House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1946, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.
Chairman Martin Dies of the House Un-American Activities Committee proofreads his October 26, 1938 letter replying to President Roosevelt's attack on the committee.
Lee Slater Overman headed the first congressional investigation of American communism back in 1919.
Texas Democrat Martin Dies Jr. served as chair of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, predecessor to the permanent committee, for its entire seven-year duration.
Democrat Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania was chair of HUAC from 1955 until his death in 1963.
McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. After the mid-1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is, in the modern day, outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism, after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover, is more appropriate.
One of the earliest uses of the term McCarthyism was in a cartoon by Herbert Block ("Herblock"), published in The Washington Post, March 29, 1950.
Senator Joseph McCarthy
Executive Order 9835, signed by President Truman in 1947
J. Edgar Hoover in 1961