ABSTRACT

Chapter 5 examines the program’s Cold War legacy. While many factors contributed to the demise of Langdon’s childcare program, anti-communist attacks played a huge role in burying the program’s accomplishments. Congressional hearings politicized the program as the country began to demobilize in 1945. Program leaders and supporters were red-baited. Other program leaders retreated largely into the private sector. Grace Langdon moved away from Washington, DC, for instance, to begin her postwar career as a toy consultant. By the time she created preschools as an element of the War on Poverty, her New Deal program had been largely forgotten. Remnants of the program’s achievements remained, but relatively few former WPA nursery school leaders worked directly with Head Start. Both Langdon’s lack of recognition from the larger nursery school community after World War II and President Nixon’s veto of the 1971 Comprehensive Child Development Act were rooted in the Red Scare’s contribution to the burial of the WPA nursery school program.