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...Franklin D. Roosevelt, and she was a strong supporter of national defense and security. Although a staunch anticommunist, she was nevertheless the first Republican senator to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s anticommunist witch-hunts, delivering a memorable “Declaration of Conscience” on the Senate floor in 1950. Her opinion that President John F. Kennedy should use...
In the 1950s, investigations conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee into alleged Communist activities prompted claims that congressional investigations were violating First Amendment rights by “engaging in exposure for exposure’s sake.” Because these cases invariably included allegations of Fifth Amendment violations, the court disposed of the cases on Fifth...
Brecht left the United States in 1947 after having had to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent a year in Zürich, working mainly on Antigone-Modell 1948 (adapted from Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles; produced 1948) and on his most important theoretical work, the Kleines Organon für das Theater (1949; “A Little Organum...
His screen career abruptly ended during the 1950s when he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to testify. He was, however, invited by actor John Houseman to join the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., where he appeared in such parts as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and as Lear in King Lear. He later made two more motion...
...in Washington, D.C., accused Hiss of having been a member of the same “apparatus” before World War II. Hiss denied the charge, which was originally made before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. When Chambers repeated the charge publicly, away from the House committee chamber where his words were protected by congressional immunity, Hiss sued him for...
in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations, and, after spending time in prison for contempt of Congress, were mostly blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. The 10 were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester...
...next influenced strongly by the fear of communism that pervaded the United States during the late 1940s and early ’50s. Anticommunist “witch-hunts” began in Hollywood in 1947 when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) decided to investigate communist influence in motion pictures. More than 100 witnesses, including many of Hollywood’s most talented and popular artists,...
...of dramatic works. The early careers of Orson Welles, John Houseman, and Elmer Rice were all associated with the Federal Theatre Project. Following a series of controversial investigations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Subcommittee on Appropriations regarding the Federal Theatre’s outspoken leftist commentary on social and economic issues, the Federal Theatre Project...
...he helped found in 1951 the National Negro Labor Council (NNLC), which sought jobs for African Americans. In 1952 Young, who had developed a reputation as a radical, was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His pugnacious testimony earned him widespread publicity, and he later disbanded the NNLC so that he would not have to turn over its membership list. Blacklisted...
...students for his opposition to affirmative action and campus protests. A member of the Communist Party during the 1930s, he was also criticized for providing names of other members to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953. From 1969 to 1973 Boorstin directed the National Museum of History and Technology at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and in 1975 he was...
American politician, the sponsor and first chairman (1938–45) of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
...Running for reelection in 1948, Nixon entered and won both the Democratic and Republican primaries, which thus eliminated the need to participate in the general election. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) in 1948–50, he took a leading role in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union....
...in Berkeley in May 1969, Reagan, as governor of California, called out the National Guard to restore order.) Much to the disgust of union members, he testified as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee and cooperated in the blacklisting of actors, directors, and writers suspected of leftist sympathies. Although Reagan was still a Democrat at the time (he...
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