No person in the classified service shall be appointed or reduced or removed or in any way favored or discriminated against because of his political or religious opinion or affiliations. -Los Angeles County Charter, Section 41
Local governments across the United States required their employees to take loyalty oaths in the late 1940s. Here, Los Angeles city executives take the oath inside the city council chambers in 1948. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library.
In the summer of 1948, a social worker named Orilla Winfield received a letter from Arthur J. Will, the superintendent of charities for Los Angeles County. It read in part:
Dear Mrs. Winfield:
You are hereby notified that effective on the 26th day of July, 1948, at 5pm, you are permanently discharged from your position in the county as a social case worker without further notice. Your discharge is based on the grounds that you have been guilty of insubordination. The specific facts constituting the grounds of insubordination are as follows:
On the 28th day of May, 1948 you were personally presented by me or my duly authorized agent with a form containing an oath and affidavit commonly known as the loyalty oath, and ordered to immediately execute the same in full, signing your name thereto and swearing or affirming to the statements therein made. You then and there refused to obey this order.
Subsequently, on the 23rd day of July, 1948 you were advised that failure to execute paragraphs A, B and C of said oath and affidavit would result in your discharge at 5pm on the 26th day of July, 1948. You have failed and refused to execute paragraphs A, B and C of said oath and affidavit within the time specified .
The letter went on to state that Winfield had ten days to request a hearing on the charges before a civil service commission. She was not the only person to receive this letter. Sixteen other county workers were fired on the same day for their refusal to sign the loyalty oath. The county's decision to require such on oath came on the heels of President Truman's Executive Order 9835, also known as the Loyalty Order, which he signed on March 22, 1947. The order was inspired by the dawn of the Cold War and the public's increasingly paranoid fears that communists would infiltrate American institutions and attempt to collaborate with the Soviet Union. A pamphlet entitled If We Remain Silent, printed by the United Defense Committee of Public Employees Against Loyalty Checks, explains what happened next:
Treading manfully in the path marked out by the President's loyalty order, the five members of the Los Angeles County's governing Board of Supervisors on April 1, 1947, played a grim April Fools jest on the rights guaranteed 20,000 county employees in the Federal Constitution and in the County Charter. Unanimously, the five supervisors directed chief Administrator Wayne Allen and County Counsel Harold Kennedy to draft legislation designed to investigate the political beliefs and affiliations of the 20,000 employees. By August 15, a recommended loyalty check was submitted to the supervisors and by August 26, the loyalty check in the form of affidavits to be sworn to by the 20,000 employees was ordered, [the] first local loyalty check in the nation.
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There was an immediate public outcry against the planned check, and the battle raged throughout the winter of 1947-48. The American Civil Liberties Union and local labor unions became involved and attempted to stop the oath through the courts. Despite their protestations that the check violated the US Constitution and the Los Angeles County Charter, the county proceeded with its plans. And so, on May 5, 1948, all 20,000 Los Angeles County employees were presented with the following packet, which included a letter, an oath and an affidavit:
TO: COUNTY EMPLOYEES
FROM: LOYALTY CHECK COMMITTEE. SUBJECT: LOYALTY CHECK
By order of the Board of Supervisors of Los Angeles County dated August 26, 1947, a committee was created consisting of the Civil Service Commission, and the County Counsel. This Committee has been instructed to determine whether any county employee advocates the overthrow of the constitutional government by force or violence.
This is not a witch hunt. Each step the committee is to take is specifically outlined, and the actions of the committee are so restricted that it may not start secret activities on its own behalf.
There is transmitted an oath and affidavit (including list of organizations) which you are requested to execute before a Deputy County Clerk.
Very truly yours,
Wayne Allen
County employees protesting the loyalty check picket outside the Hall of Records in 1948. Courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.
The loyalty oath that employees were expected to parrot read as follows:
I {blank} do solemnly swear {or affirm} that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the State of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office or employment of which I am about to enter or am now engaged SO HELP ME GOD.
Section B of the check required that country workers affirm that they had not, since 1941, been a member of any political party or organization that advocated the overthrow of the government. Section C concerned the use of aliases. But it was Section D that many considered to be blatantly illegal, intrusive, and undemocratic. County workers were required to swear:
That I have never been a member of, or directly or indirectly supported or followed, any of the hereinafter listed or
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No person in the classified service shall be appointed or reduced or removed or in any way favored or discriminated against because of his political or religious opinion or affiliations. -Los Angeles County Charter, Section 41
