Great Red Scare: Phenomenon Of National Hysteria
Great Red Scare: Phenomenon of National HysteriaSince human behavior is easily manipulated, the Red Scare caused the middle class breakout in hysteria.Carol WillisMrs. Laura GuardinoHistory 00212 December 2010
Willis 1Imagine you and your family are sleeping soundly in the security of your own homewhen there is a thunderous, forceful hammering on your door. Without conscience of guilt youanswer the door. Two men forcefully break in and seize your father in the middle of the night.This type of occurrence happened in cities and towns throughout the country from 1918-1920immediately following WWI. The fear and paranoia of being labeled a communist made everyneighbor look at each other twice; people questioned your every move. It was a time of “harshsuppression in some cases of those strikes, race riots, hyper-inflation, mass round-ups anddeportation of foreign born citizens, expulsion of newly-elected officials from various offices ingovernment, an incapacitated president, espionage laws, sedition laws, of course, the advent ofProhibition and women‟s suffrage.” (Klein, Leo Robert “Red Scare(1918-1921): HomePage”).Few periods in history have been so dramatic and full of mystery. This anti-communistmovement created out of hearsay and suspicion catalyzed an event in our countryknown as theRed Scare.After the First World War people were full of fear over the fact that communists wereamong us. Some Americans believed the Communists and anarchists, who were opposed to theAmerican government, were a threat to our society. The Russian Revolution, in which theBolsheviks overthrew the tsar and constructed a communist government, prompted the media toinform the public that such an uprising is something to fear here at home. In addition, largenumbers of immigrants were migrating to the United States and labor unions were formed forbetter working conditions. Thus, the public began fearing immigrants and their foreign ideologyand the unions were seen as the seedlings to Communism, infiltrating the labor market.
Willis 2Depicted below is a European anarchist attempting to destroy the Statue of Liberty in 1919. (yahoo image)In June 1919, anarchists detonated homemade bombs because they were fighting forequal rights throughout cities in America. One prominent, outspoken archist was EmmaGoldman, nicknamed “Red Emma”. She spent her life giving speeches, writing essays about thepersonal liberties for men and women. As Americans were reading and listening to propagandafrom both sides of the communist suspicions, emotions were escalating on every Main Street inAmerica. Also, in 1917, A Chicago Daily News reporter, Ben Hecht writes a story entitled “TheMob”, which describes the growing anarchists‟ madness that is emerging with any group of
Willis 3people. Goldman‟s piece inadvertently aroused controversy over the idea of equality. This laterled to the deportation of Emma Goldman back to Russia. As Hecht describes, a man passesanother man and his wife walking along when he witnesses the man slap his wife. Heimmediately steps in and punched the second man for striking a woman. A crowd is formed andimmediately starts yelling that the man who threw the first punch is an anarchist. As thepolicemen tried defusing the circle, the crowd grew and was quick to judge the incident notrealizing it was a man defending a woman (Goldman221-224). There were a series of anarchistbombings that terrorized the United States during this period. One explosion destroyed the homeof Cleveland‟s mayor. Another damaged the house of a Massachusetts legislator. Two went offin Pittsburg, and explosives were ignited in Manhattan, Philadelphia and New Jersey. Americanswere experiencing terrorism in their own backyard. These incidences launched the creation ofThe Palmer Raids.In November 1919, the Palmer Raids occurred. They were the brainchild of the AttorneyGeneral A. Mitchell Palmer. They acted as Palmer‟s primary platform for presidentialnomination and eradicated the removal of radicals in our society. “Here was every indicationthat by the spring of 1920 Palmer played the Red Scare for all it was worth ” (Murray, 192).His agents arrested thousands calling them “reds” convincing the public that these people wereconspiring to overthrow our government. Palmer characterized the “reds” as dangerous andbegan to create criminal stereotypes around immigrants, Jews, Catholics, African-Americans andthe rural poor. These charges poured over to job discrimination and limited access to publicfacilities (Green36).The Palmer Raids worked to round up and imprison unionists, aliens, andanyone who looked suspicious (Watson 50). An immigrant named Ray Czachowski
Willis 4remembered the discrimination shoved in his face when applying for a job. “I put in anapplication, but as soon as they saw the „ski‟ on the back, they tore it right up in front of me”(Green 36). The Palmer Raids did not bring the attorney general a nomination to the presidency,but it did ignite and fuel hate within the American psyche. Widely known hate groups such asthe Ku Klux Klan and other militia groups are among those infected with this irrational fear. Thebeliefs surrounding the Palmer Raids appealed to many Americans because it was anti-union,anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-prostitution, anti-smoking, anti-dancing, and anti-liquor. TheRaids allowed for Americans to view themselves as righteous and pure, while criminalizingevery else who did not adhere to the ethical, white American Protestant ideal.Next is an example of who the Raids targeted. In 1918, a strike in a shipping yard inMobile, Alabama was raided and the strike‟s leader was never seen again; in Birmingham thesteelworkers‟ leader also mysteriously „disappeared‟ before the strike (Green 37). Rumor has it;the federal government imprisoned them. As people were unlawfully jailed for years, lives andcareers turned upside down and many were told not to speak about what they witnessed.Terrified by the belief of the Red Scare, other parts of North America were affected as well. Inaddition, an eyewitness account of a then 10 year-old- girl named Claris (Brownie) Freedmandescribes May 15, 1919 in Winnipeg Canada as what is known in history as Bloody Saturday.She witnessed a labor strike over job loss and the economy that got out of control as the crowdtoppled a streetcar and set it on fire. The Mounted Police fired shots into the crowd killing oneman and injuring many others. “When I look back on it, I think it was a pretty horrifying sightfor young people to witness. Everybody was obviously very angry. I was only 10 and I don‟tremember anything about the politics of the time. I know now that there were people out of
Willis 5work that they didn‟t have enough to eat. I knew Gloria Queen, whose father, John Queen, waslater mayor of Winnipeg. He went to jail because he was active in the strike. We heard about alot of people who went to jail. But we never discussed it in school and never mentioned it again”(Freedman 129). But just as many were swept away with consuming the propaganda that was fedto them, there was still a truth created by the tensions of the Cold War between the Soviet Unionand the United States.How did the fear of the Red Scare cause the middle class to act and what did ourgovernment do to create such hysteria? Under normal situations, the existence of a communisttakeover would only have stirred a few. But the “conditions were anything but normal. Thecountry was experiencing industrial unrest, political and moral irresponsibility, excessiveintolerance, fear of opposition and change – but these were a few of the abnormalities thatexisted“ (Murray 57). Along with the suspicion of radicalism the Red Scare was a majorcatalyst for public paranoia and panic.After WWI America rushed to hurry back to the way it was post-war. The belief of whatthe country should be was not defined. It was used to being at war and being defined as such.Many industries were left short with lower production rates, soldiers coming home needing jobs,the cost of living for an average family was 99 percent higher than it was five years ago, andstriking by organized laborers became more and more prevalent. The economic scene after thewar was far from the normalcy expected. As the country experienced fears of striking, “redhunting” became the national obsession. (Burnett) Strikers were branded as “reds” and wereassumed to be unpatriotic and anti-American because their organizing was seen as contradictoryto capitalist values. Even more significant was the senate‟s decisionto not join the League of
Wills 6Nations. In a combined decision with President Wilson the implications weakened the world‟sview even more on America. This scenario gave smaller men an excellent opportunity to leadthe strayed and defocused public into a false security and tapping into human weakness andemotions. We have now starting to look at one of our more honored principles for which thiscountry was created, freedom (Perlstein A17).In addition, three particular laws were passed by the Federal Congress to set the scene ofproclaiming espionage and treason on our own country‟s soil. The Espionage Act of 1917prohibited any disloyal activity; the Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited any person to speak, write orprint any negative words regarding the U.S. Government and the third, signed on October of1918 decreed that all aliens of foreign lands were to be deported. All of these events set theatmosphere for the Great Red Scare to occur.(Perlstein). However, as quickly as the Red Scarebegan, it abruptly ended the summer of 1920. Laborers realized that deporting immigrants was amajor drain on profits. Newspapers that used articles and cartoons condemning “reds” now usedthe same paper to make fun of the entire issue. (Burnett)Granted, the Red Scare of the late 1910‟s ceased after America saw a decline in the economy, theRed Scare returned for a second debut. Within the events of the late 1940s with the RosenbergTrials, the Iron Curtain surrounding Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union‟s nuclear weapon supply,and the 50,000 member strong group Communists of the United States within our boundaries,Americans were again fearful of Communism. Espionage and spying were on the forefront inAmerica. As the media coverage intensified with the trials of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg whowere the first civilians in the United States ever executed for conspiracy to commit espionage,communismheadlined every newspaper. President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order
Willis 7forming the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) led by Joseph McCarthy (R,Wis) to conduct character investigations of the Americans suspected of espionage and favoringthe Soviet Union. This act would become the legacy of McCarthy, known as McCarthyism.McCarthy produced lists without merit of “loyalists” to the Soviet Union. Americans from allwalks of life were “blacklisted”, jailed and lives were ruined by the unmerited allegations.The second red scare completely tainted the behavior of American society. Hollywoodplayed a role in fueling these acquisitions. Television series like The Taking from AnotherWorld (1951) created stories and themes about destruction, which consequently infiltrated thepublic‟s belief system. Even the baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds changed their name to theCincinnatiRed Legs for a period of time motivated by stereotyping and money.Sixty years after aCongressional panel grilled Hollywood‟s directors, writers, and producers about Communistconnections, tinsel town is still quarreling over the heroes and the rogues of the Red Scare(Cieply E1). If you were black listed in Hollywood in the late 1940s, you would have consideredyour career over. You could be labeled as a Communist sympathizer and cast out of acting,writing and directing opportunities. Among many that were blacklisted in Hollywood wasactress and singer Lena Horne; Katharine Hepburn and Edward Dmytrk, and director, writerDalton Trumbo. He was one of ten who was jailed for contempt for refusing to answer questionsbefore the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He and hundreds of others werebarred from working openly in Hollywood for more than a decade. A documentary entitled“Trumbo” directed by Peter Askin and written by Trumbo‟s son, Christopher Trumbo describingin Trumbo‟s own words what occurred. In a speech actually delivered and was the opening lines
Willis 8in the film, Trumbo said “There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage andcowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; andalmost every individual involved, no matter where they stood, combined some or all of theseantithetical qualities in his own person, in his own acts” (Cieply).Low-resolution reproduction of screenshot from the documentary film Legacy of theHollywood Blacklist (1987) consisting of 1950 image showing protestors opposing thejailing of the Hollywood Ten. (Research has not established who took the original image/ copyright holder of source film: One Step ProductionsLater in life, Trumbo describes his feelings. “People feel guilty about it,” he said. “I think it‟sbecause essentially the community itself recognized that it didn‟t have to happen. And they let ithappen” (Cieply). Being blacklisted didn‟t stop the famous, Oscar winning Hollywood crowd.Occasionally newspapers would print obituaries of names we wouldn‟t recognize, but theirarticle would be headlined as “Fran Wilkinson, Defiant Figurer of Red Scare, Dies at 91”(Lyman C15) or “Milo Radanovich, 81, Dies; Symbol of 50‟s Red Scare” (Martin A24) FrankWilkinson was a Los Angeles Housing Official who lost his job because he refused to tell theHouse Un-American Activities Committee whether he was Communist. In 1952 Wilkinson
Willis 9spearheaded a housing project for Latino and Hispanics in Los Angeles. His colleaguesconsidered his actions socialistand he along with others were abruptly fired. For the next twentyyears he was on the FBI surveillance list with over 132,000 documents stating his every move.Additionally, an Air Force Reserve Officer named, Milo Radulovich, was fired and relieved ofduty because of family relationships. No accusations were ever proved, but he was guilty byassociation to his father and sister (Martin). Also, David Saxon, a physicist with the Universityof California, Berkeley was dismissed along with thirty-three others for refusing to sign a loyaltyoath requested by the Board of Regents. The State Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor ofthe nonsigners and Saxon was reinstated. In a symposium on the oath held by the HigherEducation Studies Center in 1999, Mr. Saxon recalled that he had refused to sign the oathbecause he saw a breakdown in the university government. The leaders of the university werenot following their responsibilities to shield the institution from outside pressure. (New YorkTimes B8)In sum, Paranoia and hysteria can easily manifest through the media. The anticommunist movement escalated twice in our country. Both were generated by greed, power andlack of truth or facts. Radio and newspapers in the early 1900s were the first steps incommunication. Americans were at the mercy of those reporting and to advertisers that keptthem in business. Television changed our techniques for communication, because of visualpictures and real footage. The television also became a staple in American households, reachingfamilies all over the country from all walks of life. As only a small few were actually convictedof espionage compared to the thousands that victims of hearsay, we must look at the otherobjectives that come into play by individuals who were motivated by greed or power. The media
Willis 10cannot be completely at fault for these dark periods in America. As many lives were ruinedthroughout both periods, we can only think that as media continues to infiltrate our homes anddivulge news it is our duty as citizens to educate ourselves on the validity of the informationprovided. The Red Scare highlights the idea that just because something is sanctioned by thegovernment and legislated does not make it morally right. Although America continuously fallsvictim to hysteria (the Red Scares, and more recently anti-Muslim/ anti-immigrant ideology), wecan only hope that our citizens will rise against the government‟s perversions to social equality.
Willis 11Works Cited1. Anarchy! An Anarchy Anthology of Emma Goldman‟s Mother Earth, New York, 1910;London A.C. Fifield, 1911; revised 1917, Pages 14-15.2. Burnett, Paul. “The Red Scare.” edscare.html 1 October 20103. Cieply, Michael “Voices from Blacklist, Through Voices of Others.” New York Times(1923- Current File); September 11, 2007; ProQuest Newspaper the New York Times(1851-2007) pg. E1.4. Freedman, Claris. “Terrified by the Red Scare”. Maclean‟s, Jan 01 2000, Vol. 112 Issue52, p129.5. Green, Harvey. The Uncertainty of Everyday Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1992Klein, Leo Robert “Red Scare (1918-1921): Home are/ABOUT RS.HTMOctober 220106. Klingaman, William K. Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, Facts on File, Inc, New York,NY1996, p 1017. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Marks, Gary.It Didn‟t Happen Here; Why Socialism Failedin the United States. W. W. Norton & Company, New York 2000. Pages 249-255.8. Lyman, Frank. “Wilkinson, Frank, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91.” New YorkTimes (1923- Current Year); January 4, 2006; ProQuest Historical Newspaper TheNew York Times (1851-2007); Pg. C15.9. Martin, Douglas. “Milo Radulovich, 81, Dies; Symbol of 50‟s Red Scare.” The New
Willis 12YorkTimes (1923-Current Year); Nov 21, 2007; ProQuest Historical Newspaper TheNew YorkTimes (1851-2007); Pg. A2410. Murray, Robert K. Red Scare A Study in National Hysteria 1919-1920. University ofMinnesota, 1955, pages 1 – 281.11. “Red Scare Protest Issued by Liberals” The New York Times (1923-Current File); May19, 1930; ProQuest Historian Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007)12. Perlstein, Rick. “A Look at the Architects of America‟s Red scare.” New York Times(1923-Currect files); Aug. 20, 2001; ProQuest Historical Newspapers the New YorkTimes (1851-2007); pg. A1713. Watson, Bruce. “When Bombs Terrorized America, The Attorney General Launched the„Palmer Raids” Smithsonian Feb 2002 Vol. 32 Issue 11, p 50.
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