Transcript File - US History I

2/3 Starter: Open your textbook to pg. 790 and
read “ An American Story” about Ruth Goldberg
As we read the first part of this section, identify
what the following organizations were in your
notes section.

The Loyalty Review Program:

HUAC (House of Un-American Activities Committee):
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Project Venona:
26.3 The Cold War and
American Society
USII.24
"Loyalty Order" of 1947
•
President Truman's Executive Order
9835 of March 21, 1947, required
that all federal civil service
employees be screened for "loyalty."
The order specified that one
criterion to be used in determining
that "reasonable grounds exist for
belief that the person involved is
disloyal" would be a finding of
"membership in, affiliation with or
sympathetic association" with any
organization determined by the
attorney general to be "totalitarian,
Fascist, Communist or subversive"
or advocating or approving the
forceful denial of constitutional
rights to other persons or seeking
"to alter the form of Government of
the United States by
THE HUAC
The House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), a committee of the
U.S. House of Representatives,
investigated allegations of communist
activity in the U.S. during the early years
of the Cold War (1945-91). Established in
1938, the committee wielded its
subpoena power as a weapon and called
citizens to testify in high-profile hearings
before Congress. This intimidating
atmosphere often produced dramatic but
questionable revelations about
Communists infiltrating American
institutions and subversive actions by
well-known citizens. HUAC’s controversial
tactics contributed to the fear, distrust and
repression that existed during the
anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s. By
the late 1950s and early 1960s, HUAC’s
influence was in decline, and in 1969 it
was renamed the Committee on Internal
Security. Although it ceased issuing
subpoenas that year, its operations
In October 1947, 10 members of the
Hollywood film industry publicly
denounced the tactics employed by the
House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), an investigative
committee of the U.S. House of
Representatives, during its probe of
alleged communist influence in the
American motion picture business.
These prominent screenwriters and
directors, who became known as the
Hollywood Ten, received jail sentences
and were banned from working for the
major Hollywood studios. Their defiant
stands also placed them at center stage
in a national debate over the
controversial anti-communist crackdown
that swept through the United States in
the late 1940s and early 1950s. Besides
the Hollywood Ten, other members of
the film industry with alleged communist
ties were later banned from working for
the big movie studios. The Hollywood
The Hollywood Ten
Hiss was a U.S. State
Department official who was
convicted in January 1950 of
perjury concerning his dealings
with Whittaker Chambers, who
accused him of membership in a
communist espionage ring. His
case, which came at a time of
growing apprehension about the
domestic influence of
communism, seemed to lend
substance to Senator Joseph R.
McCarthy’s sensational charges
of communist infiltration into the
State Department. It also brought
to national attention Richard M.
Nixon, then a U.S. representative
from California, who was
prominent in the investigation
that led to the indictment of Hiss.
Alger Hiss
One of the members of HUAC in the
late 1940s was a first-term U.S.
representative from California
named Richard Nixon.
McCarthyism
In February 1950, appearing at the Ohio County Women’s
Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy
gave a speech that propelled him into the national
spotlight. Waving a piece of paper in the air, he declared
that he had a list of 205 known members of the
Communist Party who were “working and shaping policy”
in the State Department.
The next month, a Senate subcommittee launched an
investigation and found no proof of any subversive
activity. Moreover, many of McCarthy’s Democratic and
Republican colleagues, including President Dwight
Eisenhower, disapproved of his tactics (“I will not get into
the gutter with this guy,” the president told his aides). Still,
the senator continued his so-called Red-baiting
campaign. In 1953, at the beginning of his second term as
senator, McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee on
Government Operations, which allowed him to launch
even more expansive investigations of the alleged
communist infiltration of the federal government. In
hearing after hearing, he aggressively interrogated
witnesses in what many came to perceive as a blatant
violation of their civil rights. Despite a lack of any proof of
subversion, more than 2,000 government employees lost
Class/Shop Week Assignment
You will research instances of people accused of being communist
during the Second Red Scare (focus on the 1950s) similar to Ruth
Goldberg’s story
 Choose a story that interests you and create a news article about
that specific story
 Criteria for Success
 Your article should be original
 You must use at least 3 resources to write your article and they
should be properly cited on an attached Works Cited page
 You must have a picture with your article
 It must be at least 4 paragraphs in length (20—32 sentences)
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