re: #271 Joe Bacon 🌹

Yes, I had the privilege of taking classes with Dr. Colodny. They attempted to blacklist him in the 50s but he stood up to them.

I also had a class with him. The only Abrahiam Lincoln Brigade anecdote he mentioned was that the US Embassy’s Military Attache dropped off a couple of BAR’s with them for test purposes. And then came back a few weeks later, collected them and disappeared.

The BAR stands for Browning Automatic rifle. It was developed in the late WW1 period as a way to help clear trenches. The Bren gun was the British equivalent and probably, ergonomically, a better weapon. The submachine gun family was developed for the same purpose, but using lower powered pistol ammunition.

Clyde Barrow much preferred the BAR to the ‘Tommy gun’. As someone described at one point, with the ‘Tommy Gun’ you could hide behind an engine block and the pistol ammunition would not penetrate. You could not do that with the BAR as the full-power rifle ammunition would go right through the engine block.

Yes, Colodny, for his anti-fascism was there-after identified as a militant communist and put on a lot of internal US watch lists. He was also called in front of the McCarthy Un-American hearings. And, as you described, at one point a right wing Pennsylvania State Legislator attempted to have him fired from the University of Pittsburgh. Obviously, that did not work.

Colodny also served in the US Army during WW2. At the beginning of the war he was screened out and sent to a special Army unit for soldiers with suspect political views. Soldiers suspected of Pro-German Nazi beliefs were in a neighboring unit, pro-Italian Fascists in another.

In his unit were militant trade unionists, ordinary trade unionists, and the veterans of the International Brigades. It took the intervention of journalist Drew Peterson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt to get his particular unit disbanded. He spent the rest of the war in the Aleutians as an intelligence sergeant in an infantry unit preparing for the invasion of Japan. He obviously developed a reputation as a bright and competent man as he was tasked on a weekly basis to brief colonels and generals on his work.

More here:
(View the pdf. It does load fairly slow.)

An American Dark Age: Echoes and Memories
by Robert G. Colodny
journals.psu.edu