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Collection Description
Born in the Bronx, New York, Harvey Marshall Matusow (1926–2002) joined the Communist Party in 1946. The first part of his Archive, however, relates less to the activities of Communists themselves than to the efforts of the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities to combat the ‘red scare’. Matusow switched allegiance and, in 1950, began to supply information to the FBI about Party activities, testifying against former comrades. As an official government witness in actions brought against various alleged Communists between 1951 and 1954, Matusow testified against union leader Clinton E Jencks, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union), Owen Lattimore, the Communist Party of the USA, related organisations and several labour unions. All this is recorded in the Archive in forms both official and unofficial; speculative material stamped ‘Confidential’ sits alongside stenographer’s minutes and published reports.
Contemporaneous material includes many press-cuttings and various alarmist publications of the Committee for Un-American Activities. Taped material includes interviews for the Ohio Un-American Activities Commission and recordings of speeches given by Matusow in 1952, with subsequent question-and-answer sessions.
The Archive also contains fascinating material relating to Matusow’s
spell as assistant editor of Counterattack!, a weekly newsletter which
investigated the entertainment business and gathered information used
to compile blacklists of allegedly Communist artists. Twenty-one issues
are included, together with related correspondence, press cuttings
and reports on entertainers in different fields including José Ferrer,
Josephine Baker and Marc Blitzstein.
Matusow’s story took on a new twist in 1955 when he admitted
giving false evidence against Clinton E Jencks and was charged with
perjury, convicted and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
The trial and the almost simultaneous publication of False Witness,
his account of his career of testimony, stimulated a discussion in
the press and among the public of the government’s use of paid
witnesses. His appeal upheld, Matusow was then arraigned before a Grand
Jury in New York and charged with further counts of perjury, again
convicted, and sentenced to serve five years in prison. The Archive
contains notes, contracts, promotional photographs and correspondence
relating to the publication of his memoirs.
Archival history
The first consignment of Matusow’s papers were presented to the University by Harvey Matusow himself in June 1968. They were acquired on the advice of Marcus Cunliffe, Sussex’s then Professor of American Studies. Matusow was adamant his papers should be housed in an institution outside the United States. As he explained in an interview with The Times (10/6/68): ‘I didn’t believe my papers would be treated objectively in America … like Nazism and Hitler to the Germans now, they are all too involved. They can’t see McCarthy in perspective. It’s all “Good Guy, Bad Guy.”’
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