What is more important — national security or personal freedom? Parnell Thomas to Harry S. Parnell Thomas and Harry S. Not wishing to get on the wrong side of Congress or the movie-going public, most film industry executives did not speak out against the investigations. In addition, many of the major studios imposed a strict blacklist policy against actors, directors, writers and other personnel implicated in Communist activity. The film industry investigations reached their peak with the events surrounding the Hollywood Ten , a group of writers and directors who were called to testify in October All were cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison terms, in addition to being blacklisted from working in Hollywood.
HUAC also sounded an alarm about Communists infiltrating the federal government. The most infamous case began in August , when a self-confessed former member of the American Communist Party named Whittaker Chambers appeared before the committee.
During his dramatic testimony, Chambers accused Alger Hiss , a former high-ranking State Department official, of serving as a spy for the Soviet Union. Based on allegations and evidence provided by Chambers, Hiss was found guilty of perjury and served 44 months in prison.
He spent the rest of his life proclaiming his innocence and decrying his wrongful prosecution. The suggestion that Communist agents had infiltrated senior levels of the U. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early s.
McCarthy led an aggressive anticommunist campaign of his own that made him a powerful and feared figure in American politics. His reign of terror came to an end in , when the news media revealed his unethical tactics and he was censured by his colleagues in Congress.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. As a result of these and subsequent hearings, nearly actors and others employed in the movie industry were blacklisted or prevented from working.
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. HUAC fed off the hysteria of the cold war and anti-communism, paving the way for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis. 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.
Often tried by flow of words to accomplish his purpose, by sheer quantity. They made a tape and will send me one. And the story that emerges is different. As the accused students are not here to speak for themselves, I have gathered a few clippings to present part of their defense for them. Sixty-eight students were arrested, and the charges were dismissed against 67 of them almost immediately. The other, Robert Meisenbach, was tried in May No witnesses either for the prosecution or for the defense could be found, who saw him rush a barricade and hit a policeman with a nightstick.
In fact Life magazine and on May 23, , shows the students sitting quietly just as the hoses went on. Many of them was still dry and the boy who was supposed to be jumping the barricade was leaning against the wall and smoking a pipe.
Nancy Perkins What really happened and how can the film be so convincing to so many people? But first, what did the students say they were trying to do? The committee had scheduled hearings in for a large group of subpoenaed teachers in the California school system, and then had delayed the hearing, and finally canceled them, keeping the teachers under a cloud of suspense and suspicion and then giving them no chance to clear themselves of the charges.
A resolution passed by the Episcopal Diocese of California accused the committee of having outraged the public conscience. Many people in organized labor on faculties of the universities and in the churches, besides the students, were objecting to the methods of the committee. A week before the hearings, which was scheduled for May , students got police permission to pick it and to stage demonstrations. And they were quite orderly for the most part.
Trouble began when they were not allowed to enter the building where the hearings were held. They sang and chanted outside and the police turned fire hoses on them to clear the building.
Nancy Perkins The House on Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed the films that were taken on the scene by the television newsman, and had prints made of them, and edited them, and spliced them in their proper sequences. But they show no violence on the part of students. Several policemen had heart attacks, and one had a bitten thumb, which it must be admitted is evidence of aggression. There is a documented article by Robert Moon and in the Christian Century of March 22, , which makes the following observation.
Nobody proved that any of them came there to direct a riot or that they were successful in directing the students to do anything. And what the students were complaining about was not being allowed to go into the hearings, and they were frequently promised by the sheriff that room would be made for them that they could go in and hear. And when this promise was not kept, they got angry.
The movie shows subpoenaed witnesses making allowed demonstration in the hearing room in such a way as to suggest that this action set off noisy demonstrations by students. The first happened on May the 12th, and the second of May the 13th. And these were put together as if they were causally related.
The film also shows policemen talking to the students and then the students singing in the building, as if in deliberate disobedience.
But these two scenes are not related in time either. The Star Spangled Banner incident implies that the students were breaking up the hearings, but this incident occurred during a noon recess when no committee members were present.
The narrator says that there was open defiance of law and order. And other observers said that there was no violence at all. Nancy Perkins Students report that there were no warnings given that the fire hoses would be turned on if they did not clear the building.
The reason they sat down when the police dragged out the hoses was to show that their intentions were nonviolent. They were obeying directives is not of communists, as the film states, but of their own respective student leaders, a procedure that had been agreed on ahead of time in case of violence. Eckbert Ladies and gentlemen, the Emory University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom welcomes you to the second in our series of political discussions and debates.
James Hund, of the Department of the School of Business Administration, will introduce our topic and our speakers of the evening. Since leaving the committee, he has lectured widely and debated on behalf of the conservative position. He has appeared on radio and television shows, including substituting at times for his father Fulton Lewis Jr. On my left is Professor Howard Zinn, chairman of department history and social sciences at Spelman College here in Atlanta.
During the question [tape defect] questions alternate from the floor first for one speaker, and then for the other. And today, we live in the age of irony. We probably in a 20th century the ironies are more monumental than ever.
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