Matusow, Harvey, 1926-

Harvey Marshall Matusow (1926-2002) was born in the Bronx, New York, where his father owned a cigar store. He dropped out of high school, to serve in the US Army in Europe during the Second World War. Joining the Communist Party in 1946, for several years he was an active member in New York. During 1950, until his expulsion from the party, he supplied information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the party's activities. Early in 1951 he volunteered to give evidence for the Government in actions being brought against various alleged communists or communist organizations. From this time until the autumn of 1954 he acted as an official witness in cases heard before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, the Ohio Un-American Affairs Commission, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, the State Industrial Commission of Texas, the Subversive Activities Control Board, etc. During this time he testified against Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Owen Lattimore, Clinton E. Jencks, against the Communist Party of the USA, the Labor Youth League, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and against several labour unions.

During 1952 he worked for the magazine Counterattack, and was involved in investigating the entertainment business in New York and Hollywood and in gathering information used in compiling blacklists of allegedly communist artists. Through contact with Senator Joseph McCarthy, he played a vigorous part in the presidential election campaign of 1952 : he spoke for Senator McCarthy in Wisconsin and in support of other Republican candidates in Idaho, Montana, Utah and Washington State. In these activities Matusow made many contacts among those most active in combating the influence of communists in the United States.

In February 1955, having admitted giving false evidence before a federal court against Clinton E. Jencks, an organizer of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, Matusow was brought before the U.S. District Court in El Paso, Texas. Charged with perjury, he was convicted and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. The trial of Matusow and the almost simultaneous publication of his account of his career of testimony, False Witness, stimulated in the press and among the public a discussion of the Government's use of paid witnesses. His appeal against conviction at El Paso upheld, Matusow was arraigned before a Grand Jury in New York. Charged with perjury in the case of the USA. v. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and others, Matusow was convicted before the U.S. District Court of New York and sentenced to serve five years in prison.

This part of the Matusow Papers concerns Matusow's activities down to his imprisonment. See SxMs 23, Matusow Papers II, for later activities. That part also includes: material documenting Matusow's further involvement with Senator McCarthy, both in the 1952 Presidential election campaign (as pro-Republican speaker) and as assistant in a project to undermine public trust in the New York Times ; and his prison correspondence.

From the guide to the Matusow Papers I, 1945-1992; mainly 1950-1956, (University of Sussex Library)

See the collection level record for SxMs 8, Matusow Papers I, for Harvey Matusow's early life and, in 1950-54, service as an informer to the FBI on the Communist Party and as an official witness in cases heard before the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, etc., and, in 1955, his trial and imprisonment for giving false testimony. This portion of the Archive contains some personalia (relating to family members) and further material documenting Matusow's involvement with Senator Joe McCarthy, both in the 1952 Presidential election campaign (as pro-Republican speaker) and as assistant in a project to undermine public trust in the New York Times . His prison correspondence is also included. Matusow has described prison as 'the university I never attended' and he spent his time directing plays and painting canvases.

The principal focus of this part of the Matusow archive is 'alternative culture' in New York and London, with particular strength in the late 1960s and early 1970s. On his release from prison in 1960, Matusow worked his way in to the New York art scene and, by 1963 was editor and publisher of listings magazine The New York Arts Calendar . He also wrote and edited The Art Collector's Almanac, a well-received book, but increasing bitterness and a sense that he would never be truly forgiven for his acts in the previous decade drove him deeper into counter culture. He became involved in New York's first underground newspaper, The East Village Other (EVO) and, on moving to London in 1966, began to contribute to its closest British equivalent, the equally groundbreaking International Times (IT). The collection is strong on small-press, counter culture magazines of this era and the Matusow Archive includes copies of EVO, IT, Friends/Frendz, INK, Oz (including the published account of the notorious Oz obscenity trial and the infamous 'School Kids' issue), Crawdaddy and Forum . There are drafts of articles and reviews Matusow penned for various publications and a copy of his interview with Norman Mailer for IT in 1968 (Matusow had made Mailer's acquaintance two years earlier).

After the anti-Communist paranoia of the 1950s, Matusow's years of freedom found him allied to another movement driven by distrust and a perceived threat to individual liberty. In the late 1960s, he became involved with the Anti-Computer Campaign and organised the International Society for the Abolition of Data-Processing Machines. His activity and interest is recorded in the form of contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles voicing concern over the growth of technology. Matusow's work spawned a book, The Beast of Business: A record of computer atrocities (1968), and his stance, very much the product of a new technological era, parallels that of contemporary but better-known thinkers such as Lewis Mumford.

More tangential and esoteric strengths of the second part of the Matusow Archive include two boxes of material on Wilhelm Reich of 'Orgone Box' fame, a fellow inmate from Matusow's prison years. Reich's extravagant claims for his inventions and experiments had led to prosecution by the Food and Drugs Administration for fraud, and Matusow's collection contains a transcript of Reich's (unsuccessful) appeal against his conviction. Magazine articles and copies of Reich journal Organic Functionalism (Rutter Press) from the late 1950s and early 1960s are also included.

One further dimension to Matusow's work well represented in the Archive is his involvement with music. He staged concerts of John Cage's compositions and organised ICES-72 (International Carnival of Electronic Sound). Married at the time to minimalist musician Anna Lockwood, Matusow also had a band of his own: Harvey Matusow's Jew's Harp Band. The Archive contains some arts and music magazines with related features from the period, including Time Out and Rolling Stone . There is also documentation of the staging of ICES and the process of making his own recordings.

This part of Matusow's archive ends with his return to the USA in 1973. His summary of his life down to 1996 is (September 2002) at www.ibiblio.org/mal/ MO/matusow .

From the guide to the Matusow Papers II, c1940-1974, (University of Sussex Library)