Luella Mundel, a former head of the art department of Fairmont State College in Fairmont, West Virginia, is known for her job termination and blacklisting due to questions about her beliefs during the McCarthy era. Mendel was the subject of American Inquisition, a documentary by Helen Whitney. The documentary examines how McCarthyism had affected the small town of Fairmont, West Virginia.
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In the documentary, the narrator said that in 1951 Mundel "was not a political activist, but had tastes, convictions about art, about religion, unfamiliar to these streets. And at a local American Legion seminar about subversives, Mundel stood to challenge what was being preached there. Her contract was dropped by the college. A state education official accused her of being a poor security risk. She then sued for slander, but in the trial that followed in Fairmont's courtroom, it was Luella Mundel and her right to speak freely, to be different, that wound up being tried."