Red Scare

In a 1950 speech before a women's club in Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin claims to have documents containing the names of communists employed by the State Department. The anti-Communist purges that ensue will become synonymous with his name, but the truth is that McCarthyism has its roots in events that occurred decades before.

During the Palmer Raids in 1920, the Department of Justice arrested thousands of real and imagined radicals. In 1947, Harry Truman issues an executive order barring fascists, communists, and their sympathizers from government employment, a ban that soon spreads to the private sector. By the early 1950s, the FBI has collected information on almost every known leftist in the country, and the Department of Justice has begun to draft a list of "subversive" organizations. Title II of the 1950 Internal Security Act allows for the use of concentration camps in the event of a "national emergency" and establishes the Subversive Activities Control Board. Members of communist organizations cannot apply for or renew passports. Accused communists who refuse to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee are imprisoned. Some offer to admit their own guilt rather than betray friends — but the Fifth Amendment forbids self-incriminating statements in court.

When McCarthy turns his attention to alleged communists in the Army, though, his support begins to unravel. He is censured by the Senate in 1954 and dies in 1957. By then, 10,000 people have lost their jobs, and others have faced deportation. The American Left is decimated.

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950 Library of Congress