What do Cold War witch hunts and old-school fables have in common? In this episode of The Persistence, host Angélica Cordero connects The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Emperor’s New Clothes to America’s Red Scare, exposing how paranoia and denial fueled McCarthyism. With humor and insight, Angélica revisits the stories of Paul Robeson, Dorothy Parker, and Hazel Scott, brilliant artists and activists who refused to stay silent, even when the cost was everything. This isn’t just history. It’s a mirror for today’s culture wars and performance politics, reminding us that truth-telling has always been an act of resistance.
This episode was written by and produced by Angélica Cordero, with a little help from ChatGPT.
Our theme song is Don’t Kid Yourself Baby by Fold, used with their blessings. Podcast artwork for The Persistence features Mexican-American activist Jovita Idar and was created by Tamra Collins of Sunroot Studio.
Resources For Fellow Wascally Wabbits
Books
The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist by Carol A. Stabile
Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, Astrid Henry
Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s secret campaign against Joseph McCarthy by David A. Nichols
The Kitchen Debate and Cold War Consumer Politics: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) by Sarah Phillips and Shane Hamilton
The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and Political Roles, 1920-1970 by William H. Chafe
The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library by Louise S. Robbins
The Undiscovered Paul Robeson: Quest for Freedom, 1939 - 1976 by Paul Robeson, Jr.
The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz
The Women’s History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years by Rosalind Miles
Links
The 1950s Happy Housewife by Rachel Waugh (The Museum of Food and Culture, 2023)
Alicia Keys just played two pianos at once in jaw-dropping Grammys performance by Sofia Rizzi, (ClassicFM, Feb 11, 2019)
Black Skin in the Red Land: African Americans and the Soviet Experiment by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon (The Russia File, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center, Feb 28, 2020)
“Cold War Beginnings,” Growth and Turmoil, 1948-1977, (Women and the American Story, Center for Women’s History, The New York Historical)
Free to Criticize by (The Center for Free, Fair, and Accountable Democracy, 2025)
Hazel Scott: The Gorgeous Face of Jazz at the Mid-Century by Neely Tucker, (Timeless, Stories from the Library of Congress, October 12, 2021)
“Hazel Scott Says Segregation Rule Surprise to Her,” (Austin American-Statesman, Nov 16, 1948, p 1)
Red Channels: The Official Periodical of the Hollywood Blacklist by Peter Bowen (Bleecker Street,)
“Texas U. Students Back Hazel Scott’s Fight on Bias,” (Daily World, New York, Nov 28, 1948)
“To Be Somebody,” (Song of America)
The FBI’s War on Folk Music by Alexander Billet, (Jacobin, Nov 22, 2020)
“The Kitchen Debate,” Growth and Turmoil, 1948-1977, (Women and the American Story, Center for Women’s History, The New York Historical)
“United States House Committee on Un-American Activities,” The Online Books Page, ed. John Mark Ockerbloom (University of Pennsylvania, )
The Variation and Impact of Ol’ Man River by Paul Robeson (MHS: Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, University of Rochester, Apr 2019)
Other
United States Congressional Record, (September 21, 1949, p 13375)
“Hazel’s Boogie Woogie,” Hazel Scott: Her Second Album (Archive.org, 1942)
“Hazel Scott in ‘The Heat’s On‘ (1943),” Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers, ed. Matthew F. Delmont, (Stanford University, 2019)
The Disappearance of Miss Scott, (American Masters, PBS, Archive.org, 2025)
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