This list of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee details the names of those members of the United States House of Representatives who served on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) from its formation as the "Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities" in 1938 until the dissolution of the "House Internal Security Committee" in 1975.
New members of the committee marked with bold type.
Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (1938–1944)
Commonly known as the "Dies Committee." The permanent secretary of the committee was Robert E. Stripling throughout.[1]
75th Congress (1938)
Conservative Texas Democrat Martin Dies Jr. was chair of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities for its entire seven-year duration.
Effective with the 79th Congress of 1945, the former special committee of the House of Representatives was made permanent, expanded to nine members, and renamed. Permanent secretaries of the committee would be Robert E. Stripling (1945–1948), John W. Carrington (1949–1952), Thomas W. Beale Sr. (1953–1956), Richard Arens (1957–1960), Frank S. Tavenner Jr. (1961–1962), Francis J. McNamara (1963–1968).[2]
Pennsylvania Democrat Francis E. Walter, a member of HUAC from 1951, would serve as chairman of the committee from January 1955 until his death in 1963.
Chair of the renamed House Committee on Internal Security for its entire 7-year duration was Democrat Richard H. Ichord Jr. of Missouri.
In February 1969 the name of the committee was changed for a second time. The nine-member Committee on Internal Security would remain in existence until 1975. Chief professional staff members of the Committee on Internal Security included Donald G. Sanders (1969–1973),[3] Robert M. Horner (???–1973), and William H. Stapleton (1974–1975).
The House Committee on Internal Security was formally terminated on January 14, 1975, the day of the opening of the 94th Congress.[4] The Committee's files and staff were transferred on that day to the House Judiciary Committee from whence the Internal Security Committee had sprung.[4]
↑ Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968. New York: The Viking Press 1971; pp. 955-956.
William F. Buckley, The Committee and Its Critics; a Calm Review of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. New York: Putnam Books, 1962.
Robert K. Carr, The House Committee on Un-American Activities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1952.
Frank J. Donner, The Un-Americans. New York: Ballantine Books, 1961.
Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1968.
Joseph Litvak, The Un-Americans: Jews, the Blacklist, and Stoolpigeon Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.
Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Unamericans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
