Today I've found an interesting ad for US Savings Bonds from 1952. Essentially, They have decided that the best way to promote the bonds is by drawing up a map of Communist Party members in each State. One assumes the thinking was that the terror provoked by the knowledge of five fifth columnists in Alaska potentially getting up to no good would be enough to scare the housewives out of a few dollars to stump up for another H-Bomb!
This is one of my all time favourite ads, as it reveals a certain mindset (paranoia) at a time when the Cold War (still in its infancy) threatened to turn hot. I'm sure that the Bonds people saw this as a public service announcement of sorts, kind of like mapping of the outbreak of some horrible disease. Maybe the implication implicit here is that Bobby Joe down in Kansas better start rooting out the seditious six!
When I look at this map though, there is one thing that I can't help but ponder. I wonder about that lonely Red down there in Mississippi. Did they get out much? How was their love life? Did they hold any meetings? If so, who took the minutes? Were they welcome in the local bowling alley or did they have to nip across to Alabama or Louisiana for laughs. So many questions!
[Confession: as mentioned previously on this blog, subversive belief systems run deep in the McCracken family line. Yes, at the exact time of the publishing of advertisement, my Grandfather would have then been a card carrying Communist. And as a merchant seaman who would have visited the United States in this period, he may well have met with individuals recorded on this map. You have been warned.]
This is one of my all time favourite ads, as it reveals a certain mindset (paranoia) at a time when the Cold War (still in its infancy) threatened to turn hot. I'm sure that the Bonds people saw this as a public service announcement of sorts, kind of like mapping of the outbreak of some horrible disease. Maybe the implication implicit here is that Bobby Joe down in Kansas better start rooting out the seditious six!
When I look at this map though, there is one thing that I can't help but ponder. I wonder about that lonely Red down there in Mississippi. Did they get out much? How was their love life? Did they hold any meetings? If so, who took the minutes? Were they welcome in the local bowling alley or did they have to nip across to Alabama or Louisiana for laughs. So many questions!
[Confession: as mentioned previously on this blog, subversive belief systems run deep in the McCracken family line. Yes, at the exact time of the publishing of advertisement, my Grandfather would have then been a card carrying Communist. And as a merchant seaman who would have visited the United States in this period, he may well have met with individuals recorded on this map. You have been warned.]
Comments
Glad I was too young then to have known about such ads. Oi! But as a kid I DID buy a US Savings Bond, after buying stamps toward it week by week with the dimes I earned.
It always surprised me that so few African Americans turned towards Communism. Paul Robeson was a high profile capture for socialists, yet I don't really know much of formal linkages.