It's very weird to read a young person's view of all of this. It's part of
my life, my background. I was in high school when the Rosenbergs were
executed. Close family friends were members of the Communist party. My math
teacher was fired for having been a member. And I was emersed in folk music.
I remember the song, Strange Fruit.
Miriam
THE ROSENBERG ORPHANS AND THE POWER OF RADICAL HISTORY
By Annie Levin, Current Affairs.
January 19, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above photo: Harry McCabe (from left), deputy U.S. marshal; Julius Rosenberg
and his wife, Ethel; Anthony H. Pavone, deputy U.S. marshal, in New York on
March 8, 1951. AP.
Orphaned After Their Parents Were Executed For Espionage, The Story Of The
Rosenberg Boys Is One All Americans Should Know.
The Left would go crazy over Jewish American dissidents Abel and Anne
Meeropol if they were alive today. Their tale is a radical epic so poignant
that one wonders where the 10-part miniseries is. It covers a range of
contemporary themes: children separated from parents, the political
persecution of dissidents, and social justice warriors doing battle against
a racist, xenophobic, increasingly fascistic America.
Its a story so fantastical, and containing so many celebrated names, that
its hard to believe it hasnt stuck better into the mainstream. Then again,
a tale involving judicial executions on fake charges of espionage and the
heroism of Jewish and Black radicals probably wouldnt get the prestige TV
greenlight. The only way the Meeropols story would get approved by network
executives is if it were pitched by someone like Aaron Sorkinwho would no
doubt fill his script with speechifying neoliberals.
While Hollywood isnt going to tell the real story of the Meeropols anytime
soon, if I were to make that TV series, I would open it on a party scene in
the front parlor of a Brooklyn brownstone. The room is decorated for
Christmas. The house belongs to Black socialist and civil rights activist
W.E.B. Du Bois. Its December 1953.
At the party, perhaps standing off to the side of the partygoers, is the
poet-songwriter Abel Meeropol (also known by his pen name, Lewis Allan), the
author of famous anti-lynching song, Strange Fruit. He stands beside his
wife, Anne Meeropol, a public school teacher and union organizer. They are
waiting patiently for the orphaned sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to
arrive. Abel and Anne are going to be their new parents.
We were told that we were going to go live with them, Robert Meeropol, the
youngest son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, recently told me of meeting his
adoptive parents for the first time. At that point we had been shuttled
around so much
we said OK.
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were the first U.S. civilians to be executed for
espionage during peacetime. Their sons, Robert and Michael, were three and
seven when their parents were arrested in 1950 after being accused of
sharing nuclear secrets with the Soviets. During their parents
imprisonment, the boys lived with their grandparents, spent a brief period
in an orphanage, and finally were sent out of New York City to the home of
family friends in Toms River, New Jersey. It was here that a news bulletin
interrupting their Yankees game informed them of the hour of their parents
impending execution. By 1953, photographs of Robert and Michael Rosenberg,
in suits and Brooklyn Dodgers caps, had been plastered across newspapers for
three years. They were the famous sons of communist spies.
How Robert and Michael were going to liveand who they were going to live
withremained an open question after their parents were executed. Emanuel
Hirsch Bloch, the Rosenbergs lawyer and a renowned left-wing defense
attorney who had defended numerous people accused of communist sympathies,
acted temporarily as their guardian. Bloch was informed of the Meeropols
request to adopt the boys through Shirley Graham Du Bois, wife of W.E.B. Du
Bois. She was one of the trustees of the fund that was raised for Robert and
Michaels upbringing.
In our phone interview in September 2020, Robert Meeropol spoke to me for
over an hour, with tremendous fluidity and frankness, about the
circumstances surrounding his parents execution and how he and his brother
were adopted by the Meeropols.
Manny [Emanuel Hirsch] Bloch knew about Abels reputation as the author of
Strange Fruit and knew that Abel and Anne were both supportive of my birth
parents, Robert Meeropol told me. So, he met them, he liked them, and he
said, OK, you can adopt them!
The Rosenbergs were executed June 19, 1953. Michael and Robert Rosenberg
went to live with the Meeropols in January of 1954. However, before the
adoption had been formalized, Bloch suffered a heart attack and died.
At that point, right-wing groups tried to have us taken from Abel and Anne,
and a court custody battle developed, Robert Meeropol told me. We were
actually seized by New York City police and sent to an orphanage. But the
Meeropols won the legal battle and we were reunited with them in the fall of
1954. We dropped from public sight and within a couple of years our names
were changed to Meeropol.
It is this part of the story, the part about the left showing deep care for
their own, that I might seize on for my imaginary prestige TV show. My story
would begin with the Christmas party at the Du Bois and end with Robert and
Michael being reunited with the Meeropols, after they had won their legal
battle. My story would focus not on the governments case against the
Rosenbergs, nor Blochs defense. I would sidestep David Greenglass, Ethel
Rosenbergs brother who implicated her and Julius in the spy ring, and on
whose testimony much of the evidence in the case relied. I actually wouldnt
approach the trial or the appeals much at all. This material has been combed
over in countless books and articles. Its even been fictionalized by E.L.
Doctorow in The Book of Daniel (a beautiful example of navel-gazing
Sorkinesque white guy writing if there ever was one). Id stroll around that
material, which I believe has been over examined and lost much of its
humanity.
I would instead focus my story on the left-wing community in New York City
who rallied around the Rosenberg family. I would zero in on the
interconnected network of unions, socialist organizations, and civil rights
groups that events like the execution of the Rosenbergs left in tatters.
Abel and Anne Meeropol deciding to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs, and
their being in a position to actually do so, was one of those convergences
so poetic it doesnt seem real. Its as if a DSA member on Twitter were
writing left-wing fan fiction. The sons of accused spies, taken under the
wings of famous civil rights icons, wind up in the care of radical artists
and activists. Its easier to think of the story as a Coen Brothers film
(Im seeing John Turturro and Frances McDormand cast as the Meeropols) than
as history.
Perhaps youve already guessed the secret behind this odd convergence of
people. Perhaps you already know what the Du Bois, the Meeropols, and the
Rosenbergs all had in common. Maybe you already know that these people flew
in the same circles because they were at some point either members of the
Communist Party or, at the very least, friendly to the socialist cause in
America.
Like many artistic New York City lefties, the Meeropols joined the Communist
Party in the 1930s. The Party at the time was a hotbed of creative activity.
It encouraged cultural work and supported artists through organizations like
John Reed Clubs for writers and the Pierre Degeyter Club for musicians.
Abel was a public school English teacher (he taught a young James Baldwin at
Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in the early 1940s) who gave half
his salary to the Communist Party. He wrote songs for left-wing reviews that
were supported by or in the orbit of the Party. He barely escaped
blacklisting by changing jobs, moving around the country, and lying and
obfuscating when interrogated by government agents. Robert Meeropol suspects
that Abel and Anne only quit the Party in order to adopt him and his
brother. They remained friendly with Party members throughout his childhood.
In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA swelled to about 80,000 members at the
height of its popularity. It was in this era that an up-and-coming jazz
singer named Billie Holiday was introduced to Abel Meeropol at Café Society,
the first integrated nightclub in New York City. There she first sang his
song Strange Fruit to hushed and astonished audiences.
Abel had written Strange Fruit when the left was rallying in support of an
anti-lynching bill in the Senate. It first appeared as a poem, Bitter
Fruit, in the New York Teacher, a publication for the New York City
Teachers Union. The song consists of 12 lines comparing a southern idyll
(Pastoral scene of the gallant South) with a brutal lynching (The bulging
eyes and the twisted mouth). Abel had a spare, imagistic style and could
use simple language to devastating emotional effect. His type of artistry
was ideal for writing politically powerful songs.
Abel was no turn-the-other-cheek liberal, said Robert Meeropol. A lot of
what he wrote was biting satire and had a nasty edge to it. Strange Fruit
has often been described as a dirge-like ballad. I think that misses the
truth. The point of Strange Fruit was that it was an attack song. It was
an attack on the perpetrators of lynching.
It was also in this period that Abel Meeropol wrote the poem, Beloved
Comrade. The poem, at eight lines, is even shorter and sparer than Strange
Fruit. Addressing a dead friend (To you, beloved comrade, we make this
solemn vow / The fight will go on), it comforts them in the knowledge that
the struggle that they had fought and died for would continue until the
final victory (Sleep well, beloved comrade, our work will just begin / The
fight will go on till we win).
When put to music by composer Fred Katz, Beloved Comrade became an anthem
sung at socialist funerals. Probably written for Spanish Civil War soldiers
from the International Brigades, it was sung by Josh White for Franklin
Roosevelt and by Holly Near and Ronnie Gilbert in memory of Sacco and
Vanzetti (two Italian anarchists framed for murder and executed in 1927).
Recently, Sing in Solidarity, a choir composed of members of Democratic
Socialists of America (of which I am a member), sang it for the victims of
the COVID-19 pandemic. While Abel Meeropol was a communist, Beloved
Comrade belongs to no faction and has been sung in solidarity by many
left-wing movements. Robert Meeropol believes that this is exactly how Abel
intended the song to be used.
Leftist solidarity was a theme that ran throughout Abels songwriting career
and political life. It was also what enabled him and Anne to adopt the sons
of the Rosenbergs. As lefty public school teachers, the Meeropols were both
heavily involved in the New York City Teachers Union. This was a radical
union and many of its members were also members of the Communist Party. It
was through the union that they came to know teacher and Party member, Alice
Citron. After being blacklisted in the 1940s and fired from her teaching
job, Citron went on to work as Shirley Graham Du Bois personal secretary.
Through this daisy chain of personal ties, the Meeropols were ultimately
able to adopt Robert and Michael.
Under constant threat of persecution, the New York City left was necessarily
close knit. But there was only so much protection a network of friends could
provide each other. In 1945, the Meeropols, fearful of being blacklisted
like Alice Citron and so many of their fellow Teachers Union members, left
their teaching jobs and took off for Los Angeles. Here, Abel wrote
television scripts. He also attended a socialist reading group that the
Communist Party ran for Hollywood screenwriters. Robert Meeropol recalls:
They were at this study group reading Lenin or something and Abel raised his
hand to the party functionary who was doing the teaching and he said, I
dont know why I have to read all this stuff. I know who the workers are, I
know who the owners are, I know who our allies are, I know who our enemies
are, thats good enough for me!
For his impertinence, Abel got written up by the Party functionary.
According to Robert Meeropol, Abel had a visceral anger over injustice and
a willingness to act upon that. Alongside these deep feelings also appears
to have been a uniquely attuned moral clarity. It was no doubt this same
fearless, clearheaded nature that made him write an anti-lynching song at
the height of Jim Crow and to adopt the sons of the Rosenbergs at the height
of the Cold War. Eventually, it would also lead him to return to the
community hed left behind, blacklists be damned.
The Meeropols were living back in New York City in 1954 when they adopted
the Rosenberg boys. Robert and Michael were raised in a loving, quirky,
left-wing home. There was no regular job, Robert Meeropol recalls. There
was this, that, and the other thing. It was very artistic. There was always
a stream of writers and artists and performers coming and visiting. I guess
it was a pretty exciting and rich environment for a young kid growing up.
His parents were forever running off to rehearsals and performances of
left-wing concerts. Robert Meeropol remembers Malvina Reynolds singing
Little Boxes on their living room sofa.
The Meeropol boys today are in their 70s. If you didnt know their back
story, they would appear much like the other red diaper babies of their
generationthat coterie of diehards who protested Vietnam, kept the faith
through the dire neoliberal period, and even sent their kids to socialist
summer camp. People who grew up on the American left, and especially the
Jewish American left, might feel a flicker of recognition at the mention of
their birth names. For the rest of us, the saga of the songwriter and the
sons of the murdered spies seems like a secret history, a potshard buried
beneath the sand that speaks of a whole fallen civilization.
I first learned the Meeropols story in 2018 when, as a member of Sing in
Solidarity, I was taught to sing Beloved Comrade for a memorial to Heather
Heyerthe young woman murdered in the Charlottesville terror attack in 2017.
I was new to the left, having joined DSA after volunteering for Bernie
Sanders in 2016. Hearing this story made me feel bound to my new community,
and made me think how powerful a collective memory like this can be. It made
me feel as if I had just brushed aside half a centurys worth of dust and
discovered a part of my own past. I felt rejuvenated and included. It was a
little reward for having the faith in humanity that had brought me to the
left in the first place.
It also made me think about how small and secretive the left was for so many
decades, and in some ways continues to be. My feeling of belonging came part
and parcel with a feeling of exclusivity. I had to be initiated and
committed to the movement in order to hear these stories. For that movement
to grow, however, it needs to be able to tell its stories to the
uninitiated. It needs to be able to frame those stories for widespread
consumption. The Bernie Sanders campaigns understood that. DSA understands
that.
The left, however, is currently small (relatively speaking) and neoliberal
cultural hegemony isnt going anywhere anytime soon. In our current moment
of widespread helplessness, when narrativizing our past would be a
therapeutic and politically expedient practice, left-wing history is instead
being rewritten by liberals like Aaron Sorkin. As the tumultuous present
unearths the radical past, Hollywood keeps putting out films that capitalize
on public interest while propping up existing power structures. Films like
Lincoln (2012), On The Basis of Sex (2018), and, most recently, Sorkins
2020 drama The Trial of the Chicago 7 lean into top-down proceduralism and
emphasize the enduring, unshakeable nature of American institutions. It is
vital that the left continue to punch back at these rewritings of radical
history. But we also need to do our own storytelling, to make creative
narrative works that mythologize our own past.
We can see the current left movements need for such works in the wildly
successful career of a writer like Sorkin. His show, The West Wing, is
admittedly very bad art. However, its delusionally pragmatic messaging had
a real effect on liberal political discourse and practice. To acknowledge
this fact is to acknowledge the need for ambitious left-wing storytelling
that can act as a counternarrative. Before Sorkin produces his take on the
Rosenbergs, and we have to endure a walk and talk between Roy Cohn and
Joseph McCarthy, I think its time to start sharing our own history.
To be sure, rebuilding those links in the chain of memory and teasing out
the secrets of the American left wont be an easy task. Crowdsourcing funds
for left-wing art wont be an easy task either. It is also not an impossible
one, as the existence of independent left media (like this magazine) proves.
The new movement needs its own works of art, and the means to make those
works are within reach. It is long past time that we claimed our past, and
publicly narrated our storiesstories like Abel and Anne Meeropolsand won
back the (currently Sorkinized) political ground in the popular imagination.
