Red Scare And Palmer Raids Essay

The Red Scare and Palmer Raids Between November 1919 and January 1920, at the height of the first Red Scare, the American Justice Department arrested thousands of people without warrants and federal authorities deported many arrested immigrants. Some of the prisoners were beaten and mistreated while in captivity. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer determined that the “Reds” were a threat to America. Though not well defined, the term “Reds” generally meant those on the far political left, especially anarchists and communists, as well as sympathizers with these movements. And, because of the communist Bolsheviks taking power in Russia only two years before, immigrants from Russia and their children were often arrested simply for being of Russian decent. Palmer appointed J. Edgar Hoover to head the Radical Division of the Bureau of Investigation, putting Hoover in charge of his raids. Through the Palmer Raids, Palmer and Hoover hoped to stop a supposed communist uprising like the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia THESIS!!.
Palmer’s concerns about violent communists were not entirely unfounded. In April 1919, a few months before the raids began, Palmer was part of a group targeted in bombings by Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani and his followers, the Galleanists. The the Galleanists mailed …show more content…
Politicians stopped referencing the Reds, and did not use the issue in their 1920 campaigns. However, the Red Scare seriously impacted many political groups in America. The Red Scare destroyed the IWW and many other labor organizations and unions by connecting them to Bolshevism. Americans did not want to be associated with radical movements, and the reputation of the Socialist Party was also ruined. The response to the Red Scare demonstrated that although free speech was recognized as an important right, citizens could not be certain the government would protect this