Author: lisaedavis

At the height of the Red Scare, Angela Calomiris was a paid FBI informant inside the American Communist Party. As a Greenwich Village photographer, Calomiris spied on the New York Photo League, pioneers in documentary photography. While local Party officials may have had their sus-picions about her sexuality, her apparent dedication to the cause won them over. When Calomiris testified for the … for the prosecution at the 1949 Smith Act trial of the Party’s National Board, her identity as an informant (but not as a lesbian) was revealed. Her testimony sent eleven party leaders to prison and decimated the…