Human Rights A Day

McCarthyism era. The United States’ short-lived alliance with the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis chilled once World War II ended. And that chill turned into fears of communism throughout the world as the “Cold War” began and the Soviets asserted their control over Eastern European countries. Many Americans were concerned not only about communism abroad, but also about communism within their own borders. This post-war period, starting in the 1940s and continuing until the late 1950s, was also characterized as McCarthyism, for the communist witch-hunting carried out by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Un-American Activities committee. People became familiar with the line, “Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” For a country that prided itself on freedoms, and for a government that only years before had been an ally of the communist regime, many people were caught off-guard. In order to deal with communism at home more forcefully, Republican Senator John Marshal Butler and Democratic