The Green Feather Movement was a series of college protests directed against McCarthyism at the height of the Red Scare in the United States.
The movement arose in response to an attempt to censor Robin Hood because of its alleged communist connotations and eventually spread to universities across the nation.
The Green Feather Movement came during the height of the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the United States following World War II and the establishment of Communist governments abroad and the Great Depression, after which many were disillusioned by capitalism.
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin held a series of investigations and hearings during the 1950s aimed at exposing supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government.
McCarthy however then switched the investigation into whether the Army had promoted a dentist who had refused to answer questions for the Loyalty Security Screening Board.
The hearings reached their climax when McCarthy claimed that Joseph Welch, the Army's lawyer had employed a man who at one time had belonged to a communist front group.
In an interview, Bernard Bray, one of the original five students, talked about how he and his friends attended the Roger Williams Fellowship at a local Baptist church to discuss social issues while performing vespers.
The religious activism of his parents, Helen and Earl Bray, who stood up and walked out of their church after someone made a racist comment about a Japanese American, also prompted his action.
[6] In response to this attempt to ban Robin Hood, and the larger McCarthy witch hunt it was a part of, five college students, junior Bernard Bray, sophomore Mary Dawson, Graduate student Edwin Napier, junior Blas Davila, and senior Jeanine Carter, at Indiana University Bloomington started the Green Feather Movement.
[5] The students went to a local poultry farm, bought six large bags of chicken feathers, took them to the basement of a nearby house and dyed them green to represent the one worn by Robin Hood.
[7] Then on March 1, 1954, they put one on every bulletin board on campus to protest censorship and attaching them to white buttons with slogans like "They’re your books; don’t let McCarthyism burn them".
They distributed a statement of purpose, "This I Believe" with help from a printer in town, outlining their support for academic freedom and free speech while warning of the dangers that McCarthyism posed to these ideals.
[5] However, their actions were extremely radical during a time when IU freshmen and sophomore men were still required to participate in ROTC and more than 50% of the nation was in support of McCarthyism and only 29% viewed him unfavorably according to a 1954 Gallup poll.
[9] Faculty from the psychology department and the School of Law, as well as the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, however supported the movement.
Wells denied the Green Feather Movement’s request for official recognition because they were too political, and he feared that university approval would be interpreted as endorsing the group’s anti-McCarthy position, again citing the 1945 policy.
A segment of the letter reads, "Indeed, we can hardly conceive of any meaningful kind of academic freedom on a campus, unless the formation of partisan groups is allowed, if not encouraged.
Louise Derman-Sparks, who joined the Green Feather movement as a high schooler, said that "as a child of the McCarthy period, I was angry at the repression and also scared.
When students returned to classes in the fall, the Green Feathers organizers did not resume their efforts to promote political discussions on campus.
[7] Although the Green Feather movement lasted only through two semesters and came to an end after Sen. McCarthy was censured by the US Senate in December, 1954, it successfully prevented the censorship of Robin Hood[16] and served as an important challenge to the abusive power of McCarthyism and the government in people's lives.
The Green Feather Movement in UCLA was said to be "a turning point in student activism on campus because this type of political performance was not sanctioned by the administration.