Roughly fifty years after the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) purged communist-led unions from its membership, the Southwest Labor Studies Association met in San Francisco from April 29 to May 1, 1999, to reconsider the history and implications of this event and, more broadly, to attempt to untangle the connections between and among McCarthyism, anticommunist liberalism, and the political trajectory of organized labor during the postwar era. Bringing together labor activists, union members, and academics, panels considered these themes from a number of perspectives and methodological approaches. Papers focused on such topics as the dynamics of political repression, the effectiveness of liberal anticommunist politics for organized labor, and the role of the state in shaping the labor movement.