Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Letter to the editor:

McCarran’s name dishonors Nevada

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Defenders of Sen. Patrick McCarran’s communist witch hunts cite the Venona papers that show there were communists working for the government. But the innocent victims of McCarran and Sen. Joseph McCarthy were not those named in the Venona papers.

McCarran’s anti-Semitism motivated him and those he influenced to equate being Jewish with being a communist. Thousands of Jews seeking to escape from communism in Eastern European countries were barred from entering the U.S. because of McCarran’s racist immigration act (which also drastically lowered immigration from Africa).

It now appears that our airport name will not be changed and those of us personally affected by McCarran’s bigotry will just have to accept it.

But whatever we do with the airport, it is disingenuous for us to try to salvage McCarran’s ugly reputation simply because he brought federal funds to Nevada.

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