John Walton Caughey(1902-1995)
- Additional Crew
A professor at UCLA from 1930-1967, John Caughey was one of the
foremost historians of California of his time. His books include Gold
is the Cornerstone, California Heritage, and Their Majesties the Mob
(about vigilantism). In 1949 he defied the Regents of the University of
California by refusing to sign a loyalty oath he considered
unconstitutional. He was fired but eventually vindicated in court and
reinstated. That experience started him on a new career as a civil
rights activist. Together with his wife LaRee Caughey he worked to
oppose the death penalty, nuclear testing, and especially racial
discrimination. In the 1960s the couple wrote a fourth-grade textbook
(California's Own History) and an 8th-grade US history textbook (Land
of the Free, in collaboration with Ernest R. May and John Hope
Franklin), both designed to address the need to teach children the
truth about some of the less glorious aspects of our history, such as
internment of Japanese-Americans and Jim Crow, as well as about the
labor movement, the women's movement, and other grassroots efforts for
change. Conservative organizations like the John Birch Society fought
hard against these texts, but they were eventually adopted for use in
the California schools.