Rick Winston will talk on ‘Red Scare in the Green Mountains’

COURTESY
LUDLOW, Vt. — Black River Academy Museum, Friends of the Ludlow Auditorium and The Book Nook will welcome Vermont film historian Rick Winston to Ludlow for a talk about Winston’s new exploration of the McCarthy Era in Vermont, “Red Scare in the Green Mountains: Vermont in the McCarthy Era 1948-1960.” 

This book talk will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 13 at the Frank Heald Auditorium upstairs in the Ludlow Town Hall.

Winston was the co-owner of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater for 29 years, and was programming director for the Green Mountain Film Festival for 14 years. He has taught film history at Burlington College, Community College of Vermont, Goddard College, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and has made presentations throughout Vermont on film history.

In his new book, Winston explores what happened in Vermont when the anti-Communist fear known as the “Red Scare” swept the country. We see how a small, rural “rock-ribbed Republican” state with a historically libertarian streak handled the hysteria of the time. Far from the klieg lights of Washington D.C., Hollywood, and New York City, the Green Mountain state challenged the national narrative with its own fascinating stories.

Here are nine of the most gripping dramas played out in Vermont during “scoundrel time,” including a high-profile academic firing, controversies involving left-leaning summer residents, courageous newspaper editors who spoke out against McCarthy’s tactics, and a conservative senator who helped take down Joseph McCarthy.  

Copies of “Red Scare in the Green Mountains” will be available for purchase, and to be signed, at the event.