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McCarthyism and the civil rights movement
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The Road to Abolishing HUAC: A Comparison of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee
The history of the United States in the twentieth century was significantly influenced by the actions of civil liberties organizations. However, during the reign of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s, civil liberties organizations compromised their principles and did not protest HUAC’s repression of civil liberties. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) purged its Communist members and sympathizers, condoned congressional investigating committees, and failed to defend individuals whose civil liberties had been abridged. Although the ACLU sought to censure McCarthy and called for the abolition of HUAC, its policies had shifted to the right and it rarely took direct action against HUAC. As a result, several former members of the ACLU created the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) in 1951 to pick up the initiative dropped by the ACLU. Corliss Lamont, a fervent defender of civil liberties who left the ACLU for the ECLC, claims that he “remained on the Board [of the ALCU] and fought for fundamental civil liberties principles as long as [he] was able to…[but] was fighting a losing battle” (Freedom 278). By 1957, the ECLC dedicated its resources to abolishing HUAC but could not engage the ACLU in its campaign. One questions why the ECLC was active in the condemnation of HUAC in the 1950s, but the ACLU was not. Historians have cited anti-Communism within the Union, a desire to preserve its reputation, and the Union’s lack of resources as reasons why it was not involved in an abolition campaign. Research best supports the claim that the ACLU did not joi...
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...LU. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1999.
Samuel Walker is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He earned a Ph.D. in American History and is the author of books on civil liberties, policing, and criminal justice. He is also a member of the ACLU and this book is recommended in Ellen Shrecker’s Age of McCarthyism. He claims the ACLU was inactive during the Cold War because of weak leadership, poor judgement, an effort to keep the ACLU free of communism, and the belief that cooperation with the government was the best way to defend civil liberties. That he is a member of the ACLU lends questions to the objectivity of his analysis; William Donohue notes that the book “demonstrates as much independence of thought as would a tract written by a senior member of the Pentagon on the history of the Department of Defense”.
Guilford, CT: Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill, 1997. Chiatkin, Anton. A. Treason in America. Washington DC: Executive Intelligence. Review, a review of the book, Divine, Breen, Frederickson, and Williams. America Past and Present.
In the 1920’s a heightened suspicion of communist activities on domestic American land arose, the Red Scare. Benjamin Gitlow, a prominent member of the Socialist party, was arrested and convicted on charges of violating the New York Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902 during these drastic times. What was his violation? The publication and circulation of the Left-Wing Manifesto, a mere pamphlet, in the United States was his infringement. He appealed the decision on the basis that it violated his First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and press and it was passed on to the United States Supreme Court. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of Gitlow on the basis of Section 1 of the Fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Gitlow v. New York exemplifies the protection of civil right and liberties with judicial activism.
During the late nineteen forties, a new anti-Communistic chase was in full holler, this being the one of the most active Cold War fronts at home. Many panic-stricken citizens feared that Communist spies were undermining the government and treacherously misdirecting foreign policy. The attorney general planned a list of ninety supposedly disloyal organizations, none of which was given the right to prove its loyalty to the United States. The Loyalty Review Board investigated more than three million employees that caused a nation wide security conscious. Later, individual states began ferreting out Communist spies in their area. Now, Americans cannot continue to enjoy traditional freedoms in the face of a ruthless international conspiracy known as the Soviet Communism. In 1949, eleven accused Communists were brought before a New York jury for abusing the Smith Act of 1940, which prohibited conspiring to teach the violent overthrow of the government. The eleven Communist leaders were convicted and sentenced to prison.
Within this controversial topic, two authors provide their sides of the story to whom is to blame and/or responsible for the “Cold War.” Authors Arnold A. Offner and John Lewis Gaddis duck it out in this controversial situation as each individual lead the readers to believe a certain aspect by divulging certain persuading information. However, although both sides have given historical data as substance for their claim, it is nothing more than a single sided personal perception of that particular piece of information; thus, leaving much room for interpretations by the reader/s. Finding the ...
Sokol, Jason. "IIP Digital | U.S. Department of State." White Southerners' Reactions to the Civil Rights
On June 19, 1953, there came an end to what would become known as “the trial of the century”. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted for being Soviet spies and leaking crucial information about the creation of atomic weapons to the Soviet Union. They were sentenced to death and executed by use of the electric chair, leaving behind two orphaned children. However, they have never admitted to committing this crime and their involvement in the leaking of the so-called Manhattan Project was never thoroughly proved. Their execution came to be known as one of the main events characteristic of the Cold War environment in the United States of the 1950s, which was influenced by the phenomenon of McCarthyism. This essay will examine the Rosenberg Case up close. It will first look at the course of their trial. Then it will take a step back and describe the Cold War environment in which the trial took place, which was being dominated by anti-communist sentiment, the Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy. In combining these two sections, this essay will seek to explain how the Rosenberg Case neglected American values of freedom and tolerance, and how this neatly fitted the environment of the Cold War.
In 1938, a committee was formed to find suspected communists in America; this committee was the House of Un-America Activities Committee or HUAC.
Gaddis, John Lewis. “We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.” Taking Sides: Clashing Views On Controversial Issues in United States History. Ed. Larry Madaras and James M. SoRelle. 14th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 302-308.
FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]
J. Edgar Hoover passionately feared Communism. Communism was not only a threat to the American way of life that his ancestors has worked to ensure for generations in in careers as civil servants, but it was also a threat to his deeply rooted religious beliefs. On June 2, 1919 as a bomb was thrown into the home of Attorney General, Mitchell Palmer, Hoover was thrust into a crusade against communism. After the bombing, Palmer began his infamous “Palmer Raids” which resulted in the in the arrests of more than four thousand alien communists nationwide, as well as the deportation of hundreds more. Attorney General Palmer needed a forthright man to do the job and J. Edgar Hoover, who at the time was working for the Alien Enemy Bureau, fit the part. In his role as special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States, Hoover was delegated with an organizing and orchestrating the arrest and deportation of known foreign radicals without due process. In the aftermath of the unconstitutional raids, Mitchell Palmer was disgraced, but J. Edgar Hoover rose to prominence and in 1925 w...
Print. The. Lawson, Steven F., and Charles M. Payne. Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968.
The radicalistic Robert Williams 's philosophy of armed self-reliance opposed Martin Luther King 's nonviolent resistance, but honestly each man represented two different sides of the civil rights movement. Williams and King both understood though that the Cold War a...
There are several significant, as well as less significant, themes that are put forth by the author. Some themes that are not as meticulously elaborated on, but still contribute to the book, include the idea that war can corrupt the government and it’s actions, police brutality was part of the norm of the 1960s, and the word “power” had more than one meaning during the civil rights era. All these themes are important to take into consideration upon reading this book; however th...
Reynolds, Larry. “Patriot and Criminals, Criminal and Patriots.” South Central Review. Vol 9, No. 1.
Schultz, David, and John R. Vile. The Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties in America. 710-712. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale Virtual Reference Library, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. .