From Anne Braden
Author: Braden, Anne (Southern Conference Educational Fund)
Date: November 24, 1961
Location: Louisville, Ky.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Albany Movement
Details
After learning that film advisor Bertram Edises was a former member in the Communist Party, Anne Braden reassures King regarding his participation in a documentary about the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Braden insists that King’s “philosophy is so unmistakably clear and you believe in it with such strong conviction and state it so lucidly that no misinterpretation is possible.”1 Despite Braden’s reassurances, King opted out of the project.2
Dear Martin:
I had a letter today from Bert Edises, one of the people working on that film on the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil liberties, about which I wrote you previously.3
I had written him, after receiving your letter, that you had said you would be glad to appear in the film.4
He is trying to work out the mechanics of getting you on film, and I talked to him by phone yesterday too. At that time, he told me that after writing the letter which I received today he had spoken with Wyatt on the phone and that Wyatt will work with him on the mechanics—time and arrangements, etc. What he is thinking of now is a four-way conversation in the film, between you and Fred [Shuttlesworth] and Ralph [Abernathy] and Wyatt if they are all agreeable (Fred has told me he is, but I have not heard directly from Ralph).5
I think this would be very dynamic and effective if it is possible for all of you to get together. However, since Wyatt will be working on this, I need not go into details on mechanics here.
However, I am writing to you now because there is a paragraph in Bert’s letter pertaining to something else, which I should pass on to you and the others right away. He writes:
“In all fairness, Dr. King and the others should be told that while Robert Cohen, and not Bertram Edises, is the producer, still I am in a sense the inspirer of this film, and that while I am not a Communist I was one ten years ago, and that in the eyes of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) I am still one—and will always be until I consent to join HUAC’s stable of informers—which will be never. If this means that the ministers will feel unable to participate, it is the film’s loss, and I think the nation’s loss too. Nevertheless there must be absolute honesty as far as myself and my role in the making of the film are concerned. The ministers, like all others who volunteer to participate, will have the right to delete their contribution if the final version of the film does not meet with their approval.”6
Since I did not have this information when I wrote you about this project originally, I of course feel obligated to send the information along now. I must say though that it seems a little bit of too bad to me that a person in Bert Edises position should feel obliged to go into what his politics were ten years ago in approaching people about what is obviously a good project now. But I suppose this is a part of the crazy times we live in, and in light of this, I feel that it is very fair and considerate of him to bring this up now.
I will be interested in knowing what your feeling about this is. My own feeling is that the key question here is not what the past politics of someone connected with the film are; rather the key thing is what the film itself, intrinsically, is going to say and do. If it were going to be a film promoting communism, that would be a very different matter. But in reading the outline and discussing the concept with those makingit it, I find no indication that there will be even an inkling of such an idea in the film. Rather, it appears that its only purpose will be to promote democracy and civil liberties. If it doesn’t turn out that way in the finished product, of course, all participants, as Bert notes, will have the right to withdraw.
I assume of course that the film will be attacked by HUAC and its followers, but this would not be because of Edises but because of what the film will say and could be expected in any event, if it were made by anyone. However, as I have told you before, I think you are far above any such attack and absolutely invulnerable, in the deepest sense, to it—because your own philosophy is so unmistakably clear and you believe in it with such strong conviction and state it so lucidly that no misinterpretation is possible. I assume that you would state it in the film and that this in itself would make it impossible for anyone to misunderstand.
Edises sent a copy of his letter to me to Wyatt, but I also want to get the information covered in this letter to Fred and Ralph. I am leaving town shortly to go spend tomorrow (Saturday) with Carl, and in the interest of saving time, I am just going to send Fred and Ralph copies of this letter.7 A copy also goes to Wyatt for his information.
Warm regards,
[signed] Anne
Anne Braden
1. King was initially chosen for an interview to discuss HUAC’s negative impact on desegregation efforts. Edises was a civil rights lawyer from Oakland, California, who successfully challenged a HUAC charge of contempt in Fagerhaugh v. United States, 232 F.2d 803 (1956).
2. In a letter to Robert Cohen, the film’s producer, Wyatt Tee Walker explained that although King agreed to participate in the film, the announcement that Edises had been a member of the Communist Party “necessitated a revaluation of the prior decision,” noting Edises’s political associations would “create more problems than we have time to deal with as it relates to the major work of Dr. King” (Walker to Robert Carl Cohen, 30 January 1962). In 1959 King had spoken out against HUAC following the committee’s accusations of communist involvement in the United Packinghouse Workers of America. King vouched for the integrity of the union, arguing that “it is tragic indeed that some of our reactionary brothers in America will go to the limit of giving Communism credit for all good things that happen in our nation. It is a dark day indeed when men cannot work to implement the ideal of brotherhood without being labeled communist” (King, Statement on House Committee on Un-American Activities Hearings on the United Packinghouse Workers of America, 11 June 1959, in Papers 5:226–227).
3. Edises to Braden, 21 November 1961.
4. King to Braden, 7 November 1961.
5. Only Walker appeared in the film.
6. Edises to Braden, 21 November 1961.
7. Braden’s husband Carl was serving a one-year prison sentence for refusing to testify before HUAC (see Braden to King, 30 May 1961, pp. 238–241 in this volume).
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Boston, Mass.