Roughly fifty years after the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)purged communist-led unions from its membership, the Southwest Labor StudiesAssociation met in San Francisco from April 29 to May 1, 1999, to reconsider thehistory and implications of this event and, more broadly, to attempt to untanglethe connections between and among McCarthyism, anticommunist liberalism, and thepolitical trajectory of organized labor during the postwar era. Bringingtogether labor activists, union members, and academics, panels considered thesethemes from a number of perspectives and methodological approaches. Papersfocused on such topics as the dynamics of political repression, theeffectiveness of liberal anticommunist politics for organized labor, and therole of the state in shaping the labor movement.