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unusual facts about House Unamerican Activities Committee



Pennsylvania v. Nelson

The Smith Act was written after the Pennsylvania Sedition Act, but both were created during the Cold War, during the age of Joseph McCarthy and his House Unamerican Activities Committee; this was the time of the “Red Scare,” where McCarthy investigated everyone, because anyone could be a communist.


see also

Hannah Weinstein

Weinstein hired American writers who had been blacklisted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings (Waldo Salt, Ring Lardner Jr., Ian McLellan Hunter and others), using pseudonyms, and instituted elaborate security measures to ensure that the writers' true identities remained secret.

Wendell H. Furry

In 1953, he was subpoenaed several times as a suspected communist by the House Unamerican Activities Committee and by US Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege in refusing to answer questions about his past membership in the Communist Party.