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Great Red Scare: Phenomenon of National Hysteria
Since human behavior is easily manipulated, the Red Scare caused the middle class break
out in hysteria.
Carol Willis
Mrs. Laura Guardino
History 002
12 December 2010
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Imagine you and your family are sleeping soundly in the security of your own home
when there is a thunderous, forceful hammering on your door. Without conscience of guilt you
answer the door. Two men forcefully break in and seize your father in the middle of the night.
This type of occurrence happened in cities and towns throughout the country from 1918-1920
immediately following WWI. The fear and paranoia of being labeled a communist made every
neighbor look at each other twice; people questioned your every move. It was a time of “harsh
suppression in some cases of those strikes, race riots, hyper-inflation, mass round-ups and
deportation of foreign born citizens, expulsion of newly-elected officials from various offices in
government, an incapacitated president, espionage laws, sedition laws, of course, the advent of
Prohibition and women‟s suffrage.” (Klein, Leo Robert “Red Scare(1918-1921): Home
Page”).Few periods in history have been so dramatic and full of mystery. This anti-communist
movement created out of hearsay and suspicion catalyzed an event in our countryknown as the
Red Scare.
After the First World War people were full of fear over the fact that communists were
among us. Some Americans believed the Communists and anarchists, who were opposed to the
American government, were a threat to our society. The Russian Revolution, in which the
Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar and constructed a communist government, prompted the media to
inform the public that such an uprising is something to fear here at home. In addition, large
numbers of immigrants were migrating to the United States and labor unions were formed for
better working conditions. Thus, the public began fearing immigrants and their foreign ideology
and the unions were seen as the seedlings to Communism, infiltrating the labor market.
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Depicted below is a European anarchist attempting to destroy the Statue of Liberty in 1919. (yahoo image)
In June 1919, anarchists detonated homemade bombs because they were fighting for
equal rights throughout cities in America. One prominent, outspoken archist was Emma
Goldman, nicknamed “Red Emma”. She spent her life giving speeches, writing essays about the
personal liberties for men and women. As Americans were reading and listening to propaganda
from both sides of the communist suspicions, emotions were escalating on every Main Street in
America. Also, in 1917, A Chicago Daily News reporter, Ben Hecht writes a story entitled “The
Mob”, which describes the growing anarchists‟ madness that is emerging with any group of
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people. Goldman‟s piece inadvertently aroused controversy over the idea of equality. This later
led to the deportation of Emma Goldman back to Russia. As Hecht describes, a man passes
another man and his wife walking along when he witnesses the man slap his wife. He
immediately steps in and punched the second man for striking a woman. A crowd is formed and
immediately starts yelling that the man who threw the first punch is an anarchist. As the
policemen tried defusing the circle, the crowd grew and was quick to judge the incident not
realizing it was a man defending a woman (Goldman221-224). There were a series of anarchist
bombings that terrorized the United States during this period. One explosion destroyed the home
of Cleveland‟s mayor. Another damaged the house of a Massachusetts legislator. Two went off
in Pittsburg, and explosives were ignited in Manhattan, Philadelphia and New Jersey. Americans
were experiencing terrorism in their own backyard. These incidences launched the creation of
The Palmer Raids.
In November 1919, the Palmer Raids occurred. They were the brainchild of the Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer. They acted as Palmer‟s primary platform for presidential
nomination and eradicated the removal of radicals in our society. “Here was every indication
that by the spring of 1920 Palmer played the Red Scare for all it was worth…” (Murray, 192).
His agents arrested thousands calling them “reds” convincing the public that these people were
conspiring to overthrow our government. Palmer characterized the “reds” as dangerous and
began to create criminal stereotypes around immigrants, Jews, Catholics, African-Americans and
the rural poor. These charges poured over to job discrimination and limited access to public
facilities (Green36).The Palmer Raids worked to round up and imprison unionists, aliens, and
anyone who looked suspicious (Watson 50). An immigrant named Ray Czachowski
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remembered the discrimination shoved in his face when applying for a job. “I put in an
application, but as soon as they saw the „ski‟ on the back, they tore it right up in front of me”
(Green 36). The Palmer Raids did not bring the attorney general a nomination to the presidency,
but it did ignite and fuel hate within the American psyche. Widely known hate groups such as
the Ku Klux Klan and other militia groups are among those infected with this irrational fear. The
beliefs surrounding the Palmer Raids appealed to many Americans because it was anti-union,
anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-prostitution, anti-smoking, anti-dancing, and anti-liquor. The
Raids allowed for Americans to view themselves as righteous and pure, while criminalizing
every else who did not adhere to the ethical, white American Protestant ideal.
Next is an example of who the Raids targeted. In 1918, a strike in a shipping yard in
Mobile, Alabama was raided and the strike‟s leader was never seen again; in Birmingham the
steelworkers‟ leader also mysteriously „disappeared‟ before the strike (Green 37). Rumor has it;
the federal government imprisoned them. As people were unlawfully jailed for years, lives and
careers turned upside down and many were told not to speak about what they witnessed.
Terrified by the belief of the Red Scare, other parts of North America were affected as well. In
addition, an eyewitness account of a then 10 year-old- girl named Claris (Brownie) Freedman
describes May 15, 1919 in Winnipeg Canada as what is known in history as Bloody Saturday.
She witnessed a labor strike over job loss and the economy that got out of control as the crowd
toppled a streetcar and set it on fire. The Mounted Police fired shots into the crowd killing one
man and injuring many others. “When I look back on it, I think it was a pretty horrifying sight
for young people to witness. Everybody was obviously very angry. I was only 10 and I don‟t
remember anything about the politics of the time. I know now that there were people out of
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work that they didn‟t have enough to eat. I knew Gloria Queen, whose father, John Queen, was
later mayor of Winnipeg. He went to jail because he was active in the strike. We heard about a
lot of people who went to jail. But we never discussed it in school and never mentioned it again”
(Freedman 129). But just as many were swept away with consuming the propaganda that was fed
to them, there was still a truth created by the tensions of the Cold War between the Soviet Union
and the United States.
How did the fear of the Red Scare cause the middle class to act and what did our
government do to create such hysteria? Under normal situations, the existence of a communist
takeover would only have stirred a few. But the “conditions were anything but normal. The
country was experiencing industrial unrest, political and moral irresponsibility, excessive
intolerance, fear of opposition and change – but these were a few of the abnormalities that
existed“ (Murray 57). Along with the suspicion of radicalism the Red Scare was a major
catalyst for public paranoia and panic.
After WWI America rushed to hurry back to the way it was post-war. The belief of what
the country should be was not defined. It was used to being at war and being defined as such.
Many industries were left short with lower production rates, soldiers coming home needing jobs,
the cost of living for an average family was 99 percent higher than it was five years ago, and
striking by organized laborers became more and more prevalent. The economic scene after the
war was far from the normalcy expected. As the country experienced fears of striking, “red
hunting” became the national obsession. (Burnett) Strikers were branded as “reds” and were
assumed to be unpatriotic and anti-American because their organizing was seen as contradictory
to capitalist values. Even more significant was the senate‟s decisionto not join the League of
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Nations. In a combined decision with President Wilson the implications weakened the world‟s
view even more on America. This scenario gave smaller men an excellent opportunity to lead
the strayed and defocused public into a false security and tapping into human weakness and
emotions. We have now starting to look at one of our more honored principles for which this
country was created, freedom (Perlstein A17).
In addition, three particular laws were passed by the Federal Congress to set the scene of
proclaiming espionage and treason on our own country‟s soil. The Espionage Act of 1917
prohibited any disloyal activity; the Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited any person to speak, write or
print any negative words regarding the U.S. Government and the third, signed on October of
1918 decreed that all aliens of foreign lands were to be deported. All of these events set the
atmosphere for the Great Red Scare to occur.(Perlstein). However, as quickly as the Red Scare
began, it abruptly ended the summer of 1920. Laborers realized that deporting immigrants was a
major drain on profits. Newspapers that used articles and cartoons condemning “reds” now used
the same paper to make fun of the entire issue. (Burnett)
Granted, the Red Scare of the late 1910‟s ceased after America saw a decline in the economy, the
Red Scare returned for a second debut. Within the events of the late 1940s with the Rosenberg
Trials, the Iron Curtain surrounding Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union‟s nuclear weapon supply,
and the 50,000 member strong group Communists of the United States within our boundaries,
Americans were again fearful of Communism. Espionage and spying were on the forefront in
America. As the media coverage intensified with the trials of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg who
were the first civilians in the United States ever executed for conspiracy to commit espionage,
communismheadlined every newspaper. President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order
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forming the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) led by Joseph McCarthy (R,
Wis) to conduct character investigations of the Americans suspected of espionage and favoring
the Soviet Union. This act would become the legacy of McCarthy, known as McCarthyism.
McCarthy produced lists without merit of “loyalists” to the Soviet Union. Americans from all
walks of life were “blacklisted”, jailed and lives were ruined by the unmerited allegations.
The second red scare completely tainted the behavior of American society. Hollywood
played a role in fueling these acquisitions. Television series like The Taking from Another
World (1951) created stories and themes about destruction, which consequently infiltrated the
public‟s belief system. Even the baseball team, the Cincinnati Reds changed their name to the
CincinnatiRed Legs for a period of time motivated by stereotyping and money.Sixty years after a
Congressional panel grilled Hollywood‟s directors, writers, and producers about Communist
connections, tinsel town is still quarreling over the heroes and the rogues of the Red Scare
(Cieply E1). If you were black listed in Hollywood in the late 1940s, you would have considered
your career over. You could be labeled as a Communist sympathizer and cast out of acting,
writing and directing opportunities. Among many that were blacklisted in Hollywood was
actress and singer Lena Horne; Katharine Hepburn and Edward Dmytrk, and director, writer
Dalton Trumbo. He was one of ten who was jailed for contempt for refusing to answer questions
before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He and hundreds of others were
barred from working openly in Hollywood for more than a decade. A documentary entitled
“Trumbo” directed by Peter Askin and written by Trumbo‟s son, Christopher Trumbo describing
in Trumbo‟s own words what occurred. In a speech actually delivered and was the opening lines
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in the film, Trumbo said “There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and
cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; and
almost every individual involved, no matter where they stood, combined some or all of these
antithetical qualities in his own person, in his own acts” (Cieply).
Low-resolution reproduction of screenshot from the documentary film Legacy of the
Hollywood Blacklist (1987) consisting of 1950 image showing protestors opposing the
jailing of the Hollywood Ten. (Research has not established who took the original image
/ copyright holder of source film: One Step Productions
Later in life, Trumbo describes his feelings. “People feel guilty about it,” he said. “I think it‟s
because essentially the community itself recognized that it didn‟t have to happen. And they let it
happen” (Cieply). Being blacklisted didn‟t stop the famous, Oscar winning Hollywood crowd.
Occasionally newspapers would print obituaries of names we wouldn‟t recognize, but their
article would be headlined as “Fran Wilkinson, Defiant Figurer of Red Scare, Dies at 91”
(Lyman C15) or “Milo Radanovich, 81, Dies; Symbol of 50‟s Red Scare” (Martin A24) Frank
Wilkinson was a Los Angeles Housing Official who lost his job because he refused to tell the
House Un-American Activities Committee whether he was Communist. In 1952 Wilkinson
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spearheaded a housing project for Latino and Hispanics in Los Angeles. His colleagues
considered his actions socialistand he along with others were abruptly fired. For the next twenty
years he was on the FBI surveillance list with over 132,000 documents stating his every move.
Additionally, an Air Force Reserve Officer named, Milo Radulovich, was fired and relieved of
duty because of family relationships. No accusations were ever proved, but he was guilty by
association to his father and sister (Martin). Also, David Saxon, a physicist with the University
of California, Berkeley was dismissed along with thirty-three others for refusing to sign a loyalty
oath requested by the Board of Regents. The State Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of
the nonsigners and Saxon was reinstated. In a symposium on the oath held by the Higher
Education Studies Center in 1999, Mr. Saxon recalled that he had refused to sign the oath
because he saw a breakdown in the university government. The leaders of the university were
not following their responsibilities to shield the institution from outside pressure. (New York
Times B8)
In sum, Paranoia and hysteria can easily manifest through the media. The anticommunist movement escalated twice in our country. Both were generated by greed, power and
lack of truth or facts. Radio and newspapers in the early 1900s were the first steps in
communication. Americans were at the mercy of those reporting and to advertisers that kept
them in business. Television changed our techniques for communication, because of visual
pictures and real footage. The television also became a staple in American households, reaching
families all over the country from all walks of life. As only a small few were actually convicted
of espionage compared to the thousands that victims of hearsay, we must look at the other
objectives that come into play by individuals who were motivated by greed or power. The media
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cannot be completely at fault for these dark periods in America. As many lives were ruined
throughout both periods, we can only think that as media continues to infiltrate our homes and
divulge news it is our duty as citizens to educate ourselves on the validity of the information
provided. The Red Scare highlights the idea that just because something is sanctioned by the
government and legislated does not make it morally right. Although America continuously falls
victim to hysteria (the Red Scares, and more recently anti-Muslim/ anti-immigrant ideology), we
can only hope that our citizens will rise against the government‟s perversions to social equality.
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Works Cited
1. Anarchy! An Anarchy Anthology of Emma Goldman‟s Mother Earth, New York, 1910;
London A.C. Fifield, 1911; revised 1917, Pages 14-15.
2. Burnett, Paul. “The Red Scare.” www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/
ftrials/saccoV/redscare.html 1 October 2010
3. Cieply, Michael “Voices from Blacklist, Through Voices of Others.” New York Times
(1923- Current File); September 11, 2007; ProQuest Newspaper the New York Times
(1851-2007) pg. E1.
4. Freedman, Claris. “Terrified by the Red Scare”. Maclean‟s, Jan 01 2000, Vol. 112 Issue
52, p129.
5. Green, Harvey. The Uncertainty of Everyday Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1992
Klein, Leo Robert “Red Scare (1918-1921): Home Page”
http://newman.barach.cuny.edu/DIGITAL/redscare/ABOUT_RS.HTMOctober 2
2010
6. Klingaman, William K. Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, Facts on File, Inc, New York,
NY1996, p 101
7. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Marks, Gary.It Didn‟t Happen Here; Why Socialism Failed
in the United States. W. W. Norton & Company, New York 2000. Pages 249-255.
8. Lyman, Frank. “Wilkinson, Frank, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91.” New York
Times (1923- Current Year); January 4, 2006; ProQuest Historical Newspaper The
New York Times (1851-2007); Pg. C15.
9. Martin, Douglas. “Milo Radulovich, 81, Dies; Symbol of 50‟s Red Scare.” The New
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YorkTimes (1923-Current Year); Nov 21, 2007; ProQuest Historical Newspaper The
New YorkTimes (1851-2007); Pg. A24
10. Murray, Robert K. Red Scare A Study in National Hysteria 1919-1920. University of
Minnesota, 1955, pages 1 – 281.
11. “Red Scare Protest Issued by Liberals” The New York Times (1923-Current File); May
19, 1930; ProQuest Historian Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2007)
12. Perlstein, Rick. “A Look at the Architects of America‟s Red scare.” New York Times
(1923-Currect files); Aug. 20, 2001; ProQuest Historical Newspapers the New York
Times (1851-2007); pg. A17
13. Watson, Bruce. “When Bombs Terrorized America, The Attorney General Launched the
„Palmer Raids” Smithsonian Feb 2002 Vol. 32 Issue 11, p 50.