Not So Popular Front: The Progressive Party of Massachusetts and the 1948 Elections

by James P. Whitters, III

Primary Advisor: Judith Smith

Secondary Reader: James Green

Abstract:
The method utilized in the final project was a narrative with a specific focus upon issues in Massachusetts involving blue-collar workers, women and people of color. Moreover, I searched for those "moments" and "impulses" where the Massachusetts Progressive Party (MPP) expressed or incorporated into its political, social and economic mission a connection to workers, women, and/or Negroes-I discovered such "moments" in the music, the demonstrations and boycotts utilized in worker-focused issues and Jim Crow discrimination tensions. Within the context of seeking such tensions or dialectics within Massachusetts society, I emphasized the language and methods of expressing dissent that the MPP employed to gain attention. The sources were found in extensive devoted to understanding the popular front progressive mindset in post-World War II and early Cold War America, extensive review of MPP papers at Boston University and University of Iowa, and oral histories with men and women who were active in the MPP. The major conclusions and themes incorporated in the paper are: (1) That historians have identified and focused far too much on CP affiliation and control of the PP and have failed to understand the significance and complexity of the PP's political positions and social analysis; (2) the PP was both visionary and on target in its criticisms of the two old parties on a number of key issues; (3) that the MPP linked the popular front movement of the 1930s to the post-war popular front, especially with regard to the prevalent racism and growing militarism based on a war-based economy; (4) the MPP was very independent of the national PP and conducted local campaigns and issue-based demonstrations on its own; (5) local issues were emphasized in all aspects of MPP's work (6) the MPP was hobbled by extensive red-baiting as well as the fact that Harry Truman and the Democratic Party "stole" much of the PP's domestic program-the result was that the PP's perceived base of voters, blue-collar workers and Negroes, largely abandoned the Progressive Party; (7) that the MPP and PP should be appreciated within the long view of American history for vision and prophecy with respect to a number of critical issues rather than either ignored outright or vilified as un-American; (8) there are "links" between the MPP and later day political movements in Massachusetts, especially with respect to peace and anti-nuclear, segregation and discrimination against black and feminist issues-certain individuals such as Jerome Grossman and Florence Luscomb are valid examples of the persistence of the popular front progressive vision and mission in local and national politics.

Who might be interested in reading this work?
Historians who are focused on the political realignment that occurred in the early Cold War period involving the Cold War liberals led by Reinhold Niebohr, Walter Reuther, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the popular front progressives led by Henry Wallace, Paul Robeson, and W. E. B. du Bois. Otherwise, historians who are interested in the American left in the 1940s; third parties in American politics-hos they influence the major parties and what are the barriers to election success; radicals in American politics and civil liberties issues in times of national mobilization for war; the left in Massachusetts during the Cold War.