HUAC: ACLU A Communist “Front Organization”
A House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) report released on this day noted that, while it can’t state the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is “Communistic,” it nonetheless included the organization in a section of “Front Organizations,” clearly suggesting that the ACLU served the interests of Communists.
The report was typical of the guilt-by-association tactics that marked the long history of HUAC. If someone had a friend, or once belonged to an organization, or signed a certain petition while a college student, that in any way was connected to the Communist Party, then that person was attacked for being a Communist sympathizer.
The most famous chapter in HUAC history involved its investigation of alleged communist subversion in Hollywood, in which ten witnesses (the “Hollywood Ten”) were held in contempt of Congress, convicted and sentenced to prison, and blacklisted. See the Hollywood Ten hearings which began on October 27, 1947.
Read about HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)
Learn more: Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century America: A Critical History (2011)
Learn more about HUAC: http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac
Read about the history of the ACLU in the Cold War: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)
Read about the history of HUAC: Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (1968)