HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE (HUAC)

Between 1938 and 1968, the House of Representatives maintained a committee with a remit to investigate "subversive and un-American propaganda," a mission that it often and controversially pursued with indiscriminate enthusiasm. Samuel Dickstein, a New York congressman of Russian Jewish descent, had long been concerned about the behavior of fascistic and anti-Semitic groups during the Depression, and in January 1937 he introduced a resolution in the House calling for an investigation of organizations promoting "un-American propaganda." The resolution was tabled, but soon after, Texas Democrat Martin Dies introduced a similar motion. The anti-labor Texan's targets were on the left, but the two congressmen cooperated and secured a majority for the proposal in May 1938, with the tacit support of the House leadership and Vice President John Nance Garner, and HUAC was established as a temporary special committee. Contradicting Dickstein's original intent, HUAC focused less on Nazi groups and more on Communists, who were said to have penetrated New Deal agencies. Dies became the committee chair, and Dickstein was excluded.

HUAC was the product of the conservative coalition of Republicans and rural and southern Democrats who had turned against the New Deal and had become the dominant political force in the lower House. The committee won the blessings of radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, patriotic groups such as the Paul Reveres, right-wing columnists such as George Sokolsky, and anticommunist leaders of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It was largely guided by its head of research, Dr. J. B. Matthews, who, after a career as a prominent fellow traveller (a term mainly applied to intellectuals sympathetic to the Communist cause but not party members), had turned on his former associates with an apostate's zeal. With the American Communist Party reaching its heyday, war looming in Europe, and fears growing of fifth column activities in the United States, HUAC secured broad public approval.

Under Dies, HUAC was a vehicle for attacking the New Deal and its labor and popular front allies, some of which were Communist fronts. It paid some attention to fascist groups such as the German-American Bund, but its principal targets were New Deal agencies such as the Works Progress Administration (especially its suspect Federal Theater Project), New Deal allies such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and such popular front groups as the American League for Peace and Democracy. HUAC initially relied on voluntary witnesses, often drawn from anticommunist groups eager to denounce the left. John P. Frey of the AFL testified that Communists were operating through the CIO, and Walter Steele, head of the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, which represented over a hundred patriotic organizations, named hundreds of other organizations as subject to communist influence. Early on, HUAC acquired a reputation for biased proceedings. One target in 1938 was the CIO-Democratic Party alliance in Michigan, which was identified with the celebrated 1937 sit-down strikes at General Motors in Flint. The strikers had been afforded the protection of the National Guard by the New Deal governor Frank Murphy, who was running for re-election in the fall of 1938. In October HUAC visited Detroit as part of a series of hearings into the labor movement. Witnesses attributed the sit-down strikes to Communists, whom they recklessly linked to Murphy. A furious Franklin Roosevelt made his first public assault on HUAC, but Murphy, a major symbol of the New Deal, lost re-election, apparently the victim of red-baiting.

With the midterm elections over, HUAC became a bit less energetic. Criticized for its preoccupation with Communist and front groups, it made some effort to investigate anti-Semitic and Nazi groups in 1939 and 1940, particularly after the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the outbreak of war in Europe. But resident aliens and the Communist Party and its alleged New Deal links remained favorite targets, and Dies relished harassing the Roosevelt administration. With Dies warning of subversion in the defense industries as German armies swept across Europe, the committee rose in public estimation and its appropriation was increased. But beginning in 1941, when the United States entered the war as an ally of the Soviet Union and American communists became enthusiastic supporters of the war effort, the "little red scare" faded. Thereafter, HUAC rarely held public hearings, and its activities consisted of little more than the cavortings of the chairman, who mostly used his office to release the names of federal employees he thought should be dismissed for their alleged front associations. HUAC might have redeemed itself in 1943 when it investigated the internment of Japanese Americans, but it used the occasion to encourage scare stories about Japanese subversion. By that time HUAC was being accused of hindering the war effort and its public support had diminished; in 1944 Martin Dies decided not to seek re-election to Congress. In January 1945, in a skilful parliamentary maneuver, Representative John Rankin of Mississippi secured a resolution making HUAC a permanent committee. It would re-emerge powerfully in the Cold War era.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bentley, Eric, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968. 1971.

Goodman, Walter. The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 1968.

Heale, M. J. American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970. 1990.

Ogden, August Raymond. The Dies Committee: A Study of the Special House Committee for the Investigation of Un-American Activities, 1938–1944. 1945.

Powers, Richard Gid. Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. 1995.

Taylor, Telford. Grand Inquest: The Story of Congressional Investigations. 1955.

Wreszin, Michael. "The Dies Committee, 1938." In Congress Investigates, 1792–1974, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Roger Bruns. 1975.