The Tombs is the colloquial name for the Manhattan Detention Complex (formerly the Bernard B. Kerik Complex), a municipal jail in Lower Manhattan at 125 White Street, and also the nickname for three previous city-run jails in the former Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan, an area now known as the Civic Center.. The original Tombs was officially known as the Halls of …

Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904 – 29 April 1969) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident voices"), and vocal anti-communist after her expulsion from the Party in 1949.

In 1938, the U.S. House of Representatives created the House Un-American Activities Committee; one of the committee's first actions was to attempt to investigate the political views of faculty in the New York public colleges. In 1940, Bertrand Russell was denied employment as a philosophy professor at CCNY because of his political beliefs.