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One of my favorite collections in the archives
is a series of loyalty oath signed by City workers during the 1950s.
This was during a time when it was Washington state law for City
employees to sign an oath swearing that they were not a, quote,
subversive person or a member of any subversive organization.
Such oaths were not unusual during the Cold War period
in the United States between 1947 and 1956.
More than 2,000 jurisdictions across 42 states enacted laws requiring them.
Loyalty oath in the archives state, mostly from 1951.
They document people working for the City in all kinds of roles
across City departments, including the Parks Department,
City Light, Seattle Public Library,
the Fire Department, Health Department and others.
Although there's not much detail on each form (usually just employee
name, date position, title, department name and signature), each one speaks
to a larger context of what was happening throughout the country at that time.
And collectively, they also provide us
with a kind of snapshot-in-time directory of who was working at the City.
Most interesting to me are the ones that include
small notes of protest, handwritten
by a few City workers who resisted complying with the requirement.
For example, City Light Substation Operator E.A.
Wishon added to his form the note “is this coercion?” Senior
Custodial Engineer James R.
Smith wrote that his oath was “signed under duress,” and Hydroelectric Operator
August Miklave noted that his was signed with, quote, “apprehensions
for security of fundamental American civil liberties.” A 1951 memo
from the Law Department to the Civil Service
Commission cites these examples of amended statements and gives others,
including one from a junior cataloger at the library,
Jean E. Huot, who had added a typewritten statement
to her oath declaring that she had only signed out of, quote,
“economic necessity” so as not to lose her position.
The memo concluded that such amended statements were out of compliance
with the state law.
As the consequence for noncompliance was dismissal,
the memo recommended that employees, quote, “be given an opportunity to sign
unqualified leave in view of the serious consequences likely to ensue.”
Loyalty oaths continued to be a condition for City employment for many years.
After a long court battle led by the ACLU in 1964, the U.S.
Supreme Court struck down loyalty oaths for Washington state
employees, and the City's loyalty oath requirement was discontinued.
For more information about this collection and any others in the archives,
just email archives@seattle.gov.
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