Senator Joseph McCarthy

This photograph of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy reading the Oregon Journal was taken on August 26, 1951. The senator was the featured speaker at the Oregon Republican Party picnic. McCarthy, who visited Oregon several times between 1950 and 1952, is best known for his virulent anti-Communism.

During the post-World War II Cold War era, much of American society was permeated by fear - of the world's other superpower, the USSR; of communism in general; and of the new weapon that had been unleashed by the United States upon Japan, the Atomic Bomb. As the Soviet Union successfully aided Communist regimes in Eastern European countries and Communist forces took control of China's government in 1949, American leaders became more fearful that their own democratic government and free-market economy were in danger.

That fear manifested itself in many ways, including the nuclear arms race, in which the United States and the USSR both developed caches of weapons powerful enough to destroy the world. The inevitable outcome of mutual destruction kept both nations from launching their nuclear weapons, but Communism continued to spread into other countries, such as Korea. The United States sent its military to fight Communist forces in Korea from 1950 through 1953, with little success.

Some Americans in positions of power reacted to anti-Communism by requiring citizens to declare their allegiance to the United States. The Oregon Legislature, for example, decided in 1949 to disallow any person "linked to Communists" to work for the state. Members of the U.S. Congress worked through the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which had been established in 1938, to distribute allegations of Communism, call accused people before Congress, and ask those accused to name others who were sympathetic to Communism. People who were called before the committee - many of whom worked in Hollywood - were often fired from their jobs and blacklisted within their professions.

Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted hearings that utilized the scare tactics employed by his colleagues on the HUAC in the House of Representatives. He became so well-knows for those hearings that the era's rampant threats, blacklisting, and jailing of citizens accused of being sympathetic to Communism has come to be known as "McCarthyism."

The June 1954 HUAC hearings in Portland resulted in the Reed College's suspension of Professor Lloyd Reynolds and firing of Professor Stanley Moore, as well as firings and forced resignations by a number of other local citizens who had been accused of engaging in what the committee called "subversive" activities.

Further reading:
Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Michael Munk, "Oregon Tests Academic Freedom in (Cold) Wartime: The Reed College Trustees versus Stanley Moore," Oregon Historical Quarterly 97:3 (Fall 1996): 262-354.

Written by Eliza Canty-Jones,  © Oregon Historical Society, 2007.