Annie Lee Crawford was born in 1905 to a tenant farmer in South Carolina. She had six siblings. She worked as a domestic servant and a laundress. In 1926, she married Ernest Moss, and they moved to North Carolina, where she worked in the tobacco industry. She began her work in the federal government as a dessert cook, and later became a clerk in the General Accounting Office, then as a communication clear in the Army Signal Corps at the Pentagon. A widowed mother, Moss steadily improved her position, buying a home in 1950, and by 1954 had an annual income of $3,300 (about $40,000 today), well above the median for black women at the time. Annie Lee Moss became widely known 72 years ago this week, when she was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and accused of belonging to the Communist party a decade before. Senator Joseph McCarthy's popularity was already declining on March 11, 1954, when Moss appeared at a hearing open to the public. A week before, Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" had broadcast the famous episode "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy." And the committee's case against Moss was riddled with errors and hearsay. McCarthy claimed Moss was "encoding and decoding ... top secret messages," when in fact she handled only unreadable, encrypted messages. McCarthy left the hearing shortly after it began, and his henchman Roy Cohn took over. Cohn said a well-known communist named Rob Hall had visited Moss's home. Senator Robert F. Kennedy pointed out that communist Rob Hall was white, where the Rob Hall known to Moss was a union organizer, who Moss described as "a man of about my complexion." Cohn claimed to have corroboration of the evidence against Moss "from a confidential source." Senator John McCullan rebuked Cohn for "convicting people by rumor and hearsay and innuendo." Moss denied being a Communist Party member. When asked if she knew who Karl Marx was, she evoked laughter from the audience when she answered, "Who's that?" Senator Stuart Symington suggested that the case against Moss might be mistaken identity, as there were three women named Annie Lee Moss in Washington DC. "See It Now" filmed the hearing and broadcast an episode on March 16, 1954. Murrow opened by saying it would be a "little picture about a little woman." The two episodes on the hearings are credited with contributing to McCarthy's downfall. The New York Herald Tribune wrote, "The American People fought a revolution to defend, among other things, the right of Annie Lee Moss to earn a living, and Senator McCarthy now decided she has no such right." Drew Pearson wrote, "Wisconsin folks saw her as a nice old colored lady who wasn't harming anyone and they didn't like their senator picking on her". This was not the "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" moment. That was Army lawyer Joseph Welch at the Army-McCarthy hearings months later. On December 2, 1954, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, ending his influence, but continued to act as committee chair until the next U.S. Congress was inaugurated in January. He continued his anti-communist oratory, often to an empty Senate chamber. Turning increasingly to alcohol, McCarthy died of hepatitis on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. Annie Lee Moss had been suspended from her Army job when McCarthy accused her. In January, 1955, she was rehired to a non-sensitive job in the Army's finance and accounts office. She remained an Army clerk until her retirement in 1975. She died in 1996, aged 90. Later, Historian Andrea Friedman studied the evidence against Moss, in particular FBI files that showed Moss's name and address in Communist Party membership records. So not mistaken identity, after all. Friedman concluded that Moss most likely had indirect contact with Communists through her cafeteria workers' union, at most was probably a "casual recruit to the Communist Party, attracted by its social and economic justice politics," and later abandoned any association with them. Credits: https://w.wiki/HntB Photo: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmB2T7x6 Photographer unknown. Library of Congress Newspaper Photograph Collection Today I got my 1967 Beetle out of storage in Santa Cruz and drove it to Peninsula Automotive in Campbell, a VW specialist. Yesterday, I drove from L.A. and dropped my Domane there, so I could ride back to Santa Cruz today. It was chilly at first, but I soon warmed up. My route followed Los Gatos Creek Trail, which is mostly paved but gravel between Los Gatos and the James J. Lenihan Dam. Not very comfortable on a road bike. I walked some steep bits. But what a great trail! (I learned today that the dam was the Lexington Dam until 1996, when it was renamed upon the retirement of the Santa Clara Valley Water District's longest-serving director!) I took Alma Bridge Road around the east side of the Lexington Reservoir. That's climbier than the west side, but last time I was there, years ago, there was some single-track on the west side. Even less fun. Then the long climb up Old Santa Cruz Highway, but not steep. And the last bit of climbing on Mountain Charlie Road to cross Highway 17 at Summit Road. Then down Mountain Charlie, terrible pavement to Riva Ridge Drive, where I ran into Kip coming up Mountain Charle. Kip said Mountain Charlie has a lot of new pavement below Riva Ridge, and I found that was true, but there's still plenty of very bad pavement until Glenwood. From there, my old commute route from Scotts Valley to Santa Cruz! This was a complicated, long-planned ride. I feel very lucky that it all went perfectly. And fortunate that I have the time and the resources to do it!