HUAC hearings

House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC or HCUA) (1938–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is often referred to as the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to the Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. Image File history File links www. ... Image File history File links www. ... A committee is a (relatively) small group that can serve one of several functions: Governance: in organizations too large for all the members to participate in decisions affecting the organization as a whole, a committee (such as a Board of Directors) is given the power to make decisions. ... Seal of the House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives (or simply the House) is one of the two chambers of the United States Congress, the other being the Senate. ... U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, or (more commonly) the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. ...

The committee's anti-communist investigations are often confused with those of Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy, as a senator, had no direct involvement with this House committee. Joseph Raymond McCarthy Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was a Republican Senator from the U.S. state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. ...

McCormack-Dickstein (1934)

This House committee, McCormack-Dickstein, was named after its chairman and vice chairman, John W. McCormack and Samuel Dickstein. It was called the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities. In 1934, it held public and private hearings in six cities, questioned hundreds of witnesses and collected testimony filling 4,300 pages. Its mandate was to get "information on how foreign subversive propaganda entered the U.S. and the organizations that were spreading it." This House committee was named after its chairman and vice chairman, John W. McCormack and Samuel Dickstein. ... John William McCormack (December 21, 1891 - November 22, 1980) was an American politician from Boston, Massachusetts. ... Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York, and a New York State Supreme Court Justice. ...

The committee investigated and supported allegations of a fascist plot to seize the White House, known as the Business Plot. It was replaced with a similar committee that focused on pursuing communists. Its records are held by NARA (the National Archives and Records Administration) as related records to HUAC. North façade of the White House, seen from Pennsylvania Avenue. ... The Business Plot, The Plot Against FDR, or The White House Putsch, was an alleged conspiracy to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 by a retired general backed by big money interests. ... Nara can refer to: The city of Nara, Nara Prefecture, Japan The Nara Period of the History of Japan Nara prefecture, part of the Kansai region of central Honshu, Japan Nara is a major Manchu clan. ...

Dies Committee (1938–1944)

The House Committee on Un-American Activities grew from a special investigating committee established in May 1938, chaired by Martin Dies and co-chaired by Samuel Dickstein, himself named in Soviet NKVD documents as a Soviet agent. In pre-war years and during World War II it was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity. As to investigations into the activities of the "Klan," the Committee actually did little. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member John E. Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution." Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project. Martin Dies, Jr. ... Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York, and a New York State Supreme Court Justice. ... The NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del )(Russian: НКВД, Народный комиссариат внутренних дел) or Peoples Commisariat for Internal Affairs was a government department which handled a number of the Soviet Unions affairs of state. ... German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Members of the second Ku Klux Klan at a rally during the 1920s. ... John Elliott Rankin (March 29, 1882 - November 26, 1960) was a politician from the U.S. State of Mississippi. ... The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. ... WPA Graphic The Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration, abbreviated WPA), was created in May 1935 by Presidential order (Congress funded it annually but did not set it up). ... Scene from Orson Welles Voodoo Macbeth The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a project to fund theater performances in the United States during the Great Depression. ...

The Dies Committee also carried out a brief investigation into the wartime internment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The investigation primarily concerned security at the camps, youth gangs allegedly operating in the camps, food supply questions, and releases of internees. With the exception of Rep. Eberharter the members of the committee seemed to support internment. Serving from 1999 to 2003, Army General Eric Shinseki of Hawaii became the first Asian American military chief of staff. ...

In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to answer the charge that the project was overrun with communists. Flanagan was called to testify for only a part of one day, while a clerk from the project was called in for two entire days. It was during this investigation that one of the committee members famously asked Flanagan whether the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe was a member of the Communist Party. Hallie Flanagan (27 August 1889-23 July 1969) was an American theatrical visionary, director, playwright, author, and director of the Federal Theater Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration. ... This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. ... An anonymous portrait, often believed to show Christopher Marlowe. ...

In 1939 the committee investigated leaders of the American Youth Congress, a Comintern affiliate organization. American Youth Congress (AYC) was an early youth voice organization composed of youth from all across the country to discuss the problems facing youth as a whole in the 1930s. ... The Comintern (Russian: Коммунистический Интернационал, Kommunisticheskiy Internatsional – Communist International, also known as the Third International) was an international Communist organization founded in March 1919, in the midst of the war communism period (1918-1921), by Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), which intended to fight by all available means, including...

Subversion

HUAC became a standing (permanent) committee in 1946. Under the mandate of Public Law 601, passed by the 79th Congress, the committee of nine representatives investigated suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government guaranteed by our Constitution." Senators George David Aiken (R-VT) Charles Oscar Andrews (D-FL) Warren Robinson Austin (R-VT) Josiah William Bailey (D-NC) Raymond Earl Baldwin (R-CT) Joseph Hurst Ball (R-MN) John Hollis Bankhead (D-AL) Alben William Barkley (D-KY) Theodore Gilmore Bilbo (D-MS) Ralph Owen Brewster (R...

The committee came into its own when it acted on suspicions that some people with Communist sympathies and affiliations worked within the United States government. Some Americans in the 1930s had often been attracted to Marxism, particularly to Spain's Popular Front government. Many US intellectuals worked to support the Republican government in Spain against the fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco. This work brought them into contact with the US Communist party, and in opposition to US government policy, which was not supportive of the elected government in Spain. Several of these people had reached positions of influence during World War II and the late 1940s. Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and to the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ... The Popular Front (Spanish Popular Front) was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that years election. ... Francisco El Caudillo Franco. ...

In 1947, HUAC investigated wartime shipment of uranium to the Soviet Union. The Committee reported that in 1943, with high-level protection inside the government, the United States government issued export licenses for the delivery of millions of pounds of atomic bomb-making materials. Restrictive orders of the Manhattan Project were bypassed by an American firm called the Canadian Radium and Uranium Corporation. Security concerns at the National Laboratories also came under review. General Name, Symbol, Number uranium, U, 92 Chemical series actinides Group, Period, Block n/a, 7, f Appearance silvery gray metallic; corrodes to a spalling black oxide coat in air Atomic mass 238. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ... The Manhattan Project resulted in the development of the first nuclear weapons, and the first-ever nuclear detonation, at the Trinity test of July 16, 1945. ... The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories are a system of research facilities and laboratories funded and controlled by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for the purpose advancing science and aiding in the economic and defensive national interests of the United States of America. ...

There were also fears agents were still actively working to subvert American foreign policy and needed to be removed from positions of influence. In particular, the committee, with the leadership of representatives such as Richard Nixon, brought about the trial and conviction of State Department employee Alger Hiss.^[1] A foreign policy is a set of political goals that seeks to outline how a particular country will interact with the other countries of the world. ... Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. ... Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 - November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. ...

Hollywood blacklist

Main article: Hollywood blacklist

Segment of Zero Mostel’s testimony before HUAC

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged Communist propaganda in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, the "Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists—including directors, radio commentators, actors and particularly screenwriters—were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, left the US to find work. Others wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry. The Hollywood blacklist—more properly the entertainment industry blacklist, into which it expanded—was the mid-twentieth-century list of actors, directors, screenwriters, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or associations, real or suspected. ... ... In the federal law of the United States, contempt of Congress is the crime of obstructing the work of U.S. Congress, with a punishment of up to one year in prison and up to $1,000 in fines. ... The Hollywood Ten was a group of American screenwriters, actors, and directors, alleged members of the Communist Party, who were convicted of contempt of Congress during the height of the Red Scare. ... A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, or mobility. ... For other persons named Chaplin, see Chaplin (disambiguation). ... A pseudonym (Greek: false name) is a fictitious name used by an individual as an alternative to his or her legal name. ...

In 1947, studio executives told the Committee that wartime films like Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but they suggested that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort. In the 1950s the studios produced a number of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda films like John Wayne's Big Jim McLain, The Red Menace, The Red Danube, I Married a Communist, I Was a Communist for the FBI and Red Planet Mars. Most were box-office failures, but placated Hollywood's critics and protected the industry against a threatened boycott campaign.^[2] Mission to Moscow is a 1943 movie directed by Michael Curtiz with a screen play by Howard Koch based on the book by Ambassador Joseph E. Davies. ... John Wayne (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), popularly known as The Duke, [1] was an Academy Award winning, American film actor whose career began in silent movies in the 1920s. ... Big Jim McLain was a 1952 John Wayne film starring Wayne and James Arness as HUAC investigators hunting down communists in post-war Hawaii. ... I Married a Communist is a 1949 film drama produced by RKO Radio Pictures. ... I Was a Communist for the FBI was a American espionage thriller radio series with 78 episodes syndicated by Ziv to more than 600 stations in 1952-54. ...

Decline

Illustration of VC flag that Rubin wore to HUAC hearing

HUAC lost considerable prestige after it subpoenaed Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Yippies in 1967, and again in the aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Unlike previous subjects of the committee's investigations, the Yippies neither respected nor feared the committee, and used media attention to make a mockery of the proceedings. Rubin came to one session dressed as an American Revolutionary War soldier, and passed out copies of the Declaration of Independence to people in attendance.^[3] Then Rubin "blew giant gum bubbles while his co-witnesses taunted the committee with Nazi salutes."^[4] Hoffman attended a session dressed as Santa Claus. On another occasion, police stopped Hoffmann at the building entrance and arrested him for wearing an American flag. Hoffman quipped for the press, "I regret that I have but one shirt to give for my country," which paraphrased the last words of revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale; meanwhile Rubin, who was wearing a matching Viet Cong flag, shouted that the police were communists for not arresting him also.^[5] Image File history File links FNL_Flag. ... Image File history File links FNL_Flag. ... Jerry Rubin (July 14, 1938 – November 28, 1994) was a high-profile American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. ... Abbott Howard Abbie Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was a social and political activist in the United States, co-founder of the Youth International Party (Yippies), and later, a fugitive from the law, who lived under an alias following a conviction for dealing cocaine. ... The Youth International Party (whose adherents were known as Yippies, a variant on Hippies) was a highly theatrical political party established in the United States in 1967. ... The 1968 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party was held in Chicago, Illinois from August 26 to August 29, 1968, for the purposes of choosing the Democratic nominee for the 1968 U.S. presidential election. ... A declaration of independence is a proclamation of the independence of an aspiring state or states. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... For other uses, see Santa Claus (disambiguation). ... Nathan Hale, by Frederick MacMonnies, 1893, City Hall Park, New York Nathan Hale (June 6, 1755 – September 22, 1776) was a captain in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. ... A Viet Cong soldier, heavily guarded, awaits interrogation following capture in the attacks on Saigon during the festive Tet holiday period of 1968. ...

According to the Harvard Crimson:

In the fifties, the most effective sanction was terror. Almost any publicity from HUAC meant the 'blacklist.' Without a chance to clear his name, a witness would suddenly find himself without friends and without a job. But it is not easy to see how in 1969 a HUAC blacklist could terrorize an SDS activist. Witnesses like Jerry Rubin have openly boasted of their contempt for American institutions. A subpoena from HUAC would be unlikely to scandalize Abie Hoffman or his friends.[6]

Embarrassed by the circus these men created, the committee changed its name in early 1969 and lost most of its power. Image File history File links Cquote1. ... Image File history File links Cquote2. ...

Committee chairs and notable members

• Martin Dies Jr., chair 1938–1944
• John Parnell Thomas, chair 1947–1948
• John Stephens Wood, chair 1949–1953
• Harold Himmel Velde, chair 1953–1955
• Francis Walter, chair 1955–1965
• Edwin Edward Willis, chair 1965–1969
• Richard Howard Ichord Jr., chair 1969–1975
• Richard Nixon
• Gordon H. Scherer
• Karl Earl Mundt
• Felix Edward Hébert
• John Elliott Rankin
• Samuel Dickstein

Martin Dies, Jr. ... J. Parnell Thomas (January 16, 1895 – November 19, 1970) was an American lawyer, stockbroker, politician and convicted criminal. ... John Stephens Wood (1885 - 1968) was a significant U.S. political figure. ... Harold Himmel Velde (1910 - 1985) was a U.S. political figure. ... Francis Walter (May 26, 1894 - May 31, 1963) was an American Congressman. ... Edwin Edward Willis (1904-1972) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Louisiana. ... Richard Howard Jr. ... Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. ... Gordon Harry Scherer (born Dec. ... Karl Earl Mundt (1900 - 1974) was a U.S. educator and a Republican United States Senator from South Dakota from 1948 to 1973. ... Felix Edward Hébert (October 12, 1901 - December 29, 1979), more commonly referred to at the time as F. Edward Hebert, was a Louisiana politician. ... RANKIN, John Elliott, (1882 - 1960) RANKIN, John Elliott, a Representative from Mississippi; born near Bolanda, Itawamba County, Miss. ... Samuel Dickstein (February 5, 1885 – April 22, 1954) was a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York, and a New York State Supreme Court Justice. ...

See also

• California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities
• Waldorf Statement
• Hollywood blacklist
• McCarthyism
• J. Edgar Hoover
• Zero Mostel (includes a segment of a HUAC hearing)
• Loyalty oath
• Philip Dunne
• Ayn Rand
• Hans Zeisel
• Walt Disney

California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities (SUAC) was established by the California State Senate under authority of paragraph 12. ... The Waldorf Statement was a two-page press release issued on November 25, 1947 by Eric Johnston, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, following a closed-door meeting by forty-eight motion picture company executives at New York Citys Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. ... The Hollywood blacklist—more properly the entertainment industry blacklist, into which it expanded—was the mid-twentieth-century list of actors, directors, screenwriters, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or associations, real or suspected. ... Senator Joseph McCarthy McCarthyism is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. ... Hoover in 1961 John Edgar Hoover KBE (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was the founder of the FBI in its present form and its director from May 10, 1924 until his death in 1972. ... Mostel in Sirocco (1951) Zero Mostel (February 28, 1915 – September 8, 1977) was a Brooklyn-born stage and film actor best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof , Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max... A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state to which an individual is a member. ... Philip Dunne (February 11, 1908 – June 2, 1992) was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director, and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. ... It has been suggested that The Ayn Rand Collective be merged into this article or section. ... Hans Zeisel (Kadaň, Bohemia, 1905 - Chicago, 1992) was a public opinion analyst, a sociologist, a statistician, a historian of Austrian socialism, a Shakespearan scholar, and a law professor. ... Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, and philanthropist. ...

Notes

Further reading

• US House of Representatives, 81st Congress, 2nd Session, Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding Shipment of Atomic Material to the Soviet Union During World War II (DC, US Gov Printing Office [GPO], 1950)

External links

• The National Laboratories and the Atomic Energy Commission in the Early Cold War
• Political Counterintelligence Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB)