Senate Investigation Attacks Liberals, Pacifists, Radicals
The Senate Overman Committee began hearings on alleged radicalism in America on this day. The investigation was part of the post-World War I Red Scare that included the infamous Palmer Raids on November 7, 1919, and January 2, 1920.
Archibald Stevenson, the leading anti-radical activist at the time, named 62 liberals, pacifists, and socialists as “dangerous” radicals, including Roger Baldwin, who a year later would help found the ACLU, on January 19, 1920. The committee issued its report on February 11, 1919.
The Overman Committee hearings set a precedent for later legislative investigations of political beliefs. In the Red Scare period, the New York state Lusk Committee issued a four-volume report on Revolutionary Radicalism, smearing a wide range of liberals, pacifists, socialists, and other radicals (see April 24, 1920).
The most notorious legislative investigation of political beliefs in American history was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), established on May 26, 1938, which for 37 years used guilt-by-association to equate a broad range of socialists, pacifists, civil libertarians and liberals with communism.
Put the Red Scare in historical perspective, read: Christopher Finan, From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (2007)
Learn more about the Red Scare: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/redscare.html
Read about the 1919-1920 Lusk Committee here
And about the dramatic House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation of communism in Hollywood in 1947: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)