That experience and the subsequent years I spent as a union organizer in the Deep South taught me that my country was a long, long way from being the democracy it claimed to be. Knowles found his way into the labor movement via the Unitarian Church, whose ministry he entered in 1937 when he accepted a position with the congregation in Gardiner, Massachusetts. After speaking at a union meeting where he delivered a fiery speech about the Wagner Labor Relations Act in the presence of a local reporter, Knowles met the wrath of the church's board of directors. Refuse public speaking engagements on controversial topics or resign, said the board. Knowles, with a wife and infant son to support, left.
Nobody seems to remember.
Knowles followed his CIO tenure with a stint as an organizer with the United Farmworkers. Family members also endured scrutiny. His former wife, Mary Gardner Knowles '34, had been hauled before the Senate Internal Security Committee during the McCarthy era. Upon appeal, the decision was reversed. His son, Jonathan, upon volunteering for the military in 1961, faced a merciless grilling by the Army, whose intelligence personnel interrogated him relentlessly about his parents' politics.