Which statement best describes the primary focus of the House Un American Activities Committee HUAC in the 1950s?

From its inception in 1938 until it was dissolved in 1975, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) took a prominent role in the investigation of communist activity in the United States. Although its supporters claim that this committee of the U.S. House of Representatives performed an important function, its critics contend that its abuse of power trampled important First Amendment rights, such as freedom of expression and freedom of association.

HUAC investigated Communist Party infiltration

HUAC’s predecessor, the McCormack-Dickstein committee, named for its chair and vice chair, Reps. John W. McCormack, D-Mass., and Samuel Dickstein, D-N.Y., had been formed in 1934 to investigate Nazi propaganda. In 1938 it became the House Un-American Activities Committee, and its first chair was Rep. Martin Dies Jr., D-Texas, who headed it until 1944. Under Dies, HUAC soon turned its attention toward investigating Communist Party infiltration and involvement in New Deal agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration. In 1939 it held hearings to investigate the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project, inquiring into whether any of its members or those who worked with it were communists.

HUAC investigations led to Hollywood blacklists

In 1946 HUAC became a permanent House committee, charged with investigating subversion in the United States. In 1947 and 1951 it investigated alleged Communist Party influence in Hollywood and the motion picture industry. As a result of these and subsequent hearings, nearly 300 actors and others employed in the movie industry were blacklisted or prevented from working. Many of those called to testify before HUAC pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify. Such refusal was often taken as tantamount to guilt, and many individuals were cited for contempt of Congress. Others did testify. Among them was noted film director Elia Kazan, who named numerous people who he believed were communist sympathizers, and they too were blacklisted.

One of HUAC’s most famous hearings took place in 1948, when Whittaker Chambers, a former member of the Communist Party, testified before the committee. Chambers’ testimony eventually led to the conviction of Alger Hiss, a State Department employee suspected of being a communist, for perjury.

HUAC led to targeted investigations by McCarthy, chilling of First Amendment freedoms

HUAC fed off the hysteria of the cold war and anti-communism, paving the way for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., to begin hearings in the Senate in 1953. Between HUAC and the McCarthy hearings, Congress held broad, roving investigations into the political activity of many Americans suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers. The hearings also investigated many who did not hold communist views, creating a climate of political intimidation that came to be called “red baiting” or McCarthyism. The impact of these hearings was to ruin the careers of many individuals and to foster a political paranoia toward anyone suspected of holding contrary political views or of joining suspected political organizations.

HUAC became unpopular during Vietnam War investigation

The end of HUAC came when it began to investigate opposition to the Vietnam War. Its 1967 and 1968 hearings investigating anti-war activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, both of whom attended the hearings at various times wearing a Santa Claus or a Revolutionary War patriot outfit, contributed to the rising unpopularity of HUAC. In 1969 its name was changed to the Internal Security Committee, and in 1975 it was abolished. During HUAC’s tenure, more than 3,000 individuals testified before it. Its investigations were the subject of several Supreme Court decisions that sought to define the scope of the constitutional power Congress had to hold hearings.

This article was originally published in 2009. David Schultz is a professor in the Hamline University Departments of Political Science and Legal Studies, and a visiting professor of law at the University of Minnesota. He is a three-time Fulbright scholar and author/editor of more than 35 books and 200 articles, including several encyclopedias on the U.S. Constitution, the Supreme Court, and money, politics, and the First Amendment.

When The Crucible premiered on Broadway in 1953, the country was in the midst of troubling and frightening period known as McCarthyism, or the Red Scare, which directly informed the play. Following the end of World War II the Soviet Union was a powerful enemy of the United States, and both countries were engaged in mutual distrust and amassment of nuclear power that came to be called the Cold War. During the Cold War, the United States government was extremely fearful of Soviet communism, subversion, and espionage, and many Americans believed Russia posed a “Red Scare” – an imminent and grave threat to democracy. A senator named Joseph McCarthy exploited fears of communist takeover to consolidate his own political power, fanning the flames of hysteria by collecting names of suspected communists, often without evidence. Though McCarthy initially targeted government employees, thousands of Americans were accused and interrogated during the Red Scare, especially in the entertainment industry. The McCarthy-led House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) focused heavily on Hollywood and interrogated masses of actors, directors, writers, and musicians.

Miller wrote The Crucible after seeing dozens of his colleagues called before HUAC, most importantly Elia Kazan, a director who had staged Miller’s play All My Sons in 1952. Though he initially refused to name names, Kazan, who was a communist, ultimately implicated several of his communist party-affiliated colleagues. Other peers of Miller’s, such as playwright Clifford Odets and actor Lee J. Cobb, also testified. As the trials wore on, Miller traveled between Massachusetts and New York, researching what he saw as a clear correlation between the Red Scare and the Salem witch trials, both of which depended on a mass hysteria propelled by fear. But unlike the Salem witch trials, in which all the accused were clearly innocent, many of those accused of communism, like Kazan, were in fact members of the communist party or were communist sympathizers. Just as in The Crucible, the HUAC promised clemency in exchange for condemning others, leading to many false accusations and creating terrible guilt for those who did testify. Twenty years after testifying, Kazan said, “Anybody who informs on other people is doing something disturbing and even disgusting.”

Though The Crucible was written in response to McCarthyism in Hollywood, Miller was not writing about his own persecution, but the culture of fear and intolerance he saw victimizing his friends and coworkers. He had attended communist meetings and supported communist causes, but he only attracted HUAC’s attention after writing The Crucible. When he tried to attend the play’s Belgian premiere in 1954, the State Department denied his passport renewal application due to his potential communist sympathies, and HUAC subpoenaed Miller when he tried to renew his passport again in 1956. Though promised he would not be asked to name names during his hearing, the committee asked Miller to reveal those who attended meetings with him. When Miller refused, he was charged with contempt of Congress and convicted, but he was acquitted on appeal a year later. Even before his hearing, Miller recognized a parallel between the 1692 Salem witch trials and HUAC’s methods that encouraged citizens to betray each other. In writing the play, though, Miller betrayed himself, and his own trial is one of the strongest testaments to The Crucible’s power and the dangers of mass hysteria.

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