The Loyalty Investigations of Mary Dublin Keyserling and Leon Keyserling
The Loyalty Investigations of Mary Dublin Keyserling and Leon Keyserling
This chapter focuses on Mary Dublin Keyserling and Leon Keyserling, who were particularly prominent targets for the anticommunist right from 1940 through the mid-1960s. His first claim to fame was drafting the National Labor Relations Act, and her career began as a consumer activist, so they aptly represent the movements whose successes mobilized anticommunist crusaders. The Keyserlings were “purchasing-power progressives” who argued that raising working-class living standards was essential for a healthy economy and a healthy democracy. They both experienced long, bruising loyalty investigations and resigned in 1953 during the transition to the Eisenhower administration. Leon reemerged as an economic adviser to the Democratic National Committee and the AFL-CIO in the late 1950s and then as an ally of the centrist Democrat Hubert Humphrey. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Mary head of the U.S. Women's Bureau, over the objections of congressional conservatives who revived the old disloyalty allegations.
Keywords: Mary Dublin Keyserling, Leon Keyserling, anticommunist right, National Labor Relations Act, consumer activist, loyalty investigations, Democratic National Committee, U.S. Women's Bureau, disloyalty allegations
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