Blacklisted

To the Editors:

Professor Joseph E. Illick [NYR, August 22, 1968], in responding to a letter by Anatole Anton et al [NYR, August 1, 1968] calling for an investigation of the charge that the San Francisco State History. Department, “racist and reactionary,” had fired Juan Martinez, Mike Gardiner and Richard Fitzgerald for political reasons, threatened a libel suit which he never instituted. It is noteworthy that a college grievance committee, far from having “investigated and cleared” the History Department, as Professor Illick claims in the Fitzgerald case, found (and even President Hayakawa would not contest) that in regard to my grievance against the History Department, I was denied a contract and that department attempts to prevent me from teaching at other colleges (the dittoed sheet, “A Statement Regarding Mr. Fitzgerald,” mailed to universities) did indeed “constitute a form of blacklisting…”

Richard Fitzgerald

Laney College

Oakland, California