Red+scare

Shortly after the end of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Red Scare took hold in the United States. A nationwide fear of communists, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents suddenly grabbed the American psyche in 1919 following a series of anarchist bombings. The nation was gripped in fear. Innocent people were jailed for expressing their views, civil liberties were ignored, and many Americans feared that a Bolshevik-style revolution was at hand. Then, in the early 1920s, the fear seemed to dissipate just as quickly as it had begun, and the Red Scare was over. The 1950's was a fearful time for Americans. The Cold War, which began after the end of World War II, was a period where Americans were extremely paranoid about the threat of Communism. These fears were heightened by the establishment of the People's Republic of China under Communist rule on October 1, 1949 following the defeat of the Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists.The outbreak of the Korean War also heightened the Red Scare in the United States because people feared "losing" another Asian country to Communism. The perceived threat from Asian made people feel wary toward anyone who had worked or lived in Asian. Organizations like the Institute of Pacific Relations and its members were put under constant surveillance. The increase in paranoia also made it possible for political Conservatives to attack President Truman for not effectively fighting the Communists in Asian. At the same time, many people believed that the Russians had already obtained the secret blueprints for atomic bomb production.

WAS THE THREAT REAL. Before McCarthy began his witch-hunts for Communists in 1950, the prosecution of spies had already begun. Alger Hiss was recently sentenced to five years in prison for conducting espionage against the United States. Klaus Fuchs was also arrested and confessed that he had spied for the Soviets. Other spies like Lawrence Duggan had committed suicide in 1948 and Noel Field already defected to the Soviet Union. Likewise, Elizabeth Bentley gave away more than 40 valuable agents to American authorities. Overall, the number of spies for the Soviet Union had fell significantly after the end of World War II in 1945. The American Communist Party was also declining. According to FBI figures, Party membership in the United States fell from 740,000 in January of 1947 to 530,000 in May of 1950. The threat of Communism was waning by 1950. The danger of Communism and espionage was largely a product of fear and manipulation by politicians like Senator Joseph McCarthy. On September 9, the Boston police force went on strike. A panic that "Reds" were behind the strike took over Boston despite the lack of any radicalism on the part of the striking police officers. Although the city experienced primarily looting and vandalism (as well as some rioting), papers around the country ran inflammatory and polemical headlines. Stories told of massive riots, reigns of terror, and federal troops firing machine guns on a mob. On September 13, Police Commissioner Curtis announced that the striking policemen would not be allowed to return and that the city would hire a new police force, effectively ending the strike. Weeks later, a nation-wide steel strike occurred. On September 22, 275,000 steel workers walked off their jobs, and soon the strikers numbered 365,000. Three quarters of Pittsburgh's steel mills were shut down, and the strikers estimated that the strike was 90% effective. Riots, attributed only to the strikers with no newspapers laying any blame on police or political leaders, resulted in many places. In Gary, Indiana, for example, unrest was so prevalent that martial law was declared on October 5. The steel owners held fast, and in January of 1920, with less than a third of the strikers still out, the strike ended without the strikers gaining a single demand. As a result of the strikes and unrest, the strikers were branded as "Reds" and as being unpatriotic. Fear of strikes leading to a Communist revolution spread throughout the country. Hysteria took hold. "Red hunting" became the national obsession. Colleges were deemed to be hotbeds of Bolshevism, and professors were labeled as radicals. The hunt reached down to public secondary schools where many teachers were fired for current or prior membership in even the most mildly of leftist organizations. The American Legion was founded in St. Louis on May 8, 1919 "[t]o uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and perpetuate a one hundred per cent Americanism." By the fall, the Legion had 650,000 members, and over a million by year's end. While most of the Legion engaged in such relatively innocuous activities as distributing pamphlets, the patriotic and anti-communist fervor of the Legion led many to engage in vigilante justice meted out against Reds both real and suspected. The Legion's prevalence in the country and reputation for anti-communism was so great that the phrase "Leave the Reds to the Legion" became the "Wazzzzup" of the late teens. The government, too, was not immune to anti-communistic hysteria. The Justice Department, under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, started the General Intelligence (or antiradical) Division of Bureau of Investigation on August 1, 1919 with J. Edgar Hoover as its head. Its mission to uncover Bolshevik conspiracies, and to find and incarcerate or deport conspirators. Eventually, the antiradical division compiled over 200,000 cards in a card-filing system that detailed radical organizations, individuals, and case histories across the country. These efforts resulted in the imprisonment or deportation of thousands of supposed radicals and leftists. These arrests were often made at the expense of civil liberties as arrests were often made without warrants and for spurious reasons. In Newark, for example, a man was arrested for looking like a radical. Even the most innocent statement against capitalism, the government, or the country could lead to arrest and incarceration. Moreover, arrestees were often denied counsel and contact with the outside world, beaten, and held in inhumane conditions. If the national press is any indicator of the predominant mood of the country, then the efforts of the Justice Department was overwhelmingly supported by the masses because the raids, deportations, and arrests were all championed on the front page of most every paper. All told, thousands of innocent people were jailed or deported, and many more were arrested or questioned. On January 2, 1920 alone over 4,000 alleged radicals were arrested in thirty-three cities. Legislatures also reflected the national sentiment against radicals. Numerous local and state legislatures passed some sort of ordinance against radicals and radical activity. Thirty-two states made it illegal to display the red flag of communism. The New York Legislature expelled five duly elected Socialist assemblymen from its ranks. While Congress was unable to enact a peacetime anti-sedition bill, approximately seventy such bills were introduced. The national mood, however, began to shift back to normal in the spring of 1920. In May twelve prominent attorneys (including Harvard professors Dean Pound, Zachariah Chaffee, and Felix Frankfurter, who later became a Supreme Court Justice and a proponent of Sacco and Vanzetti's innocence) issued a report detailing the Justice Department's violations of civil liberties. The New York Assembly's's decision to bar its Socialist members was met with disgust by national newspapers and leaders such as then-Senator Warren G. Harding, former Republican presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes and even Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer who felt it unfair to put Socialists and Communists in the same category. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes criticized proposed anti-sedition bills. Possibly because the proposed bills were viewed as censorship, most newspapers came out against the anti-sedition bills. Industry leaders, who were early proponents of anti-communism, began to realize that deporting immigrants (as many of the communists were alleged to be) drained a major source of labor, which would result in higher wages and decreased profits. Suddenly, political cartoons in newspapers that months earlier had been virulently opposed to Reds now featured over zealous Red-hunters as their objects of scorn and ridicule. The Red Scare quickly ran its course and, by the summer of 1920, it was largely over. The nation turned its collective attention to more leisurely pursuits. (djsmith)

Social Issues, 1919-1920
The end of the fighting in Europe did not bring peace and security to the United States. Hatred of the brutal “Huns” was quickly replaced by a fear of anarchists, communists and immigrants. While [|President Wilson] labored for his version of world peace in 1919, a series of violent events occurred at home that indicated the depth of public unease: Indeed, following the triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia (November 1917) and the establishment of the Soviet Union, efforts were made by communist agents to promote revolution in Western Europe and the United States. In 1919, Wilson appointed a new attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, a Pennsylvania attorney with liberal credentials, including past support for workers’ rights and women’s suffrage. Palmer, however, reversed his views. In April, the Post Office discovered 38 bombs that hade been mailed to leading American politicians and capitalists. Shortly thereafter, an Italian anarchist was blown up outside Palmer’s residence. The nation’s top law enforcement official became convinced that a radical plot was underway. Word was leaked to the press that the government was tracking the activities of prominent American citizens who had voiced criticisms of the war effort and other government policies, including: Palmer enlisted the services of a young attorney, [|J. Edgar Hoover], who worked to enforce the provisions of the [|Espionage Act] (1917) and its companion legislation, the [|Sedition Act] (1918). The first in a series of so-called “Palmer Raids” was launched on November 7, 1919 — the second anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. Thousands of anarchists and communists were rounded up, many of whom were detained for long periods without being formally charged. In December, in a highly publicized move, more than 200 alien detainees were deported to Finland and later to Russia. Placed aboard the //Buford//, dubbed the “Soviet Ark,” were such prominent leftists as Emma Goldman, the Russian-born anarchist, who had drawn disapproval by opposing the draft and promoting birth control. Despite finding no credible evidence that a communist plot was underway, Palmer staged more raids in January 1920. With the assistance of local law enforcement officials throughout the country, as many as 6,000 suspects were arrested and detained. Palmer claimed to know that May 1, the [|socialist] Labor Day, would bring massive demonstrations as a prelude to revolution. The American public was apprehensive as the date approached, but the predictions proved to be without foundation and Palmer’s standing declined rapidly. He was criticized sharply for conducting searches without warrants and for denying detainees legal representation. Most damning were the charges of some who believed that Palmer had manufactured the crisis as a means to gain the Democratic presidential nomination in 1920. The events of 1919-1920 were the first of a series of “red scares” in American history in which the government would clamp down on real or imagined domestic revolutionaries. (added by **Courtright**)
 * Seattle docks were idled by a strike in January and [|U.S. Marines] were sent in response to a plea from the mayor.
 * Race riots in several dozen cities led to the deaths and injury of hundreds during the summer.
 * Boston was briefly paralyzed by a [|police strike] in September; looting and theft were rampant.
 * Steelworkers seeking an eight-hour day struck in the fall, slowing the return of the nation’s economy to normal peacetime functioning.
 * In November, a labor organizer for the [|Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.)] was seized by citizens of Centralia, Washington, castrated and hanged.
 * [|Jane Addams], the famed social worker, who had become and advocate of conscientious objection in her fight against conscription
 * Charles A. Beard, an economic and cultural historian at [|Columbia University], who had ruffled feathers by suggesting that the Founding Fathers had been motivated by the profit motive in many of their actions
 * Lillian Wald, the noted public health pioneer and advocate for many recent immigrants.