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The impact of mccarthyism
Mccarthyism its effects
Essay on McCarthy
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America has endured many difficult times throughout history. One such time is known as the McCarthy era. During the early 1950's, "witch hunts" occurred of suspected communists. One only needed to be suspected of communism to be accused. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, in order to gain political power, capitalized on the fear of communism in the United States in the early 1950's by falsely accusing innocent citizens of political corruption, thus creating a lasting impact on the government, entertainment industry, and history of America. Joseph Raymond McCarthy was born on a farm in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, on November 15, 1908. His parents, Timothy McCarthy and Bridget Tierney, were devout Roman Catholics. The Catholic faith places great emphasis on love, kindness, and charity; ideals that would soon be forgotten by a power-hungry Joseph. As the fifth child of nine children, expectations for Joseph were high. Sibling rivalries instilled in him a great desire to be the center of attention that would carry through his adult life. No one would expect such a historical impact from such simple roots. Joseph attended the Underhill School, a one-room schoolhouse, where he completed eighth grade at age 14. He left scholarly life and invested in his own chicken farm. Years later, when disease wiped out his flock, McCarthy began work as a grocery store clerk. He quickly became manager; he decided to go back to school. Joseph completed the four year curriculum at Little Wolf High School in just nine months. Accepted because of his good grades, Marquette University began his career in law. Joseph graduated as president of his class in 1935 and started his own law firm in Waupaca. Later, he joined a law firm. Before Joseph was even ... ... middle of paper ... ...://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1951/11oct_gomer.pdf 5. http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/oci/ci_spy.cfm?dossier=90 6. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/blacklist.html 7. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/telegram.htm 8. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/mccarthy/navasky.htm 9. http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2007-08/communism-computing-china/ 10. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmccarthy.htm 11. http://www.apl.org/community/hist/mccarthy 12. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html 13. Anderson, Jack, and James Boyd. Confessions of a Muckraker: The inside Story of Life in Washington during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Years. New York: Random House, 1979. Print. 14. David Oshinksy, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: The Free Press, 1983), passim.
The Web. The Web. 23 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/assassination-co-conspirators/>. Bill O'Reilly Biography.
The McCarthy Era was a period of history that began in the late 1949s and ended in the mid late 1950s. This was also called the Second Red Scare in the United States. The McCarthy Era had many innocent victims and many of them were imprisoned. Several authors, actors, civil rights activists, and physicists were among the many victims that were blacklisted. Due to McCarthy’s witch-hunt many victims’ reputations were destroyed and their families ...
During this time a variety of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and were victims of aggressive investigations by government committees and agencies.
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
McCarthy conducted “witch hunts” in an effort to seek out and eliminate suspected Communists. Congressional hearings were in effect, not hearings, but trials for crimes that were not really crimes, with congressmen serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Unable to deprive a person of their life and liberty, they deprived him of his livelihood. If the person refused to give the names of other Communists, he or she would automatically be considered guilty. Witnesses at the trials were immediately classified as either friendly or unfriendly.
During the 1950s, the United States was afraid of the communist party. This caused the U.S. to quickly judge anybody who was assumed to be a communist. A similar story was the struggle John Proctor had. John Proctor lived within a super proper society, with many of the people in it being superstitious with the Witch Trials going on. The Salem Witch Trials were filled with the lies of people being witches that would eventually destroy their reputations.
McCarthy was elected senate after becoming a lawyer in his sate of Wisconsin. During the first few years of his term nothing major really happened until 1950. In a speech to the Women’s club of wheeling in West Virginia he stated that he had a list in his hand of about 205 known members of the communist party working for the United States department. President Harry Truman had signed an executive order that said that all communists or fascists could not obtain a United States government job. The FBI played a big role in the investigation of this list McCarthy contained. McCarthy’s friend j. Edgar Hoover, which was a violent ant-communist in the federal government, could not wait to expose the people McCarthy accused of being communists. McCarthy’s list created a nationwide scar among the people of the United States. Everything McCarthy said was a lie and he had no evidence to show that the people he accused were really communist but, because of the start of the Korean War and the arrest of two American soldiers accused of spying on the Soviet Union American citizen...
being a Communist, with the only source being a report on how his father reads a Serbian newspaper. (Clooney) Without genuine evidence from a credible source, an argument is as good as a blatant claim. McCarthy’s “evidence” is in fact unsubstantiated in itself. Therefore, his accusations contain no basis, and lack the foundation needed to provide solid and subs...
The attitude of the citizens of the United States was a tremendous influence on the development of McCarthyism. The people living in the post World War II United States felt fear and anger because communism was related with Germany, Italy, and Russia who had all at one point been enemies of the United States during the war. If the enemies were communists then, communists were enemies and any communists or even communist sympathizers were a threat to the American way of life. "From the Bolshevik Revolution on, radicals were seen as foreign agents or as those ...
“In 1950, Joseph McCarthy made a public accusation that two hundred plus “card carrying” communists have become a part of the United States government.” (Kazan) “In the 1940s, Americans feared communism.” (Lorcher) The Soviet Union was growing in power. Paranoia enthused a communist threat. “The incoming communists had their passports taken. While other “communists” were jailed for refusing to accuse others. The hunt for communists was difficult for writers, and entertainers. Many were labeled communist and were not allowed to continue work anymore.” (Kazan) “McCarthy's accusations heightened political tension. In formed the anti- communist group in 1938.” (Kazan) “During the two years following the publication and production of The Crucible, Arthur Miller was investigated for possible associations with the communist party, then he
Joseph was born to Russian-Jewish Immigrants on May 1st 1923 and lived a quiet life in Brooklyn New York, with his half-sister and half-brother whose mother had died. His family struggled financially and since they were immigrants they did not speak english well. Joseph's father died after a failed operation in 1929 as Joseph began formal public schooling in Coney Island. Many believe after this Heller got his dark humor developed and placed into some of his work. Heller had little literary influence in his childhood except with the books “ The Iliad by Homer otherwise known as The Odyssey”-(Advameg,Inc)
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Senator McCarthy lead a violent campaign attacking alleged communists in the US government and other institutions. Communism defined by dictionary.com is: A system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party (“communism.”). Americans were distressed about the threat of communism growing in Eastern Europe and China. Pressing on those concerns, Senator McCarthy directed more than two hundred false allegations towards communists that had the right of entry to the United States Government. McCarthy was then reprimanded by the Senate for inappropriate conduct. McCarthy’s accusations enhanced the strained relations between the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and accused communists.
The McCarthy Era, a name given to the time period were Senator McCarthy set off an era of paranoia and accusations, was a time period full of fears that the threat of communism was not from the presence of the Soviet Union, but from communists living within the United States. Many individuals during this time period were deported, despite being legal citizens, and socially shunned for suspicion of being affiliated with communists. Alger Hiss was a notable figure, during this time period that was accused of being a Soviet spy and was later convicted of perjury. This fear of communists was not fed by McCarthy alone, John Foster Dulles presented ideas of the dangers of Communism, as stated, “If world communism captures any American State, however small, a new and perilous front is established which will increase the danger to the entire free world and require even greater sacrifices from the American people.” (Doc. B). President Eisenhower, however, attempted to settle these fears, by claiming that there is too much hysteria surrounding communism (Doc. A). President Eisenhower attempted to reassure the American people that the U.S. is perfectly capable of protecting its self against
Much of his anti-imperialistic views could have sprouted in childhood, when he was under the rule of Russians the Ukraine. His father Apollo Korzeniowski was arrested for suspicious involvement in revolutionary activities (online-literature). Apollo spent much time writing plays and social satires. Although his works were not well known, they gave Joseph an early appreciation for literature.
Joseph Cornell was born in Nyack, New York, on December 24th 1903, the oldest of the four Cornell siblings. But when he was thirteen years old, his family was left in strained circumstances due to the death of his father and they moved to the borough of Queens in New York City. Joseph attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts for three and a half years but never graduated. Apart from his time in Andover, he never travelled beyond the New York City area. Joseph was a self-taught artist mainly because he was very shy around people which led to him to isolating himself. He devoted his life to looking after his younger brother, Robert, who suffered from cerebral palsy, which also contributed to his isolation. Joseph was rather poor for