the Minute Women

[John Dolva]

"Dallas, the home of billionaire H. L. Hunt and former General Edwin Walker, continues to be a mecca for speakers like the Reverend Billy James Hargis, John Birch Society leader John Rousselot, and former Major Arch Roberts, the one-time aide to Walker and author of his “pro-Blue” troop indoctrination course. Roberts, in town to pay his respects to his former chief, and to speak before the Minute Women and Hunt-supported Pro-America,"

"The Dallas-Houston differences, if indeed they remain that way, are noteworthy because both were among the last major cities in the nation to suspend "witch-hunt" activities that began in the 1950s. Groups such as the White Citizens Council, John Birch Society and the Minute Women were the most prominent. Alleging the nation was falling victim to an enemy within, they encouraged extraordinary measures, mostly around curbing civil rights, to counter the threat.

Back then, the external enemy was communism. Internally, it was portrayed as desegregation and social change. In November 1963, the virulent superstition was like a fever.

That month, President John F. Kennedy visited a Houston League of United Latin American Citizens gathering in his honor before attending a Democratic Party function. The next day he was assassinated in Dallas.

Two years ago, I asked a docent at the museum at the former Texas Book Depository Building in Dealey Plaza whether he knew of any reports of cheering over news that the president was shot. The docent told me CBS News reporter Dan Rather had reported something like that.

That too was what I witnessed that fateful day as a newspaper delivery boy at the dock of The Houston Press near downtown.

Today, most people have forgotten the hard debate following the assassination. It was about the other conspiracy concerning who killed Kennedy -- not the one about who pulled the trigger, but the circumstances and attitudes of the time. The consensus was that a culture of hate killed John Kennedy."

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/news/publis...s_printer.shtml

NSA > National Council of Churches

NSA > National Committee for an Effective Congress

NSA > National Association for the Advancement of White

NSA > Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission

NSA > Minute Women of the United States inc

NSA > Militia of Montana

NSA > Louisiana Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American

NSA > Liberty Lobby

NSA > Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

NSA > Invisible Empire, Knights of the KKK

NSA > Institute for Creation Research

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online...da59_print.html

"In the 1950s the Minute Women of the U.S.A.qv took over the Houston school board and harassed and fired teachers and administrators for alleged communism. One of the two original organizers of the Minute Women was Darden's daughter, Helen Thomas, who was very close to her mother and was the resident intellectual and researcher in the organization. The C.I.O. News blamed the Southern Conservative for helping the Minute Women bar the annual United Nations essay contests in the Houston schools. A number of tumultuous events in Texas in the 1950s heartened ultraconservatives, and Ida Darden was with them every step of the way. Her columns were carried by or quoted favorably in daily papers in Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, and Lubbock. She died on March 24, 1980, in Holly Hall, New Hampshire, and is buried in Fort Worth.

Financed largely by such Texas oilmen as George W. Armstrongqv and Arch Rowan, Darden launched her Southern Conservative, an eight-page newspaper, in Fort Worth in January 1950. Her major task was to take on the Communists, though she considered the fight nearly hopeless since she thought that Communist thinking had dominated all three branches of the government since 1933. Dwight D. Eisenhower,qv she thought, was as much a dupe of the Reds as Franklin Roosevelt. She considered the civil-rights movement,qv modern art, and modern movies all to be abominations perpetuated by inferior people. In 1959 she editorialized for the impeachment of all members of the United States Supreme Court. Darden was a Protestant, but she believed that the Protestant churches, having succumbed to the subversive social gospel, were increasingly atheistic. She alleged that all taxation was larceny and should be abolished, and that Edna Ferber's Giant was communist propaganda from cover to cover, with its depictions of children who repudiated their parents for accumulating property and humiliated their fathers by marrying down. Darden terminated the paper in December 1961 and moved to Houston. She published two more booklets around this time-My Night (1951), a witty parody of Eleanor Roosevelt's "My Day" newspaper column, and Best of the Southern Conservative (1963), selected articles from her paper. Though most contemporary observers in Fort Worth in the 1950s regarded Darden as a crackpot, she did not lack influence. In the 1950s the Minute Women of the U.S.A.qv took over the Houston school board and harassed and fired teachers and administrators for alleged communism. One of the two original organizers of the Minute Women was Darden's daughter, Helen Thomas, who was very close to her mother and was the resident intellectual and researcher in the organization. The C.I.O. News blamed the Southern Conservative for helping the Minute Women bar the annual United Nations essay contests in the Houston schools. A number of tumultuous events in Texas in the 1950s heartened ultraconservatives, and Ida Darden was with them every step of the way. Her columns were carried by or quoted favorably in daily papers in Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, and Lubbock. She died on March 24, 1980, in Holly Hall, New Hampshire, and is buried in Fort Worth."

[Guest Stephen Turner]

John, as this was a double post(thread) i have deleted one. Hope that is ok. Steve.

Somewhere I have an FBI memo on the Minutemen dating from early November 1963, I will try to dig it out.

[John Dolva]

Certainly it's OK Stephen, I was hoping some one would. These odd double posts deny other topics deserved prominence on page one.

I came across the Minute Woman (with some surprise) in looking for a connection between Hunt and Brading/Braden. While not conclusively so in any way, I think there may be in following this trail of the womens organisations and associations just such a connecton.

One thing the Minute Women did was to in a way remain unamed as in those days a woman was often just Mrs 'Man'.

Also the MW deliberately relied on a network of phone links sans documentation.

A follow up will relate to a (Mrs) Hugh Rodman Jr. Natchez Mississippi. So any info there will be a ppreciated.

Edited February 27, 2007 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

From Wikipedia,

"The Minute Women of the U.S.A. was one of the largest of a number of militant anti-communist women's groups that were active during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such groups, which organized American suburban housewives into anti-communist study groups, political activism and letter-writing campaigns, were a bedrock of support for McCarthyism.

The primary concerns of the Minute Women and other similar groups were the exposure of communist subversion, the defence of constitutional limits, opposition to atheism, socialism and social welfare provisions such as the New Deal; and rejection of internationalism, particularly in the form of the United Nations. They campaigned to expose supposedly Communist individuals, focusing particularly on school and university administrators."

"The Minute Women were a national group founded by Suzanne Stevenson of Connecticut in September 1949. They grew rapidly, especially in Texas, California, West Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut. By 1952 they had over 50,000 members. They were predominately white middle and upper-class women aged between thirty and sixty, with school-aged or grown children. Chapters were relatively small, numbering only a few dozen to a few hundred people. The Houston chapter, which later became famous, was one of the largest in the nation with around 500 members. Over sixty of the Houstonian Minute Women were doctors' wives, reflecting medical opposition to socialized medicine. Although college-educated, they were poorly informed; many relied on the Facts Forum News published by Houston oil millionaire H. L. Hunt to disseminate his conspiracy theories.[1]

Unlike many other anti-communist groups, the Minute Women operated in a semi-covert fashion. Stevenson instructed members to never reveal that they were Minute Women and always present themselves as individual concerned citizens. In her view, political activism was more effective when it appeared to be spontaneous.[2]

The organization was structured in a unique fashion, ostensibly to defend against Communist infiltration. It had no constitution or bylaws, no parliamentary procedure to guide the meetings, and no option for motions from the floor; its officers were appointed rather than elected. Its members communicated via a chain-telephoning system in which one member called five others, who in turn made five more calls, enabling hundreds to be contacted within a short space of time.[3] Membership of the Minute Women was restricted to American citizens, though the group's founder had been born in Belgium and was the sister of the Belgian Ambassador, Baron Robert Silvercruys.[4]

The Minute Women sought to apply political pressure through letter-writing campaigns, heckling speakers and swamping their opponents with telephone calls. In Houston, Texas, where they were particularly strong, they took over the local school board and claimed to have planted observers in University of Houston classrooms to watch out for controversial material and teachers"

This included camapigns regarding School Books

"There was an overt element of racism in the Minute Women's activities, which included distributing anti-semitic literature and opposing proponents of integrated schools, whom they regarded as Communist-inspired advocates of "race mongrelization.""

Many Jews who escaped from Hitlers Germany to america found employment in black eduacational institutions. The school books used in these schools (primarily from the Texas School Book Depository co.) were mostly leftovers or otherwise inwanted by the white chools.

"...the Minute Women remained active throughout the remainder of the 1950s and into the 1960s. They played a major role in stoking the 1956 controversy over the Alaska Mental Health Bill (HR 6376), claiming that the bill was an attempt by Congress to give the government authority to abduct citizens at will and imprison them in concentration camps in Alaska.[2] The group finally faded away as the nation turned against McCarthyism and the anti-communist hysteria diminished.+"

It wouldn't surprise me if they or members were involved in the Adlai Stevenson incident, and in the General Walkers psychiatric evaluation efforts.

IOW the woman striking Adlai with a poster likely from Gen Walkers could have been a MW and the Minute men ususally reagarded as instigators in many events, partly through the ongoing patriachical social structures allowed significany individuals to stay below the radar.

I think this should at least be kept in mind when looking at all the witnesses, suspects, and their otherwise ignored wives and their wives associates and relations.

A married woman in those days in a sense 'disappeared'.

Her name changed and in cases it is her maiden name and activities and associations under that name that could be important.

Thus the MW provided a network that potentially tied all the 'usual suspects' together.

[John Dolva]

From Wikipedia,

"The Minute Women of the U.S.A. was one of the largest of a number of militant anti-communist women's groups that were active during the 1950s and early 1960s. Such groups, which organized American suburban housewives into anti-communist study groups, political activism and letter-writing campaigns, were a bedrock of support for McCarthyism.

The primary concerns of the Minute Women and other similar groups were the exposure of communist subversion, the defence of constitutional limits, opposition to atheism, socialism and social welfare provisions such as the New Deal; and rejection of internationalism, particularly in the form of the United Nations. They campaigned to expose supposedly Communist individuals, focusing particularly on school and university administrators."

"The Minute Women were a national group founded by Suzanne Stevenson of Connecticut in September 1949. They grew rapidly, especially in Texas, California, West Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut. By 1952 they had over 50,000 members. They were predominately white middle and upper-class women aged between thirty and sixty, with school-aged or grown children. Chapters were relatively small, numbering only a few dozen to a few hundred people. The Houston chapter, which later became famous, was one of the largest in the nation with around 500 members. Over sixty of the Houstonian Minute Women were doctors' wives, reflecting medical opposition to socialized medicine. Although college-educated, they were poorly informed; many relied on the Facts Forum News published by Houston oil millionaire H. L. Hunt to disseminate his conspiracy theories.[1]

Unlike many other anti-communist groups, the Minute Women operated in a semi-covert fashion. Stevenson instructed members to never reveal that they were Minute Women and always present themselves as individual concerned citizens. In her view, political activism was more effective when it appeared to be spontaneous.[2]

The organization was structured in a unique fashion, ostensibly to defend against Communist infiltration. It had no constitution or bylaws, no parliamentary procedure to guide the meetings, and no option for motions from the floor; its officers were appointed rather than elected. Its members communicated via a chain-telephoning system in which one member called five others, who in turn made five more calls, enabling hundreds to be contacted within a short space of time.[3] Membership of the Minute Women was restricted to American citizens, though the group's founder had been born in Belgium and was the sister of the Belgian Ambassador, Baron Robert Silvercruys.[4]

The Minute Women sought to apply political pressure through letter-writing campaigns, heckling speakers and swamping their opponents with telephone calls. In Houston, Texas, where they were particularly strong, they took over the local school board and claimed to have planted observers in University of Houston classrooms to watch out for controversial material and teachers"

This included camapigns regarding School Books

"There was an overt element of racism in the Minute Women's activities, which included distributing anti-semitic literature and opposing proponents of integrated schools, whom they regarded as Communist-inspired advocates of "race mongrelization.""

Many Jews who escaped from Hitlers Germany to america found employment in black eduacational institutions. The school books used in these schools (primarily from the Texas School Book Depository co.) were mostly leftovers or otherwise unwanted by the white schools.

"...the Minute Women remained active throughout the remainder of the 1950s and into the 1960s. They played a major role in stoking the 1956 controversy over the Alaska Mental Health Bill (HR 6376), claiming that the bill was an attempt by Congress to give the government authority to abduct citizens at will and imprison them in concentration camps in Alaska.[2] The group finally faded away as the nation turned against McCarthyism and the anti-communist hysteria diminished.+"

It wouldn't surprise me if they or members were involved in the Adlai Stevenson incident, and in the General Walkers psychiatric evaluation efforts.

IOW the woman striking Adlai with a poster likely from Gen Walkers could have been a MW and the Minute men ususally reagarded as instigators in many events, partly through the ongoing patriachical social structures allowed significany individuals to stay below the radar.

I think this should at least be kept in mind when looking at all the witnesses, suspects, and their otherwise ignored wives and their wives associates and relations.

A married woman in those days in a sense 'disappeared'.

Her name changed and in cases it is her maiden name and activities and associations under that name that could be important.

Thus the MW provided a network that potentially tied all the 'usual suspects' together.

There are reasons to look at then and the Quakers. The 'offficial' story says one thing. All the intricacies involving individuals may be another thing altogether.

Edited February 27, 2007 by John Dolva

[Guest Stephen Turner]

omewhere I have an FBI memo on the Minutemen dating from early November 1963, I will try to dig it out.

Found it, nothing to do with the Womens auxillery, but very interesting non the less.

FBI file 62-107261, is a summary of an interview with ATF agent, Frank Elsworth, it states. "An organisation known as the Minutemen is the right wing group in Dallas most likely to be associated with any effort to assassinate the President, they are closely tied to General Walker, and HL Hunt." This file was witheld from the W/C despite a request from J Lee Rankin.

[John Dolva]

omewhere I have an FBI memo on the Minutemen dating from early November 1963, I will try to dig it out.

Found it, nothing (???) to do with the Womens auxillery (? my emphasis) but very interesting non the less.

FBI file 62-107261, is a summary of an interview with ATF agent, Frank Elsworth, it states. "An organisation known as the Minutemen is the right wing group in Dallas most likely to be associated with any effort to assassinate the President, they are closely tied to General Walker, and HL Hunt." This file was witheld from the W/C despite a request from J Lee Rankin.

For example, in1963, a womans ID is usually, or at least very often defined by whom she is married to

"January 1, 1963

List in order of best-dressed women of the world:

Mrs. John F. Kennedy

Mrs. Loel Guinness (wife of international banker)

Princess Lee Radziwill - sister of Jackie Kennedy

Mrs. Gianni Agnelli - wife of the head of the Fiat Co.

Mme Herve Alphand - wife of the French ambassador to the United States

Mrs. David Bruce - wife of the U.S ambassador to Great Britain

Mrs. Gloria Vanderbilt - actress and socialite

Mrs. Walther Moreira

Mrs. John Barry Rayn III

Mrs. Charlies Writeaman wife of the oil magnate

Mrs. Frederick Eberstadt - New York socialite

Baroness Ernest Thyssen-Bornemisza"

Each of these women, like Mrs John F Kennedy for example, had her own name.

A network of anonymous members that, due to their members particular social poisition operating like the most advanced cellular organisational structure is something unique. It is akin to an intelligence network that does not exist. Yet it did.

Woman as wife, confidant and seriously involved personally, is a social layer in a patriarchial society, that not only is dealt with in a particular way by law, it is also a layer that has a degree of invisibility through ingrained sexism. It is also a layer that has a particular type of information sharing that men often are hardly aware of.

And in a patriarchal society, which remains today, it seems easy to see them as a kid of 'tea party'.

This was an organisation started and run by women. Its structure was in fact a quite advanced model in the Radical Right.

IOW we're not talking about the Mrs Minutemen.

This is about the the "Minute Women.".

In particular "The Minute Women of the United States of America incorporated"

I have already mentioned above an antipathy with the Quakers, was this real or was there more to it?

Edited February 28, 2007 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

"The Minute Women sought to apply political pressure through letter-writing campaigns, heckling speakers and swamping their opponents with telephone calls."

So while some of this is no doubt simple coincidences, the need for communications etc in controlling the conspiracy would not be a peripheral matter.

A letter received by the Houston Chronicle from a woman reader vividly

sums up the point of view:

" A display of hatred has not always been considered so terrible. Even Christ

showed anger and hatred.

Now I do not presume to compare the attitude of the people of Dallas with

Christ, but I simply wish to remind those individuals who have so vociferously

criticized Dallas that sometimes justified hate can be of some good.…Dallas

should not be criticized for its hatred for anti-Americanism.

The blame for the assassination should not be placed upon Dallas but where it

actually belongs—on the Communist conspiracy, as aided and abetted by the

Supreme Court, which ever since that tragic day in Dallas, has steadfastly

refused to enact laws to clamp down on Communist sympathizers in this country,

and upon the shoulders of the U.S. Attorney General, who instead of rounding up

these known Communists, was so busy watching the “horrible right wing” that the

President was murdered by a Communist.

Until recently I did not understand why the Birchers were so adamant about

impeaching Earl Warren, but in the light of events since the assassination, I am

beginning to see the light. Yes, there is a deep, burning hatred in Dallas, and

I pray to God that it may continue and spread throughout the entire nation until

the Communist malignancy which is threatening all of our lives is completely

destroyed."

This was one of a number of letters, playing variations on the same theme,

that were received by Texas newspapers following statements made on the

assassination by Birch Society founder, Robert Welch.

Edited March 2, 2007 by John Dolva

[Pat Speer]

If you come across any pictures of "Minute Women" wearing a polka dot dress, John, be sure and let us know.

[James Richards]

In the 1950s the Minute Women of the U.S.A.qv took over the Houston school board and harassed and fired teachers and administrators for alleged communism. (John Dolva quoting text)

John,

Ralph O'Leary from the Houston Post did a series of articles regarding this. In fact he won the Haywood Broun award for his work. It might be worthwhile trying to track down that material.

A favorite of the Minute Women was Dan Smoot. He spoke at their gatherings on many occasions.

FWIW.

James

[John Dolva]

Pat, you'll have to be more specific about the style and color you are interested in.

____________________

James, thank you for the info. I've had some interesting e-mails and PM's on the issue and will follow up with a number of matters.

[James Richards]

John,

Just to add another tie here to Dan Smoot and right-wing women. Sue Fitch from the Jane Douglas Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution colaborated with Smoot in writing a book on the Warren Report. She also spoke many times in a lecture called 'An Evaluation' which focused on Marxist and Communist influences.

Fitch who was prominent in Martin Dies campaign for Senator, believed that the shots did emanate from the front, fired by those in cahoots with Oswald.

Me thinks that this approach was to exonorate Dallas and the so-called atmosphere of hate that was pushed in various media outlets. Oswald the pinko nut was one way to get Dallas itself out of the limelight and editors like Dick West were quick to jump on favorable reports focusing on Fitch and authors such as Albert Newman.

James

Edited March 2, 2007 by James Richards

[John Dolva]

: Daughters of the American Revolution..............James

One as yet unclear 'connection' between persons in the thread 'minute women', 'Greaves' ( http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9497 ), General Walker, and the uranium mines of Congo, the UN and Kennedy as a communist sympthiser may provice background material related to those tnterest groupings who had an interest in seeing Kennedy dead.

As yet I cannot find anyone or anywhere to explore this further because the people 'involved' are in various ways 'redacted' or 'smudged' or 'deleted' so that only 'indications'

as to who they were/or that they existed in any organised interconnected fashion are acessible (to me).

(Greaves has a strange kind of familiar 'smell' of an Intel man.)

I know to many this must just seem like muddying an alteady murky pool. I can understand that. I have no clear formed (or perhaps ever will) 'theory' on this. But I think there are, for variopus reasons, untapped sources that may yield results.