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McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. After the mid-1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is, in the modern day, outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism, after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover, is more appropriate.
The Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 987, also known as the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, the McCarran Act after its principal sponsor Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nevada), or the Concentration Camp Law, is a United States federal law. Congress enacted it over President Harry Truman's veto. It required Communist organizations to register with the federal government. The 1965 U.S Supreme Court ruling in Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board saw much of the act's Communist registration requirement abolished. The emergency detention provision was repealed when the Non-Detention Act of 1971 was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. The act's Subversive Activities Control Board, which enforced the law's provision calling for investigations of persons engaging in "subversive activities," would also be abolished in 1972.
The United States Senate's Special Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, 1951–77, known more commonly as the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) and sometimes the McCarran Committee, was authorized by S. 366, approved December 21, 1950, to study and investigate (1) the administration, operation, and enforcement of the Internal Security Act of 1950 and other laws relating to espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States and (2) the extent, nature, and effects of subversive activities in the United States "including, but not limited to, espionage, sabotage, and infiltration of persons who are or may be under the domination of the foreign government or organization controlling the world Communist movement or any movement seeking to overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence". The resolution also authorized the subcommittee to subpoena witnesses and require the production of documents. Because of the nature of its investigations, the subcommittee is considered by some to be the Senate equivalent to the older House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first predominantly white US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities, to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged," and to help create a "united front" against Fascism.
The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was a United States civil rights organization, formed in 1946 at a national conference for radicals and disbanded in 1956. It succeeded the International Labor Defense, the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, and the National Negro Congress, serving as a defense organization. Beginning about 1948, it became involved in representing African Americans sentenced to death and other highly prominent cases, in part to highlight racial injustice in the United States. After Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons were sentenced in Georgia, the CRC conducted a national appeals campaign on their behalf, their first for African Americans.
The Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) was a United States federal committee. It was the subject of a landmark United States Supreme Court decision of the Warren Court, Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 351 U.S. 115 (1956), that would lead to later decisions that rendered the Board powerless.
Francis Eugene Walter was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Walter was a prominent member of the House Un-American Activities Committee from 1951 to 1963, serving as chair of that committee for the last nine of those years. He was a Democrat who wanted to minimize immigration and was largely responsible for the McCarran–Walter Act of 1952, which kept the old quotas but also opened up many new opportunities for legal immigration to the US.
President Harry S. Truman signed United States Executive Order 9835, sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. Truman aimed to rally public opinion behind his Cold War policies with investigations conducted under its authority. He also hoped to quiet right-wing critics who accused Democrats of being soft on communism. At the same time, he advised the Loyalty Review Board to limit the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to avoid a witch hunt. The program investigated over 3 million government employees, just over 300 of whom were dismissed as security risks.
Carol Weiss King was a well-known immigration lawyer, renowned for her advocacy in defending the civil rights of immigrants, key founder of the International Juridical Association, and a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States. Her left-leaning career spanned from the Palmer Raids to the McCarthy Era.
Joseph Zack Kornfeder (1898–1963), sometimes surnamed "Kornfedder" in the press, was an Austro-Hungarian-born American who was a founding member and top leader of the Communist Party of America in 1919, Communist Party USA leader, and Comintern representative to South America (1930–1931) before quitting the Party in 1934. After his wife was arrested by the secret police during the Great Terror (1937–1938), Zack became a vehement Anti-Communist and testified before the Dies Committee (1939) and Canwell Committee (1948).
During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.
The Mundt–Ferguson Communist Registration Bill was a proposed law that would have required all members of the Communist Party of the United States register with the Attorney General.
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
The Mundt–Nixon Bill, named after Karl Mundt and Richard Nixon, formally the Subversive Activities Control Act, was a proposed law in 1948 that would have required all members of the Communist Party of the United States register with the Attorney General.
The International Juridical Association was an association of socially minded American lawyers, established by Carol Weiss King and considered by the U.S. federal government as "another early (communist) front for lawyers. The principal concern about the IJA was that it "constituted itself an agent of a foreign principal hostile to the interests of the United States."
Isaac Shorr was a 20th-century American immigration and naturalization lawyer and philosophical anarchist who worked with other important, radical lawyers in the 1920s–1940s and whose legal partners included: Swinburne Hale, Walter Nelles, Joseph R. Brodsky, and Carol Weiss King.
Abraham Howard Feller was the chief legal counsel under Trygve Lie of the United Nations and a friend of Alger Hiss who committed suicide during investigations into communist subversion at the UN by the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS).
The National Committee to Defeat the Mundt Bill AKA "NCDMB" (1948-1950) was an American organization that sought to oppose passage of the Mundt-Nixon Bill and subject of a 15-page report of the House Un-American Activities Committee, two of whose members were US Representatives Karl E. Mundt and Richard M. Nixon.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Fourth Report - Un-American Activities in California - 1948: Communist Front Organizations. Senate of the California Legislature. 1948. pp. 98 (Lincoln Bridge), 113–114 (organization). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications (And Appendixes)... House Document No. 398. US GPO. 1962. pp. 15 (Los Angeles, Albanian), 18 (front), 28 (Polish), 34 (Yugoslav), 35 (Bay Cities), 36 (Bulgarian), 40 (Charles Doyle), 41 (Chicago, Midwest), 46 (Clatsop, Claudia Jones), 49 (Karasek), 50 (Oregon), 54 (Wn PA), 65 (Czech), 67 (Detroit), 68 (East Bay), 69 (East Side), 71 (Estonian), 80 (Greek), 81 (Harry Bridges), 82 (Hungarian), 93 (Italian), 128 (NY-Polish), 183–205 (description), 191 (Lamp), 195 (Beacon). Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Guide to the Records of the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born TAM.086". New York University. 2 May 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born Records (1926-1980s)". University of Michigan. 2 May 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Sherman, John W. (2001). A Communist Front at Mid-century: The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, 1933-1959. Praeger. ISBN 9781351532839 . Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Draper, Theodore (5 July 2017). American Communism and Soviet Russia. Routledge. ISBN 9781351532839 . Retrieved 8 September 2018.
- ↑ Walker, Samuel (1999). In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. SIU Press. p. 179. ISBN 9780809322701 . Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ "American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, Petitioner, v. Subversive Activities Control Board". Cornell Law School - Legal Information Institute. 26 April 1965. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
- ↑ Romerstein, Herbert; Breindel, Eric (1 October 2001). The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9781596987326 . Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Ko, Grace (2012). "Achtemeier, Elizabeth Rice". In Taylor, Marion Ann (ed.). Handbook of Women Biblical Interpreters. Baker Academic. pp. 457–459.
- ↑ Gannon, Francis X. (1973). A Biographical Dictionary of The Left: Volume 4. Western Islands. pp. 376–378. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Navasky, Victor (1 October 2013). Naming Names. Open Road Media. ISBN 9781480436213 . Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Green, Abner (1950). Deportation Terror: A Weapon to Gag America. New Century Publishers. p. 23. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Green, Abner (1951). Deportation Drive vs the Bill of Rights: The McCarran Act and the Foreign Born. New Century Publishers. p. 23. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Morgan, Dwight C. (1936). The Foreign Born in the United States. ACPFB. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
- ↑ Heins, Marjorie (2013). High Priests of Democracy. New York University Press. p. 90. Retrieved 8 September 2018.