Loyalty Oath Required for Public Housing
Congress, on this day, passed the Gwinn Amendment, which required a loyalty oath of all residents of public housing who received federal funds. The oath requirement led to the highly publicized case of James Kutcher, a World War II veteran, who had lost both of his legs in the war, and who was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (December 29, 1952).
The insidious aspect of all loyalty oaths of the Cold War era was that they had nothing to do with any specific criminal or unprofessional conduct on the part of individuals required to sign them.
Loyalty oaths were a special mania during the anti-Communist frenzy of the Cold War. Unlike traditional oaths of office, which involve an oath to uphold the Constitution and the country’s laws, Cold War loyalty oaths required people to swear that they were not members of the Communist Party and/or other radical parties or movements. Thus, they were oaths regarding membership and beliefs without reference to any actual or planned illegal action. The mania for loyalty oaths during the Cold War also included the University of California oath (April 21, 1950); the Taft-Hartley Act, which required a loyalty oath for labor leaders (June 23, 1947); and, in the 1960s, a loyalty oath for Medicare recipients, which was never enforced (February 13, 1967).
Read the new book on the oath and the Kutcher case: Robert Justin Goldstein, Discrediting the Red Scare: The Cold War Trials of James Kutcher, “The Legless Veteran” (2016)
Read: James Kutcher, The Case of the Legless Veteran (1953)
Learn more about the ACLU in the Cold War and other Times of National Crisis: https://www.aclu.org/aclu-history-rooting-out-subversives-paranoia-and-patriotism-mccarthy-era