Native Fascism: Evansville’s 1948 Wallace Riot

Join WPL Archives and the Vanderburgh County Historical Society in the Browning Gallery on Monday, March 13 at 6:00pm to hear Dr. Denise Lynn’s presentation.

Description of the Program: In April 1948, Progressive Party candidate for President Henry Wallace arrived in Indiana to much controversy. The conservative state did not welcome Wallace and veteran’s organizations actively organized to disrupt his speaking engagements. On April 6 at the Progressive Party’s Evansville event, a mob attacked the Wallace supporters causing injuries and pushing Evansville into the national spotlight. In the wake of the riot, a local professor was fired for his involvement in the Wallace campaign and the radical CIO Local 813 became the subject of House committee hearings. This anticommunist hysteria gripped the Evansville community and led to populist fascist reaction beginning with the violence at the riot. This presentation argues that what happened in Evansville on April 6 was part of a populist fascism in the United States propelled by anticommunism and enacted by veteran’s organizations. While national politicians dominate histories of anticommunism, some of the greatest damage done during that period occurred when other Americans, specifically veteran’s groups, violated the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.

About Dr. Lynn: Originally from Upstate New York, she attended SUNY Binghamton, State University of New York where she received her MA and PhD. Her research focuses on women in the American Communist Party. Dr. Lynn is the Vice-President of the Historians of American Communism and the editor of its journal American Communist History. She has written a regular blog for Black Perspectives and has written for Nursing Clio, Marxist Sociology, and Lawrence & Wishart. Her articles have appeared in American Communist History, Women’s History Review, Journal of Cold War Studies, Radical Americas, Journal of Intersectionality, and Journal for the Study of Radicalism. Dr. Lynn is the author of Where is Juliet Stuart Poyntz? Gender, Spycraft, and Anti-Stalinism in the Early Cold War from the University of Massachusetts Press. Her current book project is on radical Black women in the anti-Korean war movement and a biography of Claudia Jones.