The Domestic Red Scare: It Didn't Start with McCarthy

In 1948 the Washington State Legislature's Un-American Activities Committee publicly attacked University of Washington faculty and staff, local artists and labor unions as communists. In the name of patriotism and public safety individual rights were suspended causing untold damage to many lives and careers. On the 50th anniversary of the hearings, THE ALL POWERS PROJECT will re-examine these events in a variety of public forums in order to understand and demonstrate their relevance to our time.

Highlighting the project is a play by University of Washington Drama Professor Mark Jenkins. Professor Jenkins exposes a forgotten, tumultuous chapter from that dark era in All Powers Necessary and Convenient, a multimedia epic drama premiering February 4 at the Playhouse Theatre in Seattle.

Additional events include a series of lectures sponsored by the UW History Department, Law School, University Libraries, Center for Labor Studies, and Provost's office. Edwin O. Guthman, the Seattle Times reporter who won a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the hearings and ensuing damage, will be among the featured speakers on a panel of surviving participants. Nationally-known authors Ellen Schrecker (No Ivory Tower) and Richard M. Fried (Nightmare in Red and Men Against McCarthy) will each lecture on the anti-communist movement in America.

Factsheet of Events

UW Libraries Exhibits

• Exhibit Preview: Yours, in dread of the Hot Seat: Anti-Communist Investigations in Seattle, 1947-1949

• Guilt by Association
  Opposition to fascism in Spain and support for liberal causes among entertainers led to blacklisting ten years later. Selections from papers of Thane Summers, Earl Robinson, and other holdings of Manuscripts & University Archives.

  Allen Library Basement, North Wing,
  8:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Mondays -Thursdays
  8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Fridays
  1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Saturdays
  Closed Sundays and Holidays
  January 23, 1998 and continuing indefinitely

Red Scare Filmography

Reading List
A more extensive bibliography will be available in the future.

Other Web Sites of Interest

• Wick, Nancy. "Seeing Red." Columns December 1997. Reader response to the article.

• UW News Release: University of Washington marks 50th anniversary of anti-Communist investigations, 1/2/1998.

• President Gerberding's speech at a ceremony honoring Harry Bridges, 1/28/94.

• Allen, Raymond. "Communists Should Not Teach in American Colleges." Educational Forum 13(4), May 1949. Part of the The Literature & Culture of the American 1950s site at the University of Pennsylvania.

• The Cold War and Red Scare in Washington State. A curriculum project developed by the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest.

• Cold War Hot Links: Web Sources Relating to the Cold War

• Hollywood Ten, a collection of documents from the Radicalism Collection at Michigan State University.

• One in Ten: Adrian Scott and the Hollywood Ten, an exhibit provided by the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies and the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming.

Project Sponsors: UW School of Drama; School of Law; UW Libraries; University Bookstore; UW Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, Department of History; UW Center for Labor Studies; Nesholm Family Foundation; Martin-Djos Foundation; Jaecks Family Foundation; UW Office of the Provost; and College of Arts and Sciences

Funding for the Libraries' projects is made possible by generous grants from the Pequod Fund of the Tides Foundation, and the Kenneth S. Allen Library Endowment Fund.

rev. 14 April 1998