Harry, Tom, and Father Rice: Accusation and Betrayal in America's Cold War

Harry, Tom and Father Rice: Accusation and Betrayal in America’s Cold War (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005) is a true story about three men whose lives intersect at a critical point early in the McCarthy Era. In 1949-50, Hoerr’s uncle, Congressman Harry Davenport of Pittsburgh, makes fateful decisions that destroy his political career and send his life spiraling downward to an ignominious end in a seedy hotel room. Fifty years later, through archival research and interviews with people who knew his uncle, the author exhumes the shameful McCarthyite tactics and betrayals on all sides that lay behind Davenport’s tragic decline. The search also uncovers the remarkable life of Harry’s friend, Pittsburgh labor leader Tom Quinn, who is falsely accused of communist activity in a 1949 congressional hearing arranged in part by Father Charles Owen Rice, a prounion priest and fierce anti-communist crusader. Forced to testify three times before congressional committees, Quinn defies the red hunters and, backed by a strong family, goes on to achieve success as a high-level labor mediator. But many of his union friends are unable to overcome the communist stigma and lose their jobs, families and self-respect in one of the most notorious political persecutions in American history.

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“John Hoerr has done a splendid job of recreating the atmosphere of the Red Scare, the damage it inflicted on many people’s lives, the ruthless battles that divided the CIO in Allegheny County, and the profound and enduring impact of that epoch on the labor movement and on the nation’s political life.” David Montgomery, labor historian, Yale University (comment on dust jacket).

“… an ambitious, often riveting account of a neglected piece of history, Hoerr relates the story through the lives of three people whose fates intersect in a complex tale of almost Shakespearean proportions.” Scott Stephens, The Plain Dealer, November 27, 2005.

“This book is a good read, and it humanizes the events of the McCarthy period in this country. [Tom] Quinn faces ten years of harassment and threats of jail time, despite never being a Communist or member of the Communist Party.” Bruce Nissen, Florida International University, Labor Studies Journal, Spring 2006.

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