Letter to My California Dreamer: Two Californians Protesting 'Communist Witch Hunts' Fall in Love

For a series we’re calling “Letter to My California Dreamer,” we’re asking Californians from all walks of life to write a short letter to one of the first people in their family who came to the Golden State. The letter should explain:

What was their California Dream?
What happened to it?
Is that California Dream still alive for you?

Here's a letter from Matt Elkins, to his mom and dad, Thelma and Morton Elkins.

Dear Mom and Dad,

You both came to San Francisco from the East Coast. Dad, you came from Philly in the 1940s to attend Stanford on the GI Bill. Mom, you were working in a New York shipyard in the early 1950s. You visited a friend in San Francisco and never left. Your friends and family were bewildered by your choice to relocate so far away. You both would say that California was founded by those who chose to leave somewhere else.

You were both political southpaws, and had a deep dislike and fear of the communist witch hunts, spreading like lava across the country, ruining lives in its Cold War path. In 1953, Governor Earl Warren passed the Levering Act, which required all public employees to sign a loyalty oath disavowing “radical beliefs.” You fell in love with each other after meeting at a non-signers' party. Not signing the oath was an earlier, more dangerous version of "taking a knee.” The outcome could eventually lead people to jail, the poorhouse, even suicide.

Indeed, outing people for their communist beliefs and/or sympathies, true or not, had already taken its toll for some time.

Dad, you lost your job as an English teacher when you refused to sign the oath. You took a job as a warehouseman, and became active in the International Longshoreman’s and Warehouse Union. That was a red flag for the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, as it was called. They interrogated you in 1960, when they dropped into San Francisco like a circus.

I keep the recording of that interrogation, first broadcast on KQED, on my phone for those times where I need strength, or just miss you.

Everything about it: the accusations, parlance, and countenance made for a surreal stage production of sorts. You were prepared. In your own, very familiar way, you utilized your time to defend, disarm, and educate, flustering and flummoxing your interrogator before finally being excused.

Mom, you were raising two young daughters, were also six months pregnant with me. You worked for the Red Cross, managing to fly under the radar even though you also refused to sign the oath. You often said that the pressure was enormous, and that just giving in and going along with the majority was a choice both tempting yet unimaginable.

At great cost to your growing family, you dealt with wire taps, threats, even swastikas graffitied on your Richmond, California home.

Dad, you were officially vindicated in 1967, when the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that the Levering Act was unconstitutional.

You and mom went on to have careers as social workers and business owners in Berkeley. You stayed surrounded by the people who emerged, scarred but alive. At the height of the Vietnam War, you marched down Telegraph Avenue, lined up against the California National Guard with your kids. You continued to fight other battles as they came up, wack-a-mole style. Mom, even while you had cancer and were going blind, you organized and fought for the rights of low-vision sufferers.

Mom and Dad, your efforts and experiences teed up a much easier existence for me and my sisters. I envy your strength, and often wonder if I could call on it under the same circumstances. In the current political climate, your help would be invaluable.

Love, Matt

We’d love to see your letter to your family’s California Dreamer. Maybe it was a parent, a great-great grandparent or maybe even you were the first in your family to come to California with a dream. Fill out the form here and share your story with us!