Palmer Raids

Born on January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C., J. Edgar Hoover was the long-time director of the FBI (1924-1972) and spent much of his career gathering intelligence on radical groups and individuals and "subversives," Martin Luther King Jr. being one of his favorite targets. Hoover's methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps and planted evidence, and his legacy is tainted because of it. He died in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 1972. J. Edgar Hoover was a director of the Federal…

The FBI The FBI gave itself a very good reputation at the national level in the times of the historical events such as the Great Depression and World War II. The program, a product of a previous agency in 1935, grew large and successful with J. Edgar Hoover as the director for more than thirty years. Hoover discovered he had his own plans for an agency that consisted of trained professionals and next-level tools to serve the law. In 1908 Attorney General Charles Bonaparte formed a group of…

How far was the domestic response to fears of communist influence in the period following the First World War different from the domestic response in the period following the Second World War? The domestic response to communist influence in the periods following both world wars were commonly known as Red Scares. It is controversial to suggest that the Red Scares were more different than they are similar. In addressing this question it is necessary to consider the responses from authorities, the…

Red Scare, characterized by a pervasive dread of a similar proletarian uprising. Social unrest and a string of bombings attributed to communists and anarchists made this fear worse. The U.S. government responded with the 1918 Sedition Act and the Palmer Raids, aimed at deporting immigrants with radical political views. The Second Red Scare, characterized by the threat of global communism during the Cold War, predominated in the mid and early 1900s. The panic was not merely an internal…

the succession of raids arrested many in New York, New Jersey, and Detroit. However, the most morally repugnant raid was the assault on Boston. Hundreds of those arrested were marched through the roads, shackled together like slaves, and abused with public approval. The raids were justified under the preconceived notion, that there was a bona fide menace that presented a danger to the status quo, under the influence of the Bolshevist revolution. Despite the brutality of these raids, the group…

After the events of both World War I and World War II a new sense of America emerged as the United States benefited from a new surge in technological advancements as well as a new generation of American youth. As with the saying “Out with the old, in with the new,” many of the old social constructions were challenged by the new generation of youth who seemed like good-for-nothing rebel. These similarities between the 20s and the 50s link them as both periods characterized by new innovations and…

sending 15,000 American soldiers into Russia in 1918 as evidence of his hostility to communism and his aggressive desire to overthrow the Bolshevik government in order to make the world safe for American capitalism. When seen in the context of the Palmer Raids and his heavy-handed treatment of socialists at home, was a principal cause of the Cold War. Wilson proposed the "Fourteen Points" as the basis for the peace treaty at Versailles, with the last point being the creation of a League of…

The events in history do not simply appear in their confined time period and disappear again. Instead, their causes and consequences are dispersed, reflected, and reiterated through new events of different conditions. The atmosphere filled with the pressure to conform and the mass hysteria following an act of dissent in a seventeenth century theocracy based community resurfaced again in the twentieth century. The only distinction found between these events was not the emotions felt, but the…

made it a crime for citizens to say anything negative about the draft. The Sedition Act made it a crime for citizens to say anything bad about the government. Sparked by fear of steel strikes being related to communism, along with these acts came Palmer Raids. Labor organizations were raided. “More than 5,000 persons were arrested, most of them warrants, and held for months without charge” (Foner, 760). By the 1920s, people had faced many thing that went against freedom, strong government was…

The decade of 1920s was definitely a decade of change because there were many innovations that also caused the general mentality of the society to change and promoted the people’s desire to improve. It was called the roaring 20s. The 1920s gave the United States things such as jazz, movies, radio, different ethics, automobile, secrecy on alcohol trade (gangsters), prosperity, credit, immigrants, economic crisis, freedom, dancing and a lot more. Hollywood was settled after World War I, and many…