HYSTERIA IN AMERICA

1
HYSTERIA IN AMERICA

• McCarthy The Red Scare

2
America in the 1950s

• Fear of Communism
• Mao Zedongs rule in China
• Rising Italian Communist Party
• Soviet Russian Communism
• America vs. Soviet Union in Cold War
• Overwhelming fear of the concept of communism
  spreading into America

3
WHAT IS COMMUNISM?

• Government by a select few controls EVERYTHING
  (speech, religion, money)
• NO FREEDOMS (you are killed if anything is said
  against your government)
• Government ownership of your property
• Classless society
• Citizens dont work the same, but all get the
  same ( is distributed equally)

4
What was The Red Scare?

• In the late 1940s and early 1950s, a young
  congressman accused a number of people of being
  communists. His main purpose in doing this seems
  to have been to further his career. He was later
  shamed and investigated himself.

5
Joseph McCarthy
6
The House Un American Activities Committee (HUAC)

• McCarthys accusations were held publicly in the
  U. S. House of Representatives. Many respected
  and noted citizens were brought before the
  committee to confess or deny the charge of being
  communists or of knowing others who were
  communists.

7
THE ACCUSERS

• The HUAC Committee Members

8
People Accused

• Because of the more liberal views of those in
  Hollywood, many were accused of being communists.
• The Hollywood Blacklist included writers,
  directors, actors, artists, musicians, and other
  entertainment professionals. These people were
  barred from their work on the basis of their
  alleged membership in or sympathy toward the
  American Communist Party.

9
The Witch Hunt in Congress

• These people often were blacklisted merely
  because their names came up at the wrong place
  and time. Some were involved in humanitarian
  political causes that enforcers of the blacklist
  (HUAC) associated with communism.
• This blacklist caused direct damage to the
  careers of thousands of American artists.

10
The Hollywood Ten

• Screenwriters, directors, and producers wait to
  be fingerprinted after being cited for contempt
  of Congress in 1947. Only two survived the damage
  to work again in Hollywood.

11
REFUSAL TO TESTIFY

• These ten artists had not been proven to be
  communists, but had merely refused to give
  testimony to the HUAC members.
• They were cited for contempt because they would
  not give names of suspected communists.

12
To accuse others or not to accuse

• Some people called before HUAC chose to cooperate
  and willingly gave names of suspected
  Communists.
• Actor Sterling Hayden said of his 1947 testimony
  I was a rat, a stoolie, and the names I named of
  those close friends were blacklisted and they
  were deprived of their livelihood.

13
A Defender of American Rights

• Arthur Miller refused to give names of suspected
  Communists.

14
Millers Words to Congress

• My conscience will not permit me to use the name
  of another person and bring trouble to him.
• For his refusal, he was cited for contempt of
  Congress, but his conviction was later overturned.

15
Millers reasons for writing The Crucible

• Miller had been researching the Salem Witchcraft
  Trials when The more I read into the Salem
  panic, the more it touched off corresponding ages
  of common experiences of the 1950s (The Red
  Scare).
• He said, The thought that the state has lost its
  mind and is punishing so many innocent people is
  intolerable. And so the evidence has to be
  internally denied.

16
THE CRUCIBLE

• Arthur Millers play about the madness
  surrounding the Salem Witchcraft Trials was a
  direct warning against mass hysteria and a plea
  for freedom and tolerance.

17
(No Transcript)