McCarthyism - Victims of McCarthyism

Victims of McCarthyism

It is difficult to estimate the number of victims of McCarthyism. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired. Many of those who were imprisoned, lost their jobs or were questioned by committees did in fact have a past or present connection of some kind with the Communist Party. But for the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. Suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for "sexual perverts", who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in thousands being harassed and denied employment.

In the film industry, over 300 actors, authors and directors were denied work in the U.S. through the unofficial Hollywood blacklist. Blacklists were at work throughout the entertainment industry, in universities and schools at all levels, in the legal profession, and in many other fields. A port security program initiated by the Coast Guard shortly after the start of the Korean War required a review of every maritime worker who loaded or worked aboard any American ship, regardless of cargo or destination. As with other loyalty-security reviews of McCarthyism, the identities of any accusers and even the nature of any accusations were typically kept secret from the accused. Nearly 3,000 seamen and longshoremen lost their jobs due to this program alone.

A few of the more notable people who were blacklisted or suffered some other persecution during McCarthyism are listed here:

• Nelson Algren, writer
• Elmer Bernstein, composer and conductor
• David Bohm, physicist and philosopher
• Bertolt Brecht, poet, playwright, screenwriter
• Charlie Chaplin, actor and director
• Aaron Copland, composer
• Bartley Crum, attorney
• Howard Da Silva, actor
• Jules Dassin, director
• Dolores del Río, actress
• W. E. B. Du Bois, civil rights activist and author
• Howard Fast, writer
• Carl Foreman, writer of High Noon
• John Garfield, actor
• Jack Gilford, actor
• Ruth Gordon, actress
• Lee Grant, actress
• Dashiell Hammett, author
• Elizabeth Hawes, clothing designer, author, equal rights activist
• Lillian Hellman, playwright
• Lena Horne, singer
• Langston Hughes, writer
• Sam Jaffe, actor
• Theodore Kaghan, diplomat
• Garson Kanin, writer and director
• Benjamin Keen, historian
• Gypsy Rose Lee, actress and stripper
• Cornelius Lanczos, mathematician and physicist
• Arthur Laurents, playwright
• Philip Loeb, actor
• Joseph Losey, director
• Burgess Meredith, actor
• Arthur Miller, playwright and essayist
• Zero Mostel, actor
• J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, scientific director of the Manhattan Project
• Dorothy Parker, writer
• Linus Pauling, chemist, winner of two Nobel prizes
• Samuel Reber, diplomat
• Martin Ritt, actor and director
• Paul Robeson, actor, athlete, singer, writer, political activist
• Edward G. Robinson, actor
• Waldo Salt, screenwriter
• Pete Seeger, folk singer
• Artie Shaw, jazz musician
• Irwin Shaw, writer
• William L. Shirer, journalist
• Lionel Stander, actor
• Paul Sweezy, economist and founder-editor of Monthly Review
• Charles W. Thayer, diplomat
• Tsien Hsue-shen, physicist
• Gene Weltfish, Anthropologist. Fired from her position at Columbia in 1953 and unable to secure a new position for the next 9 years.

In 1953, Robert K. Murray, a young professor of history at Pennsylvania State University who had served as an intelligence officer in World War II, was revising his dissertation on the Red Scare of 1919-1920 for publication until Little, Brown and Company decided that "under the circumstances...it wasn't wise for them to bring this book out." He learned that investigators were questioning his colleagues and relatives. The University of Minnesota press published his volume, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920, in 1955.