Pittsburgh Board of Public Education (Pa.)

Dorothy Albert was born to Russian immigrants on February 25, 1908, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1928 with an A.B. degree from the University of Pittsburgh, she became an English teacher at Taylor Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill. In March, 1950, she was denounced as a communist by FBI informant Matthew Cvetic during a hearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Her name was published along with many other alleged area communists in the Pittsburgh newspapers. In a meeting with the school superintendent, Earl A. Dimmick, Albert acknowledged attending meetings of the Civil Right Congress, which the government listed at the time as a communist front. When the Board of Public Education met on March 28, 1950, to discuss Albert, it voted unanimously to terminate her employment. A two year legal battle ensued in which Albert and her lawyer, Hymen Schlesinger, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in hopes of regaining her teaching position and clearing her name. However, in 1952, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld Albert's dismissal.