army Air Corps, under President Harry S. Truman’s infamous Executive Order 9835, my dad was thrown out of government service. He died not knowing what he was actually accused of or who the witnesses were against him, because these proceedings were worse than Kafkaesque. His attorney, Harriet Bouslog, had her law license stripped from her for having the audacity of attempting to defend people accused of subversion and it took a year before the United States Supreme Court overturned that decision and gave her back her license to practice.

Just a couple of highlights of how stupid and bizarre these proceedings were came out when eight years after my father’s death, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act I was able to get his files from the FBI and the Army. One issue that really pissed off the investigators was the fact that he was a member of the Hawaii Association for Civic Unity. The Civic Unity associations around America were founded by Quakers, and repeated verbatim in my dad’s file were what the Army and the FBI called the Communist line of the organization from its constitution:

1. Ending discrimination based on race, creed, color, sex, political belief, or national origin;

2. Equality of opportunity based on raced, creed, color, sex, political belief, or national origin;

3. Better standards of living and social progress for all;

4. Promoting better understanding and unity amongst various racial and ethnic groups.

Now, given that this was before the Presidential Candidacy of Progressive Party nominee Henry Wallace forced President Truman to desegregate the armed forces, one can see why this was considered radical and “communist.” Given that while ending segregation was sort of acceptable in some circles, ending sex discrimination must have looked outright insane to non-feminists in those days. But that was considered evidence against my father.

Another bit of ‘evidence’ against him was that a snitch for the 401st Counter Intelligence Command (maybe that should have been “counter-intelligent”???) told his handler that my dad was Vice President of the Hawaii Trail and Mountain Club and that at meetings, “Tucker never said anything good about the United States and never said anything bad about Russia.” ???????? This is two steps beyond. This is Twilight Zone stuff. This is worse than the acceptance of “hearsay” evidence in court. This was considered evidence against my father even though it was evidence of what he didn’t say! He might as well have been a deaf-mute and that would have been logically consistent with what he didn’t say at meetings.

When you hopefully get to see Red Hope, you’ll see how Hope Foye repeatedly refused to answer the questions put to her by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This is precisely why refusing to answer was the best option: these nuts would get you no matter what you said. If they didn’t have your statements by which to convict you and persecute you, they’d just get you for what you didn’t say. That is truly beyond Kafkaesque.

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