Join the NYC Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) each month for a virtual Lunch & Learn Series – an intimate conversation with agency staff and special guests focusing on the collections of the Municipal Archives and Library and the history of New York City.

On Tuesday, February 3, Dr. Jane S. Smith will retrace the path that began with a mysterious cache of family records and ultimately led her to the Municipal Archives’ Board of Education Collection and the Communist investigation files where she uncovered a McCarthy-era program designed to purge allegedly leftist teachers from the city’s public schools

“A Blacklist Education” reveals how Smith discovered that her own father had been one of the targeted teachers, while also exposing the broader anti-communist investigations carried out by the NYC Board of Education and the nationwide campaign against “un-Americanism” that gripped the United States during the 1950s — echoes of which resonate powerfully today.

About the Author:

Jane S. Smith was born in New York City and educated in public schools. “A Blacklist Education: American History, a Family Mystery, and a Teacher Under Fire” is her ninth book. Other prize-winning books include Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, and Fool’s Gold, a comic novel. A member of the Northwestern University History Department, she received her PhD from Yale University. She lives in Chicago and works in a very small room with a very large window.