Prof. Rideout goes west

John G. Rideout at Idaho State
The 1950 Wickiup yearbook

On April 29, 1949, the Idaho Falls Post-Register announced that John had been hired as one of the two new faculty members at Idaho State College (now University) in the city of Pocatello. In its announcement, the newspaper remarked that John was a Rhodes scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, but it made no mention of the political controversy that had surrounding him in New Hampshire. 

Idaho State College was a relatively new institution. It had been formed a few years earlier out of a two year branch campus of the University of Idaho. John's activities during this time are not well-documented, so it is not entirely clear what brought him to the college. As an experienced professor with an impressive record, he was certainly an attractive hire for the newly formed college. It is less clear why John would have wanted to move there. He may have accepted the position out of necessity. It appears that he was strongly pressured to resigned from New Hampshire in spring 1949, after his failed campaign as a Progressive Party candidate, and the Idaho job may simply have been the job he was able to secure on short notice. However, there might have been a political connection. The Progressive Party's vice presidential nominee was a resident of Pocatello, Senator Glen H. Taylor. Presumably, there was an active Progressive presence in the city, and John's hire might have been facilitated through political connections.

Upon arriving Idaho, John continued his political activities, although he attracted less public attention. He joined the Idaho Progressive Party, which remained active despite its electoral defeat. His political interests remained focused on international political and anti-militarism. Among other activities, in 1952 he participated in the American Peace Crusade, or APC. The APC was a peace advocacy organization that had been founded in 1951 in response to concerns about the Korean War. The organization called for a withdrawal of American troops from Korea and an end to war in the Far East. In March 1952, the APC organized a rally in DC that drew an estimated 2,500 supporters. 

A number of political leaders condemned the APC as being a Communist front. For example, Secretary of State Dean Acheson called the organization a "far-flung propaganda effort of the International Communist Movement." In 1953, the Justice Department added the organization to its list of subversive organizations. 

In addition to his advocacy for world peace, John was involved with the Idaho Pension Union, serving as the union's state educational director in 1953. As its name suggests, the union had been formed to advocate for people receiving pensions. For example, the union advocated repealing an Idaho lien law which was being used by the state government to collect funds from the property of deceased welfare recipients. 

The union became the subject of controversy after politicians began publicly alleging that the union was Communist dominated. It is unclear what attracted the negative attention. The union's core issues don't seem controversial and were mostly of regional interest. The union may have attracted negative attention by expanding its activities beyond the issue of pensions. For example, in 1952, the union passed a resolution declaring its opposition to the Smith Act (an anti-subversion measure that targeted communists and anarchists) and to "Universal Military Training." By the mid-1950s, the union had attracted so much attention that it joined the APC on the Justice Department's list of subversive organizations. 

John's employment at Idaho State ended as it had ended in New Hampshire. He submitted his resignation in 1953. John never made any public statement about his resignation, and it attracted little public attention, so it isn't entirely clear what happened. Later, in his 1958 annual address, the governor of South Carolina claimed that Idaho State administrators had requested John's resignation because of his political views, activities, and teaching. Certainly, this would not have been unexpected in light of John's political activism and the general political climate at American universities.

John left Idaho for South Carolina to teach at Allen University. His hire was a historic event. Allen, then an eighty-four-year-old institution, had long maintained a proud tradition of maintaining an all-Black faculty. However, following the Brown v. Board of Education court decision, the university president had decided to hire White faculty as a way of preparing Allen students for desegregation. John motivation for accepting the job offer appears to have been simple; according to the governor, he told a colleague, "I am going down there until things cool off." 

John's arrival in Columbia, South Carolina was well-received. On August 22, 1954, The State newspaper announced his hire in an article titled "Allen U Adds 5 to Faculty with Ph.D.'s." He began teaching that fall. 

John G. Rideout at Idaho State
The 1951 Wickiup yearbook

John G. Rideout
The 1952 Wickiup yearbook