Standing in Silence

Amid the Hollywoodian babble that accompanied the Oscar night Lifetime Achievement Award to erstwhile film director and Commie namer Elia Kazan, I kept thinking of Eason Monroe.

If you know him at all, you know him as the name on an ACLU award given to those who display courage and honor in the conduct of their lives by standing up for what they believe.

Kazan, as you know, stood in a different way. He rose before the career-wrecking House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era and pointed his finger at those in the industry he once knew to be Communists, because he was once one himself.

While the gesture in hindsight seems almost comedic, it wasn’t then. Good people saw their lives ruined in the frantic, surreal effort of the nation’s Red hunters to root out subversives. The Cold War threw a chill over freedom that continues to ice our memories today.

Protesters have demanded that Kazan apologize for what he did, but watching that frail and bewildered old man on television the other night, I’m not even sure he remembers what he did, or why.

Courage is defined by the time and manner in which it is displayed, and the 1950s were, indeed, strange times. It took a special quality to stand amid the anti-Communist clamor and refuse to be terrorized into submission.

Eason Monroe was one who stood, and it cost him.

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Because he wasn’t in show biz, with its noisy recognition of heroes and villains, the man is barely remembered for what he did, but I haven’t forgotten.

He was my English teacher at San Francisco State in the 1950s, a cultured, soft-spoken man who guided me through early years of writing and urged me to find my literary voice and use it.

He taught control even as he encouraged style, offering the kind of guidance that never intruded on individual goals. His love for teaching was obvious. His respect for learning was immense. But neither mattered in the autumn of 1950.

The mass hysteria generated by the Cold War, with its deep suspicions, resulted in the passage of a state law that required public employees to swear that they did not advocate the overthrow of the government.

The loyalty oath was poison to anyone who believed in personal freedom, but only a few refused to sign. Monroe was one. And at the ascendancy of his career, San Francisco State fired him.

“How can you swear to uphold the Constitution and thereafter sign away your rights under the Constitution?” he asked. No one answered.

A PhD from Stanford, he had come to State from his first university teaching job in Pennsylvania three years earlier to head the college’s language arts division. Recognition of his academic talents was spreading. School districts sought his expertise. UCLA wanted to hire him. Then his world fell apart.

“One day everything,” he would say, “the next day nothing.”

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His hurt was profound, but Monroe never backed away from his commitment to individual freedom. Two years later, he was named executive director of Southern California’s ACLU. That’s when I met him again.

I came to L.A. in 1972 and learned of his presence here when California’s loyalty oath was struck down and San Francisco State was ordered to rehire him. After two decades of “exile,” he had been vindicated.

But that wasn’t enough. I took it as a personal mission to make clear to all what this man had done at a time of peril to his career. I wrote about him in one of my first major stories for The Times.

In his moment of triumph, he seemed subdued. “Sometimes,” he said in a soft baritone, “risk involves regret.” The regret was that his stand for principle had cost him the work he loved. But: “Careers must sometime be risked for things of value.”

Monroe resigned from the ACLU and returned to teaching in 1972. He died three years later at age 65, his work undone. In his honor, the Eason Monroe Courageous Advocate Award was created.

“He risked all for principle,” Ramona Ripston said the other day. She’s the ACLU’s current executive director. “He was the true patriot. . . .”

I thought about Monroe as Kazan accepted his award. I thought about honor and about courage. Kazan saved himself at a cost to others. Monroe sacrificed himself for the sake of others. History will honor this quiet man who simply stood and said no.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com