Editing McCarthyism (section)

====House Committee on Un-American Activities====<!-- This section is linked from [[Pete Seeger]] -->
{{main|House Un-American Activities Committee}}
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as the HUAC) was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee, named for [[Martin Dies Jr.|Rep. Martin Dies]], who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated a variety of "activities", including those of German-American Nazis during [[World War II]]. The committee soon focused on communism, beginning with an investigation into communists in the [[Federal Theatre Project]] in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion.

HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood film industry]]. In [[Hollywood blacklist#The blacklist begins (1946–1947)|October 1947]], the committee began to [[subpoena]] screenwriters, directors, and other movie-industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. At these testimonies, this question was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?"<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8RxLbr0QPdgC&q=mccarthyism+64+dollar+question&pg=PA153|title=The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics|publisher=[[University of Iowa Press]]|year=1991|isbn=978-1587290343|editor-last=Case|editor-first=Sue-Ellen|page=153|access-date=October 19, 2020|editor-last2=Reinelt|editor-first2=Janelle G.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107142946/https://books.google.com/books?id=8RxLbr0QPdgC&q=mccarthyism+64+dollar+question&pg=PA153|archive-date=November 7, 2020|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dmytryk |first1=Edward |title=Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten |date=1996 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |isbn=978-0809319992 |page=59 |url=https://archive.org/details/oddmanoutmemoiro0000dmyt_j8j0/page/59/mode/1up |quote="In the early days of the Martin Dies Committee [...] the question had simply been, Are you a member of the Communist Party of the United States? As a countermeasure, the Party adopted a rule that automatically cancelled a Communist's membership the moment the question was asked. He could then answer 'No' without perjuring himself. The final wording [...] was adopted to circumvent the Party's tactic."}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=October 2023}} Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the "[[Hollywood Ten]]", cited the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]]'s guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer the committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for [[contempt of Congress]]. Two of them were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year.

In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the committee would claim their [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]] protection against self-incrimination. [[William Gropper|William Grooper]] and [[Rockwell Kent]], the only two visual artists to be questioned by McCarthy, both took this approach, and emerged relatively unscathed by the experience.<ref>{{Cite web|last=nublockmuseum|date=May 31, 2013|title=Behind Blacklisted|url=https://nublockmuseum.blog/2013/05/31/behind-blacklisted/|access-date=July 27, 2020|website=Stories From The Block|language=en-US|archive-date=July 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200727105706/https://nublockmuseum.blog/2013/05/31/behind-blacklisted/|url-status=live}}</ref> However, while this usually protected witnesses from a contempt-of-Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private-industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with the Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with communist affiliations.{{sfn|Fried|1990|pp=154–155}}{{sfn|Schrecker|2002|p=68}} Thus, many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor [[Larry Parks]] put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"—an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy.<ref name="SIN">{{cite web| title = See it Now: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (transcript)| publisher = CBS-TV| date = March 9, 1954| url = http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/murrowmccarthy.html| access-date = March 16, 2007| archive-date = November 10, 2015| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151110194223/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/murrowmccarthy.html| url-status = live}}</ref>