Annie Lee Moss; helped to bring down McCarthy: 1954
Annie Lee Moss testifies before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Committee on Investigations March 11, 1954 in Washington, D.C. responding to allegations she was a security risk as a Pentagon employee while a member of the U.S. Communist Party.
The image is a still from CBS television footage.
The hearing was recorded and later shown on the national television show See It Now. Moss, a member of Cafeteria Workers Union Local 471, came across as a badgered witness testifying truthfully while committee counsel Roy Cohn came across as mean and vindictive toward a woman who performed routine tasks of a non-secure nature and seemed confused about what Cohn was talking about.
The public reaction toward the hearing helped turn the tide against McCarthy who had made a career out of fear-mongering, unsubstantiated accusations and public shaming of those that disagreed with his crusade against communists.
John Crosby wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, "The American People fought a revolution to defend, among other things, the right of Annie Lee Moss to earn a living, and Senator McCarthy now decided she has no such right." Reporting on public opinion in McCarthy's home state, Drew Pearson wrote, "Wisconsin folks saw her as a nice old colored lady who wasn't harming anyone and they didn't like their senator picking on her."
McCarthy would soon be embroiled in the Army–McCarthy hearings which also significantly eroded his standing with the public and in the Senate.
In December 1954 he was censured by the Senate, and spent the rest of his career in relative obscurity. He died in 1957.
Moss had been suspended from her position when McCarthy announced his interest in the case. In January 1955 she was rehired to a non-sensitive position in the army's finance and accounts office, and she remained an army clerk until her retirement in 1975. She died in 1996, aged 90.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk72YVXD
The television cameraman is unknown. The image is from CBS television, but the distributor is unknown. The image is housed in the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection.
Annie Lee Moss; helped to bring down McCarthy: 1954
Annie Lee Moss testifies before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Permanent Committee on Investigations March 11, 1954 in Washington, D.C. responding to allegations she was a security risk as a Pentagon employee while a member of the U.S. Communist Party.
The image is a still from CBS television footage.
The hearing was recorded and later shown on the national television show See It Now. Moss, a member of Cafeteria Workers Union Local 471, came across as a badgered witness testifying truthfully while committee counsel Roy Cohn came across as mean and vindictive toward a woman who performed routine tasks of a non-secure nature and seemed confused about what Cohn was talking about.
The public reaction toward the hearing helped turn the tide against McCarthy who had made a career out of fear-mongering, unsubstantiated accusations and public shaming of those that disagreed with his crusade against communists.
John Crosby wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, "The American People fought a revolution to defend, among other things, the right of Annie Lee Moss to earn a living, and Senator McCarthy now decided she has no such right." Reporting on public opinion in McCarthy's home state, Drew Pearson wrote, "Wisconsin folks saw her as a nice old colored lady who wasn't harming anyone and they didn't like their senator picking on her."
McCarthy would soon be embroiled in the Army–McCarthy hearings which also significantly eroded his standing with the public and in the Senate.
In December 1954 he was censured by the Senate, and spent the rest of his career in relative obscurity. He died in 1957.
Moss had been suspended from her position when McCarthy announced his interest in the case. In January 1955 she was rehired to a non-sensitive position in the army's finance and accounts office, and she remained an army clerk until her retirement in 1975. She died in 1996, aged 90.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk72YVXD
The television cameraman is unknown. The image is from CBS television, but the distributor is unknown. The image is housed in the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection.