House Un-American Activities Committee

importance such as the government or even the Hollywood film industry. The term for this fear is know as the Red Scare (ushistory.org) Due to the advancement of the Red Scare an organization was formed known as HUAC. HUAC stands for House Un-American Activities Committee. This organization was formed in 1938 with the purpose of investigating suspected communist affiliations within the United States. HUAC’s main targets were set on labor unions, government officials, and the military to keep…

The Cold War began at the end of World War Two with the destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American atomic weapons. This led to the rapid surrender of Japanese forces, causing the U.S. To possess the most dangerous and destructive weapons, known to mankind. But the soviets did not want this to be the case and rapidly started developing atomic weapons of their own, this beginning a new generation of warfare, a nuclear arms race, which would last four four decades…

technical and management that helped spread American farming techniques, labor policies, and manufacturing. Although the Marshal plan was successful by preventing the spread of communism, and helping European economics grow and also helped lead to European integration. After spending $13 billion to restore Europe the Marshall Plan funding ended in…

William Appleman Williams will always be best known for his controversial writings and radical views of America. In his obituary the New York Times wrote that he was “a historian known for his sharp critiques of American foreign policy”. William’s is often seen as one of the most influential historian’s of the 20th century, and for good reason. His works on the Cold War have helped historians re-evaluate the impact that it had, not only to the United States, but on the entire world.…

When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, for many Americans it symbolized the culmination of decades of fighting for civil rights, and that we had reached Martin Luther King Jr.’s fabled “mountaintop” of equality. However, not all Americans were fully satisfied with this accomplishment, with critics like Toure Neblett writing “Surely Obama’s victory revealed something had changed in America, but it was not a signal that we’d reached… where race no longer matters and equality has been…

who defended his right to play in the Major Leagues. Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler, Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg and All-Star teammate and Dodger team captain Pee Wee Reese outwardly showed fans that they welcomed the first African-American professional baseball…

known. It was the same Tuesday, that, years later through a string of events, would lead to daring political theatre engendered and made possible by the American government. This Tuesday would echo across the nation in innumerable aspects, but certainly made a great catalyst for new ideas in the creative world. Tuesday, October 29th, 1929, the American Stock market crashed, marking the beginning of the great depression. This ten year affair was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn…

The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller in 1953 as a counterattack for being forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, at the height of the Red Scare era. The Crucible, is about the Salem witch trials and how people accused each other of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, without having proper evidence. In many of the cases people were accusing others solely because they disliked them. Much similar to The Red Scare, an era of mass hysteria in which people…

Crucible Themes The Crucible was written by Arthur Miller in 1953 about the Salem witch trials of 1692 and is still read today. While the play has many different themes, this essay will focus on three: women, religion and scapegoating. Even though it was set in an old time period, the themes of the play were germane when it was published and maintain their relevance today. Women: Women are often undervalued and viewed as weak or lesser in society. They are expected to fit into certain strict…

It was a time that we even hosed down our own college students with fire hoses during peaceful protests. At Berkeley a group of students gathered at the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in San Francisco, the doors were barred so that the students could not get into the hearing. Police were called to take care of the students and “The police turn(ed) on high-pressure fire hoses and blast the crowd down the marble steps. Officers arrest 64 people, including 31 Berkeley students, but…