History Day - by Time Periods

• 1920s Red Scare, following the Bolshevik Revolution
• 1939 - The Hatch Act of 1939, An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities
•  1947 - President Truman's Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947 requiring loyalty screening for federal civil service employees. President Harry S. Truman's "loyalty program", also called Federal Employee Loyalty Program
  • Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO) published.
• Internal Security Act of 1950
  • McCarthy accused Owen Lattimore of being a spy. Lattimore was exonerated.
• "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?"
• March 1954 Edward R. Murrow editorial
  • "Senator Benton of Connecticut accused McCarthy of apparent perjury, unethical practice, and perpetrating a hoax on the Senate. "
  • "Good night and good luck."

Formed in 1938.

Some people called before the committee and/or targeted: Dashiell Hammett, Waldo Salt, Lillian Hellman, Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Chaplin and Group Theatre members Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, and Stella Adler. 

• 1951 Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, if the Senate Judiciary Committee
• 1954, April - June -  "Army-McCarthy" hearings, covered on national television news.

Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957)

• Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946
• Junior senator from Wisconsin
• Chair of Committee on Government Operations and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
• Made allegations that hundreds of Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies. 
• 1952 - investigated by Senate Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections
• 1954 - censured by U.S. Senate ("Watkins Committee")