Ironically, the image today most often associated with this period is the congressional investigations of Hollywood that began before McCarthy came on the scene, when screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers were dragged before the
House Un-American Activities Committee and asked to "name names" of colleagues who had Communist ties or sympathies.
As the Cold War, in general, and the spirit of intolerance epitomized by the inquiries of the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Senator Joseph McCarthy, in particular, began to grip national and domestic politics, the space for protest and dissent would become decidedly more cramped.
With our songs of fellowship and international solidarity, the lefty, top-of-the-charts Weavers were fair game for the
House Un-American Activities Committee and its minions.
For images and transcriptions of historic documents from various sites arranged in topical order from African Americans, to Amistad Civil Rights, to
House Un-American Activities Committee, to Love Canal, and more, visit Federal Government Resources: Historic Documents at www.lib.umich.
Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays," swooned our Paper of Record, "and in them often reflected or reinterpreted the stormy and very public elements of his own life--including a brief and rocky marriage to Marilyn Monroe and his staunch refusal to cooperate with the red-baiting
House Un-American Activities Committee." You have to say this for the Times: it pushed all the buttons: Arthur Miller, Genius Playwright; Arthur Miller, Social Celebrity; Arthur Miller, Moral Paragon and Darling of the Left Establishment.
She did not need the added attention and "commy" labels during a mayoral administration framed by, what Thomas Kessner reminds us was, the era of the Cold War mentality, the fears that led to the excesses of the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), of the new conservatism, and of the passing of insurgency politics.
Yet Kazan, unlike Miller, would be a cooperative witness before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, and Kazan's movie On the Waterfront was a powerful answer to the criticism that Miller and those of his political persuasion directed against him and other informers.
Displaying naivete at the very least, she repeatedly referred to the work of the "
House Un-American Activities Committee" or "HUAC." The committee's actual name was "House Committee on Un-American Activities." But the Communist press consistently referred to the committee as the "
House Un-American Activities Committee" as opposed to a committee on "Un-American Activities" so as to suggest that the committee, and not the subject of its investigations, was Un-American.
The only real difference between McCarthyite repression of unsound artists and that in the Soviet Union, admittedly an important one, was that the
House Un-American Activities Committee did not have the power to execute its victims, only to deprive them of their livelihood, and sometimes imprison them.
But in perhaps the most meaty and revealing excerpt, Ernest Demaio explains how General Electric (GE) used the Taft-Hartley Act and the
House Un-American Activities Committee to oust the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union (UE) out of GE.