The Security State Spots Edwin Hoffman

After waiting over five years, I finally got the FBI files on Edwin D. Hoffman! Hoffman was one of the three professors at Allen University who were accused of being "communist workers" by South Carolina Governor George B. Timmerman  in the late 1950s.

The governor's accusations drew national attention and ultimately resulted in the dismissal of Hoffman and the other professors. However, the core of his claims is, at best, unclear under close inspection. The governor claimed that he'd seen records showing that Hoffman had been a member of various "Communist Party affiliates," but the groups he cites were obscure ones like the Queens County Financial Station. The name "Financial Station" certainly does not suggest troubling communist political activity. Moreover,  in most cases, Hoffman's involvement dated to a decade or more in the past. The FBI records shed light on the governor's claims and show how Hoffman first caught the attention of the surveillance state. 

The FBI files show Hoffman enthusiastically participated in left-wing political activities, essentially all of which the governor would have condemned. However, there is no evidence that he was a member of the Communist Parties, and his documented activities were well within constitutionally protected activities. 

Hoffman was first investigated by army counter-intelligence during the Second World War, and this occurred almost by accident. Shortly after Hoffman joined the army (on August 8, 1942), an army investigator was examining records at the City College of New York as part of an investigation unrelated to Hoffman. In the course of doing this, the investigator came across evidence that Hoffman had engaged in "communistic activities" while a student in the late 1930s.

The investigator's claim wasn't baseless, although it is striking that City College retained records on Hoffman several years after he graduated. When Hoffman attended the college, the student population drew heavily from the city's working-class immigrant families. Many had seen their families devastated by the Great Depression and were open to political and economic change. This manifested itself by a large wave of campus activism.

Hoffman was a leader among student activists. He helped form and then lead a chapter of the American Student Union. The governor of South Carolina described the ASU as a Communist Party affiliate, and he wasn't wrong. The ASU had been formed from various socialist and communist groups. However, the City College chapter focused on issues like opposing war and fascism. They successfully advocated for removing mandatory ROTC training. Hoffman's proudest achievements were those related to African-American rights. A student protest he participated in succeeded in getting the college to hire its first African-American instructor, Max Yergan. 

Hoffman's old student records were enough to trigger an army investigation. As Hoffman was enrolled in the army during war time, the military had extensive powers to investigate his activities. Investigators interviewed a number of the soldiers who worked with him as well as former employers, reviewed all the records they could get their hands on, and inspected his mail.

Investigators found a few additional causes for concern. Hoffman's political activities hadn't ended with college. When he registered as a voter, he had registered as a member of the American Labor Party. This was a legitimate, if minor, political party, but it promoted a socialist democratic platform and was viewed by some as communist-aligned. 

A more serious cause for concern were his Selective Service records. They showed that he told the draft board that he was a conscientious objector. Moreover, he had actively protested against the war. On May 29, 1941, Hoffman was stopped by a police officer for distributing "Communistic" anti-war pamphlets on a street corner. While the officer did not arrest him, he did make a report to Hoffman's draft board.

May 1941 was before both the invasion of the Soviet Union and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and Hoffman's feelings about the war had evidently changed by the time he was inducted into the army. Every soldier interviewed spoke highly of Hoffman, although a few acknowledged that he held leftwing political beliefs. One officer said he was "pinkish" but loyal to the US. Two other officers said that Hoffman had discussed being an active communist during college and acknowledged that he had maintained friendships with active communists.

None of the soldiers expressed serious concerns about Hoffman, but investigators felt differently. They noted that he was friendly with another soldier (Richard J. Crohn) who had already been flagged as "proven to be a dangerous Communist." 

On January 22, 1944, army investigators completed their work and concluded that Hoffman was at least a communist sympathizer. He was deemed potentially subversive and a few months later (on March 17, 1944) he was restricted from sensitive duties.

Hoffman, it appears, was unaware of the investigators' findings or even the existence of an investigation. All evidence shows that he was a loyal soldier who dedicated himself to the war effort. He was commissioned as an officer and volunteered for combat duty at the time of the Normandy invasion. He served as an artillery forward observer in western Europe and earned three Battle Stars. 

Hoffman's military service did nothing to erase the army's concerns about his communist sympathies. A few years after the war (on March 26, 1948), the army provided the FBI with a copy of their records on Hoffman. Using those records as a basis, the FBI opened an investigation. The reasons for sending records to the FBI are unclear. In Hoffman's file, an FBI cover letter attached to Hoffman's military record is followed by four pages that are fully redacted under a national security exception. These pages may contain a description of why the files were transferred.

However they made their way to the FBI's files, the records were hugely consequential. The governor's accusations against Hoffman were a regurgitation of the army's findings together with some activities that the FBI had investigated in the early 1950s. 

Hoffman's Anti-War Pamphlet.

The text below is a transcription of the anti-war pamphlet that Hoffman was distributing in May 1941. The pamphlet is a response to one of President Roosevelt's radio addresses in which he encouraged Americans to support the war. At the time, America was nominally neutral, but it was sending supplies to the Allies via Naval convoys, something the pamphlet openly opposes. The pamphlet also opposed organizing an A.E.F., which was an acronym for an American Expeditionary Force (the term for the US military forces that fought in World War One). 

The pamphlet encourages readers to listen to an answer to the president's speech that Congressman Vito Marcantonio would deliver. The reference to Marcantonio is highly significant. He represented East Harlem and was one of the most left-wing members of Congress. At the time, he was a member of the American Labor Party. During the early years of the war, he was among the staunchest opponents to American military involvement. His position appears to have reflected his sympathy for communism. Up until June 1941 (a month after the pamphlet was distributed), the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had formed a non-aggression pact, and  the Soviets encouraged American communists and their allies to advocate for American neutrality. 

 

A New York Jew moves south: Edwin D. Hoffman

Edwin D. Hoffman in 1960
Sunday Gazette-Mail [Charleston,  West Virginia]. October 30, 1960

Edwin D. Hoffman was born in Manhattan on December 3, 1918 to Joseph and Sadie Hoffman. Joseph and Sadie's parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Sadie herself was born in America. At the time of Edwin's birth, the Hoffmans had achieved remarkable financial success. Starting as a clothing cutter, Joseph had worked in the garment industry since he was a teenager. By the 1920s, he was running his own clothing manufacturing business and had moved the family to suburban Long Island. 

Hoffman family residence in the late 1910s
617 West 170 St, Manhatten, New York
From GoogleMaps

Hoffman family residence in 1920
391 Eastwood Road, Hempstead, New York
From GoogleMaps

Edwin spent his childhood on Long Island. While he would later become deeply involved in the struggle to secure civil rights for African Americans, he interacted with few African Americans while growing up. In a later account of his life, he wrote that the only African American he so much as spoke to was the live-in maid employed by his Uncle Harry and Aunt Ethyle. Their maid, Hattie Harrel, was a 20-something year-old women who had moved to New York City from Georgia.

Edwin's family life was severely disrupted by the Great Depression. His father lost his business. The family was forced to move out of their home on Long Island and ended up living in an apartment in Washington Heights in Manhattan. Edwin's father found work as a rent collector for a housing project (a job he described as "like trying to get blood out of a turnip"), and his mother took up sewing lace collars to supplement their income. This economic disruption led Edwin to question American capitalism, and by high school, he had become, in his words, a radical youth.

Edwin traced his engagement with political issues involving African Americans to the move out of Long Island. The move put Edwin in closer proximity to African Americans as Washington Heights borders Harlem, then a largely African American neighborhood. He was shocked to see how African Americans in the city were largely confined to working menial jobs. He was especially upset when he was riding the trolley one day and saw a large group of African American women standing on the corner of Jerome Avenue (in the Bronx), trying to get work as domestic day workers. He later described the scene as "a virtual slave market."

Hoffman family residence in 1940
250 Fort Washington Avenue, Manhattan, New York
GoogleMap

Edwin graduated from high school and began attending the City College of New York around 1936. That year he helped organize a campus chapter of the American Students Union or ASU. He remained active in the Union during his time as a student. He served as chapter president, vice president, and secretary from 1938 to 1939. 

The ASU was one of several left-wing organizations organized on campus during this time. In general, City College was a center of student activism. The student population drew heavily from immigrant and working-class families. The students brought to campus the political concerns that impacted their families.

Among the ASU activities Edwin helped organize was a sit-down in front of the college president's office. The sit-down was organized by the Frederick Douglass Society (an African American students' organization) as part of a campaign to compel the administration to make the campus more welcoming to students of color. They achieved success. City College hired its first African American faculty member, Max Yergan. In fall 1937, Yergan taught City College's first course in African American Studies "Negro History and Culture." Edwin was among the students who attended the class.

Because of his family's financial difficulties, Edwin had to work during college to make ends meet. He worked on Wall Street as a "runner" (responsible for carrying securities for a brokerage firm). 

Edwin graduated from City College in 1940. He then continued to work on Wall Street, although he was able to secure employment as a billing clerk. He also continued his education by enrolling in a graduate program at Columbia University's Teachers College. However, before he could complete a graduate degree, his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War Two.

Edwin was inducted in the U.S. army in August 1942, about few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed on the western front and was in combat service as a Forward Observer in the Field Artillery. He served in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, and Austria. After the war, he was part of the U.S. occupation and supervised prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and Austria until his discharge on April 6, 1946. By this time, he'd been made an officer and held the rank of first lieutenant. 

After the war, Edwin continued his education at Columbia's Teachers College. He received an M.A. from the college in spring 1947. That year he also began teaching at Long Island University. He would remain at LIU for the next seven years.

While teaching at LIU, Edwin remained in graduate school, working on his Ph.D. He was supervised by Professor Erling Hunt. Although employed in the Teacher College, Professor Hunt was a historian and had received his Ph.D. from Columbia's History Department.

Edwin completed his Ph.D. in 1952. His dissertation, titled "Creators of a democratic heritage: nine dramatic episodes on the building of the American democratic tradition," told stories of Americans who had played a role in "forging a tradition of freedom that can guide and inspire us today." Reflecting Edwin's interest in civil rights, the dissertation included discussions about the experiences of African Americans. Edwin later wrote Professor Hunt encouraged his research on the topic.

Edwin remained engaged in politics while teaching and working on his dissertation. He became active in the American Labor Party or ALP in 1945. The ALP was a New York based pro-labor, socialist democratic party. During the late 1930s and the early 1940s, the party's electoral efforts focused on offering support to the mainstream (i.e. Republican or Democratic) candidates that were most supportive of their policies. However, the party also nominated its own candidates when there wasn't a suitable Republicans or Democrats.

Edwin was among those the ALP nominated for political office. In 1948, he ran for Representative of the Fifteenth District in the state Assembly. He performed poorly on Election Day. He only received 9,160 votes. By comparison, the winner of the election, Republican Samuel Roman, received 34,087 votes. His Democratic challenger, James M. Grundy, received 30,598. In reporting on the election, the New York Times reported that the election generally demonstrated the waning electoral power of the ALP. 

In 1954, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its famous Brown v. Board of Education decision, Edwin became enthusiastic about the prospect of positive political change for African Americans. Wanting to play a greater role, he began making inquiries about teaching at an HBCU in the south. He soon received an invitation to interview for a position at Allen University in Columbia, SC.

Edwin was interviewed by Allen President, Samuel Higgins, and the chairman of the board of trustees, Bishop Frank Madison Reid. They met in Harlem's Theresa Hotel. President Higgins explained Allen University had a proud tradition of maintaining an all-black faculty. However, because of the Brown decision, he wanted to integrate the faculty. Many of Allen's graduates became public school teachers. At the time, those graduates taught at all-black segregated schools. However, in light of the Brown decision, Higgins expected that many would soon be teaching at integrated schools. He thought hiring some white faculty would help them transition to teaching in an integrated environment. 

Bishop Reid added that they only wanted to hire white professors who were supportive of civil rights for African Americans. Most whites in South Carolina were staunch segregationists, and the trustees wanted to make sure that any white faculty they hired would not give "any aid or comfort to the Dixiecrats." Edwin assured the bishop that he "stood for full equality." 

President Higgins and Bishop Madison were evidently impressed by their interview with Edwin. He and John G. Rideout became Allen's first white faculty that fall.

Hoffman's speech "History and Political Science – The Foundation of Freedom"

Edwin D. Hoffman in 1960
University of North Carolina at Pembroke Yearbook The Indianhead [1960]

The following text is a March 14, 1958 "Chapel Address" that Edwin D. Hoffman delivered at Allen University in Columbia, SC. Hoffman had moved to Allen in 1954. That year the U.S. Supreme Court announced its Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregating education. When the decision was announced, Hoffman was teaching at Long Island University in New York City. He left New York to teach at Allen because he thought teaching at a southern HBCU was a good way to get involved in the nascent civil rights movement.

Hoffman delivered his speech during a difficult time for Allen. The state government had been pressuring the university to dismiss Hoffman and two other faculty members. The governor had publicly accused the faculty members of being Communist workers in his annual address, and Board of Education (which was controlled by the governor) was withholding teaching certification of Allen graduates until the faculty were dismissed. The university president responded to this by vacillating between trying to force the faculty out and defending their continued employment. 

At the time of his speech, Hoffman had been fighting to retain his position for about a year, and he'd been in the public spotlight for a month-and-a-half. In delivering his speech, Hoffman appears to have been trying to rally the university community to continue to their resistance to the governor's attacks.

The object of this talk is to increase your interest in the social sciences.  Most particularly in history and political science.  I hope to show the study of these subjects equips you to meet the problems we face today and how the mind is stimulated to the point of passionate concern for great ideals.

In the social science we deal with the real world.  We face up to real problems with frankness and boldness.

I intend to speak frankly – to call a spade a spade

Last September the State Board of Education took from Allen students the right to teach in the South Carolina public schools.

In January, Governor Timmerman attacked Allen for employing three professors.

In February bills were introduced in the General Assembly establish a legislative committee to investigate so-called "communist activities" in education.

Those are the facts – frankly stated. I could have made vague reference to "troubled times" and "ill winds" and "difficulties we are now going through." But that is not the method of the social scientist. If you want to understand problems – if you want people to help you solve problems – you put them right out on the table in the clearest possible manner.

How can history and political science help us to understand and meet such problems?

Let us begin by labeling the problems for what they are. These are problems in civil liberties. We must speak of such basic democratic rights as freedom of speech, academic freedom, due process of law and equal protection of the laws. We speak of the rights of man, the inalienable rights, to use the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The question we must ask is whether the State of South Carolina is not doing violence to our constitutional liberties, and if it is abusing our democratic liberties, what must be our attitude and action.

Living in South Carolina, we are accustomed to think more in terms of civil rights than civil liberties. We want an end to Jim Crow and our efforts have been centered on achieving equality of opportunity. Equal pay for Negro teachers, an end to the white primary, and school integration have been the big campaigns in recent South Carolina history.

We sometimes forget that question[s] like freedom of speech are intimately tied to the winning of such rights. Yet it is a glaring fact that one of the biggest problems that the NAACP faces is the denial of freedom of speech. I need only mention how unfree Negro teachers feel in the public schools of South Carolina today.

Indeed, the issues of civil rights and civil liberties have always been intertwined in our history. Recall the threats to opponents of slavery made by William C. Preston, Senator from South Carolina, before the Civil War. "Let an Abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina. If we catch him, and not standing all the governments on earth, including the Federal government, we will hang him." Surely here was a grave problem of free speech. 

What exactly is freedom of speech? We usually define it as the right of every man to say and write what he thinks. Many men have called it the queen of freedom. The great English poet, John Milton, said, "Above all liberties, give me liberty to know, utter, and to argue freely according to conscience."

We enjoy that freedom most moments of our lives. When we would talk about the weather, or about the date we had last night or the new shoes we plan to buy we are perfectly free to speak our minds. It is only when we would express unpopular views, when we would criticize the "powers that be," that our right to speak is challenged. If every South Carolina Negro were an Uncle Tom, if all of us here at Allen said only what the White Citizens Council would like to hear, no one would try to silence us. We would enjoy perfect freedom of speech. And what an empty freedom it would be!

Louis Blane, in Letter on England, tells a story of such a freedom. 

    "A sailor related that he was once on board a vessel with a passenger who had frequently made the same voyage. The passenger told the captain about a rock ahead which was hidden beneath the waves, but the captain would not listen to him. On his insisting on it, the captain had him thrown into the sea. The energetic measure out an end to all remonstrances, and nothing could be more touching than the unanimity which reigned an [sic on] board. Suddenly the vessel hit the reef and was wrecked. They had got rid of the giver of the warning, but the rock remained."

The rock remained! you may silence men, but the truth remains. And since we need know the truth to act with wisdom, we need the brave voices of dissent to dare always to point to the rock ahead. As an [sic a] historian I cannot help but remark that the independent, non-conforming mind has been one of the glories of human history.

Where would Christianity be without the non-conformity of Jesus and Paul? Where would Judaism be without its Moses and Jeremiah?

Where would science be without the dissent of Copernicus and Galileo?

Where would American democracy be without Roger Williams and Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass and John Brown?

Each os [sic of] these had to speak at the risk of displeasing the rulers of their day – and how much poorer the world would have been if they had not excercised [sic excercised] their right of free speech.

Freedom is not safety. It is the opportunity to say something meaningful.

In times like ours, in South Carolina today, it is our courage that shows we are alive. In the words of Edward Arlington Robinson "Because we move and breath, and say a few complacent words with tongues that are afraid to say our thoughts, we think we are alive. But we are dead."

It is because our forefathers would be alive, would know the truth, that freedom of speech was proclaimed in Article I of our Bill of Rights. That First Amendment, as we call it, erects a fence inside which man can talk. Lawmakers and government officials are told to stay outside that fence.

Unfortunately some men in authority feel impelled to climb over the fence, and even at times to break the fence down. They identify their own policies with truth and punish those who disagree with them. I suspect these men in power have no confidence in their own ideas, and seek to silence others because they fear they will not win in a fair and square debate. I say with Milton, "Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever know [sic knew] Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

I remarked that some men in authority feel impelled to silence those who disagree with them. Some, but not all. Listen to this quotation, as as [sic] you do, guess who might have said the words.

"Here in American we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrines. Without exhaustive debate, even heated debate, of ideas and programs, free government would weaken and wither. But if we allow ourselves to be persuaded that every individual or party that takes issue with our convictions is necessarily wicked and treasonable, then, indeed, we are approaching the end of freedom's road.

Is this the voice of some harried liberal or radical? No. The speaker is Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States.

Sometimes we forget that democracy means that public officials are to be the people's servants and not the people's master. We allow government to be dominating and hesitate to challenge it when it goes beyond its powers. We would be better off if we kept in mind the injunction of Justice Black of the Supreme Court of the United States.

"Public Officials cannot be constitutionally vested with powers to select the ideas people can think about, censor the public views they can express, or choose persons or groups people can associate with. Public officials with such power are not public servants, they are public masters."

Most important of all, we must insist that our government allow the free encounter between truth and falsehood to go on unhampered in our schools and colleges. This is the meaning of the term academic freedom.

Do we have the right to insist that our schools be free? Do we have the right to tell the government of South Carolina, for example, to leave education alone?

The story of Galileo tells us that we must insit [sic insist] on freedom to study, to learn and to teach. This great scientist and professor – as a result of his scholarly research – was convinced that the earth moved around the sun. But the rulers of 1630 condemned his teaching as dangerous lies and threatened him with death unless he admitted he was wrong. They called him up before the investigating committee of his day, called the Inquisition, tortured him and forced him to confess his errors. So Galileo said the earth stood still.

In our day we still have the investigating committees that call teachers before them to force them to conform or lose their jobs. Indeed, some committees have sought to jail teachers who would not answer their questions. But today education has a firm ally in the United States Supreme Court. Let be quote briefly from the Supreme Court decision in the Sweezy case in 1957.

"The essentiality of freedom in the community of American Universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any straitjacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation. No field of education is so thoroughtly [sic thoroughly] comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot function in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding, otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die."

Thus speaks the Supreme Court. There is the case for academic freedom. There are those in South Carolina who are terribly angry with the Supreme Court of late. It speaks for free speech, for academic freedom, and it has spoken for integration. But we at Allen respect the Court and praise its good judgement in our day. 

In 1954, before the Sweezy decision, Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago and then head of the Funds for Republic said, "The entire teaching profession of the United States is now intimidated." I suspect, as McCarthyism is gradually vanishing today, that Dr. Hutchins would not make as sweeping a statement now. And I trust that the spirist [sic spirit] of independence shown at Allen will further encourage teachers to stand on their own hind legs and be men

What does a scholar do when called before one of today's investigation committees? Must he prostrate himself before it as Galileo was forced to do? What are his obligations as citizen and teacher?

Let us start by saying that investigation is a proper stop in lawmaking and all of us should assist a legislature in getting the facts it needs to create intelligent laws.

But we must say, as the Supreme Court says, in its Watkins decision, that investigation is only justified as a stop in lawmaking. A committee no right to investigate in areas where it can make no law, and it has no right to investigate merely to expose the ideas and private lives of witnesses. The Supreme Court emphatically states that investigating committees may not encroach upon an individual's right to privacy nor abridge his liberty of speech.

The Court has also held that no man need be a witness against himself. He may properly plead the Fifth Amendment to our constitution. Keep in mind that the Fifth Amendment is for the innocent as well as the guilty and that every man is innocent until proven guilty. Indeed, some prominent Americans well known to be utterly innocent, have chosen to take the Fifth Amendment for the very purpose of protecting the civil liberties of all Americans. Dean Griswold of Harvard Law School calls the Fifth Amendment a good friend and an old friend of freedom – a shield for freedom of thought and "a hindrance to any government which might wish to prosecute for thoughts and opinions alone."

In the idea of freedom of speech is the right not to speak, the right to be silent. For how can a man hold whatever ideas he wishes, how can he save a free conscience, if government has the power to pry thoughts out of his mind. This, too, is the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. 

To really appreciate the value of the Fifth Amendment – to recognize it as a protector of men's liberties, it is helpful to recall the history of why it was put into our constitution. We go back to English history to the time the Stuart Kings and the persecution of men for their religious ideas.

The first men to refuse to answer the questions of investigating committees are Protestants – Puritans. Let us recall for a moment the ordeals of John Udall and John Lilburn in 17th century England.

Udall was a distinguished minister who was hounded to tell who wrote unsigned pamphlets criticizing the King's bishops.

"Will you take the oath" (to tell us all we want to know), he was asked when called before the Privy Council.

"I dare not take it" replied Udall.

"Then you must got to prison, and it will go hard with you, for you must remain there until you be glad to take it."

"God's will be done" said Udall. I had rather to go to prison with a good conscience than be at liberty with an ill one."

He went to prison – under sentence of death.

John Lilburn was no distinguished man. Rather he was a humble apprentice persecuted for refusing to name Protestants who had brought banned books into England from Holland. Like Udall he refused to tell the investigators what they wanted.

Lilburn was tied to the tail of a cart and whipped as he was dragged through the streets of London. He was put in the pillory and gagged when he spoke for freedom. He was put in jail, chained, and refused food for ten days. Thirty months latter [sic later] he was freed from jail when a new government came to power.

Americans know the story of Udall and Lilburn and other [sic others] like them. They were determined that such cruel treatment not happen in America. So they put the Fifth Amendment into our National Constitution. South Carolinians knew the stories too, and the same words are found in the South Carolina Constitution.

These are our liberties – these are our rights. Brave men established them at great risk. Today it still takes courage to exercise them. But when we lack that courage we become helpless tools of tyrants – we cease to be men and we betray our country's precious heritage of freedom.

A college student gets a sorry education when he does not learn of his rights and does not develop the will to defend them. In college they are learned most in the student of history and government. Come on in and learn. The water is fine. It is the fountain of freedom.

Text from a document in the William D. Workman, Jr. Papers at the South Carolina Political Collections Repository.

Timmerman Attacks: Hoffman Update

Old cover from the Monthly Review

This blogpost is preceded by 

1. "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1957"
2. "Timmerman attacks, Fall 1957"
3. "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1958"
4. "Timmerman attacks: Allen University and Benedict College"
5. "Timmerman attacks: the Benedict professors"
6. "Timmerman attacks: the Allen University professors"

I just found an article Hoffman wrote after he retired that sheds some light on what happened at Allen University.  He spends the article reflecting on his academic career, and fills out part of the story about what happened.  Hoffman was from a Jewish family in New York, and he become committed to radical left-wing politics after his family experienced financial hardship during the Great Depression.  He was especially passionate about African American rights, and he applied for a position at Allen University with the goal of becoming of more involved in the civil rights movement.  Personally, I'm not sure if this reflects remarkable political commitment or breathtaking naivety.  In any case, his situation was different from that of people like Marion Davis who seems to have moved to Benedict primarily because the college was willing to hire Red Scare victims.  (I had a helpful email exchange with Davis's children: they said their parents were supportive of the civil rights movement, but they also don't recall them being actively involved at the time.  Judging from his publications, Marion's husband Horace seems to have been most passionate about labor issues.)

There are a few notable silences in article.  Hoffman says nothing about Toth desegregating the Allen students body (an event that made the news), and his discussion of his dismissal from Allen is as follows:

That two Northern whites [Hoffman and Rideout] and a Northern black [Wiggins] were never securely positioned in the Southern, African-American environment of Allen University was made evident by our third year there, when South Carolina's Dixiecrat Governor Timmerman, having a new A.M.E. bishop and a new college president to do his bidding, demanded our ouster as dangerous "reds." Since our only manifest subversiveness was opposition to every form of discrimination and bigotry, Allen's Board of Trustees refused to go along with the wishes of governor, bishop and president. The governor then deployed a powerful weapon, his decree that no graduate of Allen could be certified to teach in South Carolina's still segregated public schools until we were dismissed....  The trustees held out for two years then told us goodbye....

While I find Hoffman's political commitment very admirable, his use of scare quotes around the word 'reds" strikes me as disingenuous.  The Governor's accusation that he was a communist wasn't groundless: he made specific accusations of subversive activity (e.g. involvement in the American Students Union).  Moreover, Hoffman's very article in which the scare quotes appear supports the accusation: it is published in the US's longest running socialist magazine, the Monthly Review (in 1998 – 10 years after the fall of communist!).

More generally, Hoffman says nothing about his involvement with communism and little about his involvement with left political issues that are separate from African American rights.  For me, understanding the relationship between the civil rights movement and communism in the context of the Benedict and Allen controversy remains a challenge.

Timmerman attacks: the Allen University professors

Photo of Edwin Hoffman
From West Virginia State University yearbook

This blogpost is preceded by 

1. "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1957"
2. "Timmerman attacks, Fall 1957"
3. "Timmerman attacks, Spring 1958"
4. "Timmerman attacks: Allen University and Benedict College"
5. "Timmerman attacks: the Benedict professors"
6. "Timmerman attacks: the Allen University professors"

In my last post, I described the Benedict faculty attacked by Governor Timmerman.  What about the faculty at Allen University?  Before describing them, I should say that it is a little artificial to separate  the faculty at the two schools.  Allen is across the street from Benedict, and at the time, the schools exchanged faculty and students.

Edwin D. Hoffman
Hoffman was a 40-year old Professor of History who'd been at Allen University since 1954.  He was born in Long Island, New York and studied at City College of New York and Columbia University, He had taught at Long Island University for seven years prior to coming to Allen.

It's unclear why he left Long Island for Columbia, SC.  A natural guess is that he'd been dismissed from LIU, but Timmerman didn't say this in his speech (and he highlighted the dismissals of the other professors).  He may have just left for personal or professional reasons.  (Update:  Hoffman wasn't dismissed from LIU.  He wanted to teach at a HBCU.  More here.)

Hoffman's highest degree was a Ed.D. (rather than a Ph.D.), but he seems to have studied African American history.  He published academic articles on the topic while at Allen.  He also seems to have been an excellent teacher.  Kay Patterson, a former state senator, speaks glowingly of being taught by him and Rideout in an interview.

After being dismissed from Allen University, Hoffman taught at Pembroke State College (a college which before the Brown decision had been for American Indians) for a few years before going to West Virginia State College (a public HBCU).

Hoffman worked in West Virginia until he retired in 1988.  He spent his retirement in California, teaching part time at Cal State Hayward.  He died in 2008.

Photo of John G. Rideout
From Thunder Bay University Yearbook

John G. Rideout
John. G Rideout was born in Vermont in 1915 and received a BA from Colby College, was a Rhodes Scholar at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, and received a Ph.D. in English from Brown University in 1945.  His dissertation was on the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelly.

He taught at several colleges before receiving his Ph.D. and then started teaching at the University of New Hampshire in 1946.   In New Hampshire, he became involved with left-wing politics, chairing the New Hampshire Progressive Party and running as their 1948 candidate for U.S. Senate.  These political activities attracted the attention of school and state officials, and he was forced to resign.  His resignation was reported in the New York Times in an article on challenges to academic freedom.

After leaving New Hampshire, he was able to find a position at Idaho State College in 1949, although his experience in New Hampshire was repeated, and he was forced to reign in 1953.  He ended up in Allen University after that, reportedly telling an associate that he was "going down there until things cool off".

After being dismissed from Allen, Rideout spent the next 6 years teaching at Huston-Tillotson University (a private HBCU in Austin, Texas) and then moved to Lakehead University (in Canada). He spent the rest of his career there, serving as Chair of the English Department for 16 years (1964 to 1980).  The university has honored him with a named award, the Rideout Memorial Bursary.  Rideout died in 1991.

While at Allen, Rideout was married to Miriam Rideout, and his children George and Margaret Bard were probably living at home.  As with many of the other professors, I can't find information about the other members of the Rideout family.

Forrest O. Wiggins
Photo from the University of Minnesota

Forrest Oran Wiggins
Forrest O. Wiggins was born in Indiana in 1907.  he received his B.A. from Butler University and then received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin in 1931, writing a dissertation on "The moral consequences of individualism".

After graduating, Wiggins taught at a series of HBCUs: Morehouse College, Howard University, Johnson C. Smith University, North Carolina College for Negroes (now NC Central University), and Louisville Municipal College.

He was hired by the University of Minnesota in 1946.  This was a significant event as he was the first African American professor hired at UM and one of only a handful of African Americans working a flagship state university.  He seems to have become involved with left-wing politics while at Minnesota.  Governor Timmerman, for example, says that he became an active member in the Socialist Workers Party in 1946, and he served as Vice Chairman of the Minnesota Progressive Party.  Wiggins was dismissed from Minnesota in 1952.

His dismissal was a major controversy.  The official reason for his dismissal was his poor scholarly record, although he had the support of both students and members of the Philosophy Department.  Professors in the Philosophy Department issued a 5-page report challenging the allegation's against Wiggins.  Wiggins contended that he was being dismissed because of his politics.  His job at Allen University was his first position after leaving Minnesota.

After being dismissed from Allen, he taught at Savannah State College for a few years before joining Hoffman at West Virginia State University, where he taught until he retired.  He died in Florida in 1982.


This series continues with "Timmerman Attacks: Hoffman Update."