The Origins of the Campaign to Abolish HUAC, 1956-1961, The California Connection

Abstract

The recent creation of a Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism and proposals for a similar body in the House have generated fears within the liberal community that a new McCarthyism is on the rise in America. In large part, these fears are based on liberals' experience with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Throughout its thirty-year existence, HUAC was an anathema to liberals and civil libertarians. From its first public hearing in 1938 through its final demise in 1969, the Committee sought, and all too often succeeded, in branding as Communist liberals and the organizations to which they belonged. In the process HUAC fostered a blacklist, destroyed careers, and trampled upon basic civil rights. Its members ignored the right to privacy of political belief, engaged in the worst kind of guilt by association, and used their access to the media as a means of punishing through exposure political nonconformists.1