House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed on May 26, 1938, and abolished in January 1975. The committee was created to investigate disloyalty and “subversive activities.” Initially, HUAC’s investigations were directed primarily at right-wing groups, including a number of pro-fascist organizations and the Ku Klux Klan. However, these investigations were generally short and perfunctory. Under the direction of Chairman Martin Dies, Jr., the committee (informally known as the Dies Committee) quickly adopted an anti-Communist agenda, investigating the infiltration of American institutions by Communists and Soviet sympathizers. Ironically, the committee’s founding co-chair, Samuel Dick-stein, would himself be named as a Soviet operative by the VENONA Project, a top-secret effort to decode Soviet communications.
Today, many consider the HUAC hearings to be the political equivalent of witch hunts. However, HUAC played a crucial role in defining Congress’s power to investigate the private associations and activities of American citizens. The committee developed a number of techniques that would later be adopted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Government Operations Committee. Sweeping allegations were made. Witnesses were pressured to reveal the names of former and current associates, and those who refused were often charged with contempt. Being questioned as an “unfriendly witness” or being mentioned during HUAC hearings was considered an indication of guilt. Even the mere association with suspect organizations was considered enough to prove one’s disloyalty, setting the standard for guilt by association.
During the prewar years and the early years of World War II, HUAC’s activities were focused on developing legislative policy and investigating the Communist influence within labor unions and government programs. The first legislation proposed by the committee was the Voorhis Act that was signed into law in 1940. The act had two parts. First, it required groups representing foreign governments to be registered with the U.S. attorney general’s office. Second, it required the registration of paramilitary groups and organizations that advocated the forcible overthrow of the U.S. government. The Voorhis Act did not include criminal penalties for membership in these organizations.
The Voorhis Act was quickly followed by Alien and Registration Act of 1940 (generally referred to as the Smith Act), which was far more sweeping. Not only did the Smith Act make it illegal to organize, join, or affiliate oneself with the groups listed in the Voorhis Act, but it also broadened the definition of what was considered subversive activity. Anything advocating the overthrow of the government, or that presented the overthrow of the government as necessary or desirable, was rendered criminal. Furthermore, those found printing, publishing, teaching, or publicly displaying such material with the intent to overthrow the government could receive a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Although critics argue that the law violates the First Amendment, in cases such as Yates v. United States and Noto v. United States, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld its constitutionality, though it has advocated a more limited interpretation of the act.
Spurred by a number of sit-down strikes by automobile workers, Dies launched investigations into organized labor beginning in 1938. Among the first organizations to be investigated by the committee were the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and a number of its local chapters. The result of these investigations was a shift in CIO policy so that unions could be expelled if they were deemed to be “consistently directed toward the achievement of the program purposes of the communist party” (CIO constitution, Article VI). Eleven unions had been expelled from the CIO as “communist dominated” by 1950. Among these unions was the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union of America (UE), which represented every General Electric and Westing-house plant in the United States.
HUAC began hearings in Chicago to investigate the Communist influence within the steel workers union in 1939. Only two years prior, Chicago had been the site of an unprovoked police attack on striking steel workers that had resulted in 10 strikers being killed and another 90 injured. HUAC placed the blame for such acts of violence on Communists, who were undermining union goals. However, HUAC’s claims of Communist influence were so sweeping that they acted more as an ideological attack against organized labor than a practical attempt to excise radical revolutionaries from the union ranks.
During this period, HUAC also held a number of investigations into Communist infiltration of government agencies. One of the earliest hearings involved the Federal Theater Project (FTP), a program started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression to employ out-of-work theater workers. Among those that were brought before the committee as unfriendly witnesses was Project Director Hallie Flanagan. Committee members implied Flanagan had Communist leanings, citing her support for controversial theatrical productions and her tour of Russian theaters while studying in Europe during the 1920s. It was also during this hearing that one HUAC member embarrassed himself by asking Flanagan if the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe had been a member of the Communist Party. The HUAC hearings on the FTP would ultimately lead to that program being shut down in 1939.
Perhaps the pinnacle of HUAC investigations into government agencies was the case of Alger Hiss. In 1948, President Truman publicly called HUAC’s attempts to weed out Communists a “red herring.” HUAC used its investigation of Alger Hiss, at the time a high-level State Department employee, to reaffirm its place within American politics. Hiss was convicted of perjury and was perceived to be a Soviet agent, although that would never be proven. The hearings also made HUAC committee member Richard Nixon a major political player on the national scene.
In the late 1940s, HUAC shifted its attention to Hollywood. The committee believed the film industry had a unique capacity to shape public discourse and that it was heavily infiltrated by Communists and Soviet sympathizers. For nearly a decade, HUAC subpoenaed members of the film industry—both as friendly and unfriendly witnesses—and demanded they disclose whether they were members of the Communist Party and name any acquaintances who were Party members. Among the most famous witnesses were a group of filmmakers and screenwriters, dubbed the Hollywood Ten, who refused to answer questions regarding their union and political affiliations. They argued that the committee’s questions violated privacy-related constitutional principles, including those regarding the secret ballot and freedom of association. The Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of court and sentenced to one year in prison. The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal.
The hearings resulted in the creation of the Hollywood blacklist, an effort spearheaded by such cinematic luminaries as John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. The blacklist denied those believed to be Communists or Communist sympathizers from working in Hollywood or being members of one of the industry’s labor guilds. Thousands of producers, directors, actors, screenwriters, and technical workers were blacklisted, including the Hollywood Ten. While some were able to continue their careers in the theater, or continue working using non-blacklisted colleagues as cover, many struggled to piece shattered lives back together. The blacklist remained in place until 1956, when actor/producer Kirk Douglas gave the screenwriting credit for his film Spartacus to Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten.
By the 1960s, the committee had shifted its focus from Hollywood to the new wave of social activist movements. Among the groups investigated was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which pushed for the use of federal intervention in support of the civil rights movement. Representative  Colmer of Mississippi asserted that SNCC was “aiding the Communists to enslave the world” (HR 738, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess.). Portrayals of the group in mainstream media contradicted this claim, showing SNCC’s public disdain for Marxist-Leninism, or for any other organized ideology. Instead, SNCC’s efforts to involve the federal government in support of civil rights appear to have been the more practical reason for the HUAC investigation. Several HUAC committee members, including  Tuck and Edwin Willis, actively resisted federal intervention, including efforts to enforce Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. Members of SNCC who were called before the committee invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Other HUAC investigations during this time focused on public school teachers in San Francisco, anti-war protesters in Berkeley, members of the Progressive Labor Party, and even working mothers in California and Ohio. These investigations were increasingly viewed as publicity stunts by the general public, and were heavily criticized by the media for prying into the private political beliefs and associations of witnesses. The public perception of HUAC was further eroded as witnesses made a mockery of hearings; for example, social activist Abbie Hoffman appeared before the committee wearing a clown suit. The committee was renamed the Internal Security Committee in 1969 in an attempt to reinvent itself. The committee’s influence continued to wane, and it was abolished in the beginning of 1975. While often viewed as a dark part of American history, HUAC served as a flashpoint in the debate on privacy, national security, political freedom, and freedom of association.