Latest / Revisionist History / John Birch vs. the PTA

Transcript

John Birch vs. the PTA · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. I want to read to you from a very
0:22
Speaker 1: important historical document, the April nineteen sixty two edition of
0:28
Speaker 1: the wellby Way Elementary School Parent Teacher Association newsletter, The
0:33
Speaker 1: well Be Buzzings, written of course, by the PTA of
0:37
Speaker 1: the elementary school in the West Hills area of Los Angeles.
0:42
Speaker 1: First item, President's message. I would like to say thank
0:46
Speaker 1: you to the ladies that work so hard on the
0:49
Speaker 1: and this is all in caps double parking safety campaign.
0:53
Speaker 1: Second item sing along with progress PTA meeting for April.
0:57
Speaker 1: Our hostesses will be the sixth grade mothers. Third item
1:01
Speaker 1: a meeting on safety in fire prevention. Fourth item an
1:04
Speaker 1: interesting and informative trip to the fire station. Fifth item
1:08
Speaker 1: the local count meeting. Key detail. It's going to be
1:11
Speaker 1: a luncheon. Are you still there? Still awake? Four announcements
1:19
Speaker 1: on school safety, a fifth on participatory democracy. A luncheon.
1:24
Speaker 1: I'm guessing you're poored to tears. It's all so very PTA.
1:28
Speaker 1: The only things missing are the potluck supper, the newspaper drive,
1:33
Speaker 1: the book fair. But that's where you're wrong. This newsletter is,
1:40
Speaker 1: in fact the skeleton key to understanding our political moment
1:44
Speaker 1: right now. Like this exact moment. If you're listening to
1:47
Speaker 1: this episode soon after its release, there are two things
1:50
Speaker 1: going on in your world, the US presidential election between
1:54
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and more Halloween candy than
1:58
Speaker 1: you know what to do with. Well in this episode
2:01
Speaker 1: a story that manages to bring both together. It all
2:07
Speaker 1: really begins with the Well Being PTA newsletter from April
2:11
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, and specifically with the sixth and final item,
2:17
Speaker 1: the editor's message, which begins the power to seek the
2:22
Speaker 1: truth is within all of us. But there are some
2:24
Speaker 1: who abuse this freedom and cloud the answers and the issues,
2:29
Speaker 1: so that seeking the truth and knowing it is the
2:31
Speaker 1: truth becomes a harder task than it was ever meant
2:35
Speaker 1: to be. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about
2:40
Speaker 1: things overlooked and misunderstood. I'm Malcolm Goldwell. Here's our question, why,
2:46
Speaker 1: in this otherwise very dull PTA newsletter does the mother
2:50
Speaker 1: who wrote it feel the need to write an urgent
2:53
Speaker 1: defense of democracy. She doesn't say, but as my colleague
2:59
Speaker 1: BENDADAPF Hafrey discovered, it has to do with a man who,
3:02
Speaker 1: perhaps more than almost anyone else, is responsible for creating
3:06
Speaker 1: the modern style of far right conspiratorial thinking running rampant today.
3:12
Speaker 1: A man who write, at the time that Editor's note
3:15
Speaker 1: was published, held in his hands the fate of the
3:19
Speaker 1: PTA and American public life. Here's Ben.
3:32
Speaker 2: The video is grainy, but you can make out an
3:35
Speaker 2: older man, late sixties, standing in a suit and tie
3:39
Speaker 2: against a black backdrop, clasping his hands on a lecturn.
3:43
Speaker 3: Faithful citizens, wherever.
3:45
Speaker 4: You may be.
3:47
Speaker 2: He's got big ears, a big nose, and a high
3:50
Speaker 2: forehead well suited to an indignant raising of the eyebrows.
3:54
Speaker 2: The media coverage of him lately had given him many
3:56
Speaker 2: opportunities to do this. As he speaks, the camera pushes in.
4:01
Speaker 2: It's a recruitment video.
4:03
Speaker 3: It is our deliberate and careful purpose to pull together
4:07
Speaker 3: into one group, a body of morally good and truly
4:11
Speaker 3: responsible citizens who are proud of each other and of
4:15
Speaker 3: the society to which they belong.
4:18
Speaker 2: He then proceeds to reassure his viewers that the identities
4:21
Speaker 2: of people in this group are never shared with anyone,
4:24
Speaker 2: not least of all because their enemies abound.
4:27
Speaker 3: The carefully coordinated attacks against us from all points of
4:31
Speaker 3: the ideological compass have reached a crescendo stage since the
4:36
Speaker 3: rest of this year, with the surprising but visible result
4:40
Speaker 3: of solidifying the dedication of our numbers still further, and
4:45
Speaker 3: of stimulating their recruiting efforts.
4:49
Speaker 2: This is Robert Welch Junior. Consider the facts. He speaks
4:54
Speaker 2: a little like a dictator. He seems to run some
4:57
Speaker 2: sort of secret society, and consider himself public enemy number one.
5:02
Speaker 2: Who is this titan? Well, naturally he's a candy tycoon.
5:09
Speaker 2: Robert Welch Junior was born on a former plantation in
5:12
Speaker 2: North Carolina just before the turn of the twentieth century.
5:16
Speaker 2: As a kid, he was precocious and a daydreamer. Wanted
5:20
Speaker 2: to be a writer an intellectual, but he felt that
5:23
Speaker 2: before he could do so, he had to get rich.
5:26
Speaker 2: So one night, as a young man, he had a brainstorm.
5:29
Speaker 2: According to Edward H. Miller, who wrote a biography of
5:32
Speaker 2: Welsh called A Conspiratorial Life, Welch stayed up late into
5:36
Speaker 2: the evening, writing and writing to answer a single question,
5:40
Speaker 2: what specific goods in demand would be best for me
5:43
Speaker 2: to start manufacturing without either capital or experience. This is
5:48
Speaker 2: a quote Miller found from an associate of Welsh's recalling
5:51
Speaker 2: this legendary moment quote. As the sky began to show
5:55
Speaker 2: the first streaks of dawn, Robert stared at the notes
5:59
Speaker 2: in front of him. One word remained amid the maze
6:02
Speaker 2: of dark lines scratched across the pages. That word was candy.
6:10
Speaker 2: We've arrived at the Halloween portion of our programming. So
6:14
Speaker 2: if in your baskets this year you find the following
6:17
Speaker 2: candies Sugar Daddy, Sugar Baby, or the Junior Mint, you're
6:21
Speaker 2: encountering a piece of the Welsh legacy, and actually the
6:24
Speaker 2: legacy of his brother too, who naturally also worked in
6:27
Speaker 2: the candy business. The Welsh nuclear family of Hit candies,
6:31
Speaker 2: the patriarch of which the Sugar Daddy, I have to
6:33
Speaker 2: say I find totally inedible, has been a mainstay forever.
6:38
Speaker 2: Children of the nineteen eighties may remember the jingle for
6:43
Speaker 2: Sugar Daddy for.
6:47
Speaker 5: Sugar Dirty.
6:51
Speaker 2: Welsh was part of what I've come to think of
6:53
Speaker 2: as the American sweets aristocracy. I'm talking about a special
6:57
Speaker 2: class of confectioners and bakers who turned out to have
7:00
Speaker 2: a surprising number of ideas about how society ought to
7:02
Speaker 2: be run. In the Pantheon, we have Milton's Navely Hershey,
7:07
Speaker 2: whose chocolates were so delectable he was able to put
7:09
Speaker 2: his social ideas to the test, building utopian town called Hershey, Pennsylvania.
7:14
Speaker 2: Then there's Sylvester Graham, the clergyman who invented the Graham
7:18
Speaker 2: Cracker to combat youth masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg, the Seventh
7:22
Speaker 2: day Adventist, who invented cornflakes to do the same. The
7:26
Speaker 2: candy makers, in particular tended to be extremely paranoid because
7:30
Speaker 2: there was actually quite a bit of spying in their industry.
7:33
Speaker 2: They had to guard their secrets, their recipes, their fortunes.
7:37
Speaker 2: Some would even blindfold the people who repaired their machines.
7:41
Speaker 2: But I digress. After establishing himself in the candy business
7:46
Speaker 2: and drinking deeply at the trough of its paranoia, Welch
7:50
Speaker 2: set out to elbow his way into the intellectual class,
7:53
Speaker 2: specifically the anti communist class. Over the years, he wrote
7:58
Speaker 2: a number of articles in books about the rise of communism, including,
8:02
Speaker 2: per his biographer, a novel about in ant society oppressed
8:05
Speaker 2: by a monolithic state, which somehow went unpublished. But it
8:09
Speaker 2: was in nineteen fifty four that one of his ideas
8:12
Speaker 2: finally broke through.
8:14
Speaker 5: He was very secretive about these because Welch was always
8:19
Speaker 5: worried about the Communists as he saw getting a hold
8:24
Speaker 5: of what he was saying.
8:26
Speaker 2: Historian Matthew Dallak, author of the book Bircher's, talking about
8:30
Speaker 2: Welch's penchant for sending secret letters because.
8:34
Speaker 5: They exposed him and they damaged you know, the true
8:39
Speaker 5: this patriotic movement to destroy communism. It would be it
8:45
Speaker 5: would basically be like killing his movement in the crypt.
8:49
Speaker 2: Now, the letter he sent in nineteen fifty four, in particular,
8:53
Speaker 2: merited sensitivity. It was a roughly nine thousand word attempt
8:58
Speaker 2: to explain why he disliked Dwight Eisenhower so much, the
9:02
Speaker 2: first Republican president in multiple decades. The letter built to
9:07
Speaker 2: the irrefutable conclusion that Dwight Eisenhower was not really a Republican.
9:12
Speaker 2: He was quote a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,
9:18
Speaker 2: operating under the direction of his brother, the affable Milton.
9:23
Speaker 5: They're really divorced from any semblance of the truth. The
9:28
Speaker 5: other thing, though, is that the argument against Eisenhower I
9:33
Speaker 5: think fits into the Joe McCarthy argument that clearly the
9:41
Speaker 5: setbacks in the world for the United States and the
9:44
Speaker 5: fight against communism is a result of communists in the government,
9:49
Speaker 5: including Eisenhower, allowing the communists to win.
9:54
Speaker 2: Where the ant book had failed, the letter succeeded wildly.
9:58
Speaker 2: It ballooned into a book that is over four hundred
10:01
Speaker 2: pages long, complete with an extremely tedious footnote section explaining
10:05
Speaker 2: the sourcing for his atlandish claims. As wels Us wrote,
10:10
Speaker 2: explanations are like government. Nobody loves them, but a minimum
10:13
Speaker 2: amount of both is a necessary evil. But anyway, Welch
10:18
Speaker 2: was not content to mail secret letters the rest of
10:20
Speaker 2: his life. He wanted to build a movement. So four
10:26
Speaker 2: years after that letter, in October nineteen fifty eight, Welch
10:30
Speaker 2: brought together eleven of his most powerful friends to a
10:34
Speaker 2: secret meeting in Indianapolis. He didn't say what for, but
10:39
Speaker 2: he did tell them each to book their own hotel
10:41
Speaker 2: rooms so people wouldn't see them together. Then he promised
10:44
Speaker 2: them that there was nothing conspiratorial about what they were
10:47
Speaker 2: about to do, which was to gather in a secret
10:50
Speaker 2: location for two days and conspire.
10:54
Speaker 3: My undertaking today is to try to tell you all
10:56
Speaker 3: about the background, methods, and purposes of the John Birg Society.
11:00
Speaker 2: This tape is from a recruitment video he made later on.
11:04
Speaker 2: We don't have a recording of what he said that
11:06
Speaker 2: day in Indianapolis. I mean, it was a secret meeting,
11:09
Speaker 2: but I think it's safe to assume he was on message.
11:12
Speaker 2: Welch was there to start a new anti communist organization.
11:16
Speaker 2: After all, with the Communists already in control of the
11:19
Speaker 2: US presidency, the situation was getting a little out of hand.
11:23
Speaker 3: As we have said many times before, the fundamentally decent
11:27
Speaker 3: American mind simply refuses to recognize the nature of the
11:31
Speaker 3: cunning beasts who constitute our enemies today. This is especially
11:36
Speaker 3: true when these criminal gangsters assume all of the suavity
11:41
Speaker 3: and regalia of high office.
11:44
Speaker 2: Eleven men walked into that room in Indianapolis, and the
11:48
Speaker 2: John Birch Society walked out, named by the way for
11:51
Speaker 2: an American missionary who'd been killed by Chinese communists and
11:55
Speaker 2: then became a kind of patron saint for people like
11:57
Speaker 2: Robert Welch Junior. These were important men with money and
12:01
Speaker 2: time to burn and an acts to grind. They had
12:04
Speaker 2: Eisenhower's former IRS Commissioner, presidents of major companies, a former
12:09
Speaker 2: aid to Douglas MacArthur, and Fred Koch, oil man and
12:13
Speaker 2: father to the Koch brothers, was there too.
12:17
Speaker 3: I'll wake my friends and our rise now I'll be
12:20
Speaker 3: forever fallen. We mean business and we can still win,
12:24
Speaker 3: but we are in our race against time, with the
12:27
Speaker 3: enemy advancing every day.
12:30
Speaker 2: Welch knew what he was doing. He took his show
12:32
Speaker 2: on the road, giving versions of that speech across the country,
12:36
Speaker 2: and a lot of the listeners, bored Americans rattled by
12:39
Speaker 2: war and freaked out by integration, thought hey, this guy's
12:43
Speaker 2: got a point. He started with just his friends who
12:46
Speaker 2: thought like he did, then his friend's friends, and then
12:49
Speaker 2: his friend's friends friends. But Welch's dreams were always much grander.
12:56
Speaker 3: By any realistic appraisal of our size against our need,
13:00
Speaker 3: we are still very small, but we certainly expect our
13:03
Speaker 3: present growth to continue until we have the million members
13:07
Speaker 3: of Ferva page and unassailable character, which is our goal.
13:13
Speaker 2: Despite Welsh's vision for one million patriots to join the
13:16
Speaker 2: John Birch Society, estimates show that the membership was likely
13:20
Speaker 2: at an all time high when it hit thirty thousand
13:22
Speaker 2: members in the sixties.
13:25
Speaker 5: The mission was not explicitly to take over a political party.
13:30
Speaker 5: It was not to even take over in nessilly American institutions.
13:36
Speaker 5: It was to wage a mass education campaign to allure Americans,
13:42
Speaker 5: to educate them about the dire nature of the communist
13:46
Speaker 5: conspiracy inside the United States.
13:50
Speaker 2: And so a small but influential group of right wingers
13:53
Speaker 2: became convinced that there was a war going on at home.
13:57
Speaker 3: A continuous, undeclared war in which our enemiests observed no
14:02
Speaker 3: rules of international law, of civilization, or of human decency.
14:08
Speaker 2: But where was the front in this war? Exactly two
14:12
Speaker 2: years after its founding, the Birch Society had part of
14:16
Speaker 2: the answer the Parent Teacher Association. Of course, we'll be
14:24
Speaker 2: right back. The bitter Root Valley lies in the southwest
14:41
Speaker 2: of Montana, between the Sapphire and Bitterroot Mountains. It's the
14:45
Speaker 2: place they filmed Yellowstone Today. It's gorgeous.
14:49
Speaker 6: Okay, so small town.
14:52
Speaker 2: Gail Laro Munson was a little girl growing up in
14:54
Speaker 2: the valley in the nineteen sixties in a town called Darby.
14:58
Speaker 2: Back then, its population was three hundred and ninety eight.
15:02
Speaker 6: Close snit neighbors looked out for each other. Kids could
15:05
Speaker 6: be out till dark and back home they would be safe.
15:11
Speaker 6: If you were caught doing something wrong, the neighbors would
15:15
Speaker 6: let your parents know and they'd be ready when you
15:17
Speaker 6: got home.
15:19
Speaker 2: Darby was the kind of place where you knew everyone,
15:22
Speaker 2: especially if you were in Gale's family. Her dad, or
15:24
Speaker 2: Villa Rowe, was the superintendent of the school district, but
15:29
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen sixties, strangers began to show up
15:32
Speaker 2: in the valley. Orville was busy right around then getting
15:36
Speaker 2: new Bibles for a local school because there as we're
15:38
Speaker 2: all beaten up. He asked a local clergyman how to
15:41
Speaker 2: get rid of the old ones in a respectful way,
15:43
Speaker 2: and he was told to burn them. So he gathered
15:46
Speaker 2: up the bibles and set them on fire, and all
15:49
Speaker 2: of a sudden, those strangers leapt into action. It turned
15:53
Speaker 2: out they were part of a club, the John Birch Society.
15:59
Speaker 7: Merch members appeared at the regular school board meeting with
16:02
Speaker 7: a petition demanding that Larree not be offered a new contract.
16:06
Speaker 2: It was all over the local radio.
16:09
Speaker 7: Majority of the board rejected that demand. This action of
16:12
Speaker 7: the board intensified an already steady program of intimidation against
16:17
Speaker 7: the role in his family.
16:19
Speaker 2: The Butchers. Returning Orville's quiet life in Derby with his
16:22
Speaker 2: three kids and his wife completely upside down. Here's Orville.
16:27
Speaker 8: There are individuals, of course the community who will drive
16:32
Speaker 8: by and make obscene signs. There have been an incidents
16:37
Speaker 8: where people have called the house my wife had answered
16:41
Speaker 8: and have used obscene language on the telephone. Basically, it's
16:46
Speaker 8: a joy, simple constant harassment.
16:50
Speaker 2: An archivist in Montana named Kristen Gates wrote an essay
16:53
Speaker 2: about all this. She found letters from the principle of
16:57
Speaker 2: the local school who said the butchers were quote using
17:01
Speaker 2: the local PTA as a springboard to infiltrate the schools.
17:10
Speaker 2: Here I'm telling you about what unfolded for the LaRose
17:13
Speaker 2: in a tiny town in Montana. But they weren't the
17:16
Speaker 2: only people involved in local ptas or schools who became targets.
17:21
Speaker 2: This is not the case now, but in the nineteen sixties,
17:24
Speaker 2: according to one study, almost half of all families in
17:27
Speaker 2: America were represented in the PTA fifty percent. The PTA
17:32
Speaker 2: became such a well known part of public life that
17:35
Speaker 2: it was even the subject of a number one song
17:38
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties, Harper Valley PTA.
17:42
Speaker 3: And it was signed by the secretary Harper Valetta.
17:51
Speaker 2: The PTA played a huge role in modernizing American education.
17:55
Speaker 2: Every local PTA was part of the National PTA, which
17:58
Speaker 2: was run out of Washington, and they worked together to
18:01
Speaker 2: petition schools to adapt and modernize, like a miniature version
18:05
Speaker 2: of the federal government. It was actually originally called the
18:08
Speaker 2: Congress of Mother Anyways, all this paid dividends. If you've
18:12
Speaker 2: drunk fluoridated water, which you have gotten vaccinated in schools,
18:17
Speaker 2: gone to a public kindergarten, or just been at a
18:19
Speaker 2: school that received federal funds, you can thank the PTA
18:23
Speaker 2: next bakesale, maybe by a cookie. As a sociologist, Robert
18:28
Speaker 2: Putnam writes, the PTA in its day was quote one
18:32
Speaker 2: of the most impressive organizational success stories in American history
18:38
Speaker 2: end quote. And who at that exact moment wanted to
18:44
Speaker 2: pull off another of the most impressive organizational success stories
18:47
Speaker 2: in American history Dark Willy Wonka Robert Welch Junior, whose
18:52
Speaker 2: recruiting methods were slightly more apocalyptic.
18:56
Speaker 3: The Wise and the Brave, do not hold back, gonna
18:59
Speaker 3: kill it is too late.
19:01
Speaker 2: In its newsletter, the John Birch Society told its members
19:04
Speaker 2: to quote join your local PTA at the beginning of
19:07
Speaker 2: the school year. Get your conservative friends to do likewise
19:11
Speaker 2: and go to work to take it over, you will
19:14
Speaker 2: run into real battles against determined leftists who have had
19:18
Speaker 2: everything their way. But it is time we went on
19:20
Speaker 2: the offensive to make such groups the instrument of conservative
19:24
Speaker 2: purpose with the same vigor and determination that the liberals
19:28
Speaker 2: have used to the opposite aims. With encouragement from the
19:33
Speaker 2: John Birch Society, extremists of all stripes started showing up
19:37
Speaker 2: to local ptas across the country trying to take them over.
19:41
Speaker 4: You know, all kinds of methods were being used.
19:44
Speaker 2: Sarah Heath, a historian at Indiana University Kocomo.
19:48
Speaker 4: So, the Birch Society might pack cars full of people,
19:52
Speaker 4: so if I bring thirty people to a local meeting
19:55
Speaker 4: of a PTA.
19:57
Speaker 6: But basically what they.
19:57
Speaker 4: Would try to do is, if I can get thirty
20:00
Speaker 4: people to go to this one local meeting, we can
20:03
Speaker 4: try to take over the proceedings of that meeting.
20:06
Speaker 2: Suddenly, amid the conversations about fire safety and participatory democracy,
20:11
Speaker 2: parents had to consider things like whether skipping the pledge
20:14
Speaker 2: of allegiance at the start of a meeting made you
20:16
Speaker 2: a Stalin level communist or an Eisenhower level one. Such
20:20
Speaker 2: considerations it turned out demand quite a bit of everyone's.
20:23
Speaker 4: Time, because what they wanted to do was first get
20:28
Speaker 4: some people to get so tired that they would just say,
20:31
Speaker 4: I've got to go home, right. PTA meetings are usually
20:33
Speaker 4: in the early evening, so some people would leave. Then
20:37
Speaker 4: they call the vote, and then they have a majority.
20:41
Speaker 2: The virtuers wanted to use the ptas to reach school
20:43
Speaker 2: boards so they could change the textbooks and root out
20:46
Speaker 2: all the commune and sex education stuff. But a lot
20:49
Speaker 2: of what they did was actual harassment.
20:52
Speaker 4: You know. There are examples of people throwing trash on
20:55
Speaker 4: the lawns of PTA members, or threatening people by the phone,
21:00
Speaker 4: calling them at all hours of the night, you know,
21:03
Speaker 4: just to keep them awake.
21:05
Speaker 2: The PTA fought back in classic PTA form, with pamphlet
21:09
Speaker 2: and lists of meeting best practices, but this was a
21:12
Speaker 2: little like bringing knives to a gunfight. At this point,
21:15
Speaker 2: there'd even been a report of a bombing at a
21:17
Speaker 2: restaurant where a PTA meeting was going to be held.
21:20
Speaker 2: This is what happens when you talk about national politics,
21:23
Speaker 2: like Robert Welsch Junior, like you're in a shadowy.
21:26
Speaker 3: War, a continuous, undeclared war in which our enemies observed
21:32
Speaker 3: no rules of international law of civilization are of human decency.
21:38
Speaker 2: The PTA kept pushing back in their own way against
21:41
Speaker 2: the virtures. There's even a quote from the PTA president
21:44
Speaker 2: in the congressional record saying, these extremists are not really
21:48
Speaker 2: after the PTA, but are attempting to gain control of
21:52
Speaker 2: it to get at their real objective, the educational system.
21:57
Speaker 2: But for Orville Row, the superintendent in Darby, Montana, these
22:02
Speaker 2: extremists weren't some faraway thing. They were at his doorstep.
22:07
Speaker 8: And I walked home in the evening. At times I've
22:10
Speaker 8: had a car follow me. Ordinarily, they apparently are cowards
22:14
Speaker 8: because when I stopped and gone over to take their
22:18
Speaker 8: license them But there was how the picture.
22:23
Speaker 2: But the aggression wasn't just limited to Orville. Orville's eldest
22:28
Speaker 2: son was a fifth grader in the local school. One day,
22:31
Speaker 2: there was a basketball game. He was sitting in the
22:33
Speaker 2: stands watching. He was not an unpopular kid, but midway
22:37
Speaker 2: through the game, a couple of classmates walked up to him.
22:41
Speaker 2: They pulled him out of his seat and they began
22:44
Speaker 2: to beat him mercilessly. This is Gail again, his.
22:48
Speaker 6: Sister, and when they were beating him up. He was
22:51
Speaker 6: at a basketball game in the gym and other kids
22:56
Speaker 6: were sturing it on.
22:58
Speaker 2: The kids weren't Birchers all they knew he was Orville,
23:02
Speaker 2: the Bible Burner's son.
23:04
Speaker 8: Then he's coming into the house and ask pissed why
23:07
Speaker 8: they are calling him names?
23:10
Speaker 3: Is I didn't do anything?
23:12
Speaker 8: And of course it's rather had to explain, very youngster
23:14
Speaker 8: in that age.
23:15
Speaker 6: He came home bloodied, he was We were all confused,
23:20
Speaker 6: why you know, what did I do? Why did this happen?
23:24
Speaker 2: The tipping point came when Orville le Rowe was driving
23:28
Speaker 2: his whole family along one of the roads around Derby.
23:31
Speaker 2: Suddenly another car appeared and tried to run them off
23:35
Speaker 2: the road. They all could have died, and that was
23:39
Speaker 2: the last straw. After years of harassment, he decided it
23:44
Speaker 2: was time to leave Derby.
23:47
Speaker 6: He sacrificed for the family. And I know that was
23:50
Speaker 6: a really difficult thing to not stay in fight, because
23:54
Speaker 6: my dad has so much integrity and he's a tough guy,
23:59
Speaker 6: and if he hadn't had a family, I firmly believe
24:05
Speaker 6: my brothers and I believe he would have stayed and
24:07
Speaker 6: he would have fought this situation.
24:11
Speaker 2: The people of Derby had a picnic for the LaRose
24:13
Speaker 2: before they packed up and left. Montana had been Orville's
24:17
Speaker 2: home since he was a kid, the place he'd loved
24:20
Speaker 2: to fish and hunt, taught school, and raised a family.
24:23
Speaker 2: When the LaRose left, the school system didn't just lose
24:27
Speaker 2: its superintendent, It fell apart. There were twenty three teachers
24:32
Speaker 2: in the Derby Consolidated School that fall, only seven went
24:36
Speaker 2: back to work. Things were never the same for the
24:40
Speaker 2: Lereaux family either. When I called the kids up, none
24:43
Speaker 2: of them really wanted to talk about this. Then they
24:46
Speaker 2: changed their mind, I think, if I had to guess,
24:49
Speaker 2: because they wanted to stand up against the people who
24:52
Speaker 2: did this to their family, to their father and also
24:57
Speaker 2: to their mother.
24:57
Speaker 6: Dorothy, mydad said before this happened, she was such a
25:03
Speaker 6: fun person, great sense of humor. I'd love to hear
25:07
Speaker 6: my dead stories of because I didn't, I didn't witness
25:12
Speaker 6: a lot of this, and so you know, we were
25:16
Speaker 6: all cheated out of an amazing person. And just I
25:26
Speaker 6: just I just can picture her kind of don't don't
25:30
Speaker 6: tell you know, the neighbors this, don't tell the neighbors that,
25:36
Speaker 6: don't tell anybody this, don't tell anybody this.
25:41
Speaker 2: They moved from one small town to another, but Dorothy
25:45
Speaker 2: never could quite trust her neighbors again. What came of
25:49
Speaker 2: the Birch Society and the PTA after the break? A
26:06
Speaker 2: little while ago I stopped by a house in Los Angeles.
26:10
Speaker 2: It was shaded by a sycamore tree, and there was
26:12
Speaker 2: a root sixty six sign leaning in the front windowsill,
26:15
Speaker 2: facing the quiet street. I was there to talk to
26:18
Speaker 2: a woman named Marva Felchlin. Marva grew up in California
26:22
Speaker 2: and was a student at welby Way Elementary School. She
26:26
Speaker 2: was a baby boomer in the classical sense, a house
26:29
Speaker 2: in a safe and lovely subdivision, a dad in the
26:31
Speaker 2: defense industry, and a mom in the PTA that, yes,
26:35
Speaker 2: Bircher's had tried to take over. Her mom's name was Zelda,
26:40
Speaker 2: and she never got over what happened.
26:43
Speaker 9: It's a big thing that happened in our lives.
26:46
Speaker 5: Why do you think the story had banded to your
26:47
Speaker 5: mother so much?
26:52
Speaker 9: Because I think you know, the PTA and her activities
26:57
Speaker 9: in the PTA probably represented, as with other women in there,
27:01
Speaker 9: a lot of what they believed in. And here they're
27:05
Speaker 9: being accused of being liars and dishonest and Unamerican. Those
27:12
Speaker 9: of those people were probably children of immigrants. I mean,
27:15
Speaker 9: that's a serious accusation in those anytime.
27:18
Speaker 2: But in those days, Zelda had always wanted to be
27:22
Speaker 2: a writer. She once submitted a script to the Twilight Zone,
27:26
Speaker 2: but the place she really wrote was her Parent Teacher
27:29
Speaker 2: Association newsletter. It's the one we read from at the
27:32
Speaker 2: beginning of this episode, the April nineteen sixty two edition
27:36
Speaker 2: of the welby Way Elementary School PTA newsletter The Well
27:40
Speaker 2: be Buzzings With the curious editor's note, Zelda wrote that
27:45
Speaker 2: when Bircher's across the country were trying to take down
27:48
Speaker 2: the PTA, she took to her newsletter to fight back.
27:53
Speaker 9: I don't I'm not surprised that my mother pushed back
27:55
Speaker 9: in any way, because that's I think she's kind of
27:58
Speaker 9: that kind of personality that she didn't stand for a
28:01
Speaker 9: lot of crap.
28:02
Speaker 2: You know, Marva has held on to the original copy
28:06
Speaker 2: of that newsletter for years. I asked her to read
28:09
Speaker 2: me the editor's message.
28:12
Speaker 9: Okay, the power to seek the truth is within all
28:15
Speaker 9: of us. The way in which we seek it is
28:18
Speaker 9: privilege and right of all of us. We are fortunate
28:21
Speaker 9: enough to live under a system of government that secures
28:25
Speaker 9: and protects that right. But there are some who abuse
28:28
Speaker 9: this freedom and cloud the answers and the issues, so
28:32
Speaker 9: that seeking the truth and knowing it is the truth
28:35
Speaker 9: becomes a harder task than it was ever meant to be.
28:39
Speaker 9: I say this, give me the right to seek the truth,
28:42
Speaker 9: but justly, and rationally and kindly. Give me the wisdom
28:47
Speaker 9: to understand and recognize the truth simply, without unseen or
28:51
Speaker 9: unknown factors behind it. Give me the wisdom to use
28:55
Speaker 9: the truth properly, openly, knowingly, and in its entirety, without
28:59
Speaker 9: bending or twisting said truth to fit my own purposes.
29:04
Speaker 9: Give me the graciousness to accept the truth, although it
29:07
Speaker 9: may disagree with or disapprove my own personal opinions and beliefs.
29:13
Speaker 9: And last, give me the wisdom and right to seek
29:16
Speaker 9: the truth in whatever manner I so choose, so long
29:20
Speaker 9: as I in the manner I have chosen, do not
29:23
Speaker 9: belittle or deface the object of my search, so long
29:26
Speaker 9: as I can honestly say to myself it is the
29:29
Speaker 9: truth alone that I am seeking. So the last off editor.
29:38
Speaker 2: During those same years when Bircher's were mobbing PTA meetings,
29:42
Speaker 2: the PTA as a national organization began to die for good.
29:46
Speaker 2: It just kept losing members until it became effectively a
29:50
Speaker 2: loose group of local organizations. It still exists, but you
29:55
Speaker 2: wouldn't write a number one song about it anymore. I
29:59
Speaker 2: don't think that was all the doing of the Birch Society,
30:01
Speaker 2: though it certainly didn't help. The rise of the Butchers
30:05
Speaker 2: in the fall of the PTA were both part of
30:07
Speaker 2: the backlash to Brown versus Board of Education, a response
30:11
Speaker 2: to integration and civil rights. The Birch Society went into
30:15
Speaker 2: decline then too. It had become radioactive, mocked to death
30:18
Speaker 2: in the press, repudiated by even William F. Buckley, turned
30:22
Speaker 2: on by mainstream Republicans, torn by its own infighting, investigated
30:26
Speaker 2: by the Anti Defamation League in the FBI, but it
30:30
Speaker 2: never vanished. Robert Welch Junior was involved with the Birch
30:34
Speaker 2: Society almost until his death in nineteen eighty five. Under
30:37
Speaker 2: the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who, true to form wels
30:41
Speaker 2: once called a communist Lackeye, his society lives on in
30:46
Speaker 2: diminished form these days. They're a lot less notable. They're
30:50
Speaker 2: just one in a sea of right wing groups. But
30:53
Speaker 2: why did people like Welsh hate the Parent Teacher Association
30:57
Speaker 2: so much it seems to me like the Birch Society
31:00
Speaker 2: and the PTA were locked in a kind of death
31:03
Speaker 2: match between two visions of American civil society. The PTA
31:08
Speaker 2: was the vision of the America and Vital Center, progressive, orderly, incremental,
31:13
Speaker 2: and evidence based. Its model was the US federal system,
31:17
Speaker 2: local and national working patiently together. But the John Birch
31:21
Speaker 2: Society was modeled on communist cells, secretive with hard caps
31:26
Speaker 2: on membership to keep things decentralized rather than optimistic. It
31:31
Speaker 2: was paranoid rather than incremental. They called for kind of revolution.
31:36
Speaker 2: The PTA was about trusting your neighbors to share your
31:40
Speaker 2: interests too. The John Birch Society was about always suspecting
31:45
Speaker 2: them of betraying you. I don't know if that sounds
31:48
Speaker 2: familiar to you, but it shure does to me. Revisionist
32:04
Speaker 2: History is produced by me Ben Att, Fhaffrey, and Lucy
32:07
Speaker 2: Sullivan with Nina Bird Lawrens. Our editor is Karen Schakerji.
32:12
Speaker 2: Fact checking on this episode by Sam Russick. Original scoring
32:16
Speaker 2: by Luis Gara, mastering by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer
32:21
Speaker 2: is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, the State
32:25
Speaker 2: Historical Society of North Dakota, the University of Montana, and
32:29
Speaker 2: the UCLA Library Special Collections. I'm Ben Mattafaffor