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McCarthy had a big impact on the Americans, the Americans felt threatened by him.

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Communism was the cause of The Red Scare.

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In the Red Scare, many Americans were fearful of their lives.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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This image shows the United States involved in the Red Scare.

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The Americans are standing up for themselves.

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Timeline on the Red Scare, shows all the events.

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Known to some as the Red Scare of 1919, the First Red Scare was a precursor to the Red-baiting and witch hunting that occurred in the years following World War II. During this period:

People truly believed that Reds were under the bed - not to mention in the water supply, creeping through the halls of government, and even spying from space.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First some background.

After the Russian Revolution, communism was dreaded by America's business and industrial leaders. Fearing labor unrest, they treated it like the plague. According to Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture, a 2001 book by Michael Barson and Steven Heller:

These same leaders forged secret alliances with racists, jingoists, and other America-first fanatics in spreading anti-Communist propaganda throughout the nation. In turn, they succeeded in convincing a mass of Americans that their lives were threatened by Communists who were nestled among the immigrants entering the United States.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Bolshevism became totally entrenched in Russian life, and in 1919 the American Communist Party was founded in Chicago. Refusing to recognize Lenin's government, President Wilson committed arms and troops to the war against Bolshevism abroad and increased the level of anti-Communist propaganda at home.

Interestingly, though, the Red Scare begins much earlier than 1917. Let's start our timeline with the Manifesto of the Communist Party, publishedin 1848.

Red Scare Timeline: 1848-1927

1848: Karl Marx and Frederic Engels write the Manifesto of the Communist Party. It declares: " A specter is haunting Europe, and that specter is Communism."

1879: Josef Stalin is born in the Georgian village of Gori and christened Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. In 1912, Lenin gives him the name Stalin - Man of Steel.

December 26, 1893: Mao Zedong is born in the farm village of Shaosan, not far from Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province.

1903: Lenin leads the split from the 5 year old Russian Social Democrat Labor Party. He forms the Bolshevik Party.

January 9, 1905: Bloody Sunday erupts. The Imperial Guard of the absent Czar Nicholas II, at the direction of the grand duke, opens fire on a crowd of several thousand unarmed laborers marching on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to protest mistreatment; 1500 demonstrators are wounded or killed.

1905: Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1900 and 1904, founds the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The group is known as the Wobblies.

November 7, 1917: The October Revolution (the Russian calendar was used) marks the Bolshevik seizure of power with forces that number no more than 250,000. The 15 member Politburo is formed immediately. Josef Stalin, a founding member and an experienced revolutionary activist, is given the post of People's Commissar of Nationalities.

1917: Lenin's State and Revolution is published.

1917: Congress passes the Espionage Act, making it illegal to mail literature "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance" to the laws of the United States.

April 1918: Lenin forms the Revolutionary Military Council.

July 8, 1918: The Romanov royal family - the czar, the empress, and their children - are shot to death by the Bolshevists. Their bodies are buried in a remote forest, but their graves are rediscovered in 1922.

1918: Congress passes the Sedition Act, which forbids anything "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive" being either spoken or written about the US government or the Constitution.

September 1918: Eugene V. Debs is tried in Cleveland and found guilty of violating the Espionage Act. He is sentenced to 2 concurrent 10 year terms, asserting: "While there is a lower class, I am in it: while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." He served his time in an Atlanta penitentiary, even though Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer urged President Wilson to grant him clemency.

March 1919: Lenin establishes The Comintern, the Third Communist International. Its mandate is to coordinate Communist activity worldwide via decree from Moscow.

April 30, 1919: A postal clerk in New York discovers bombs in 20 packages addressed to a variety of government officials. The bombs are set to explode the next day, on May Day. The attack launches America's First Red Scare.

August 1919: The Justice Department creates the General Intelligence Division. Its first director is J. Edgar Hoover, a graduate of George Washington University Law School.

August 1919: Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer asks Immigration to deport black activist Marcus Garvey. But he doesn't go to prison until his arrest in January 1922 on charges of mail fraud. His sentence is commuted in 1927, and Garvey is deported back to his native Jamaica.

1919: John Reed's books, Red Russia and Ten Days That Shook the World, are published. They're based on his first-hand account of the 1917 Revolution. Back in the US, Reed is expelled from the Socialist Party. He and Benjamin Gitlow form the Communist Labor Party. For a few years, it competes with the Russian led Communist Party of America. Later in 1919, Reed returns to Russia. The Comintern gives him money and instructions to further the growth of the Communist movement in America. Jailed in Finland on his way back to America, Reed falls into poor health. He dies in Moscow in 1920. Lenin sees to it that he is buried within the walls of the Kremlin - the only American to ever be so honored.

January 10, 1920: The League of Nations is formed. It's dissolved on the same day in 1946, shortly after the founding of the United Nat ions.

September 16, 1920: A bomb explodes on Wall Street, killing 30 and injuring many others. Anarchists are blamed.

1920: The Red Army, led by Georgi Zhukov, defeats the White Army of the Cossacks and other counter-revolutionaries. This ends Russia's civil war.

November 1920: The first Chinese Communist Manifesto is published in Shanghai.

May 1921: The Communist Party of America (CPA) and John Reed's Communist Labor Party (CLP) merge into the American Communist Party (ACP) at a convention held in Woodstock, NY.

December 24, 1921: Newly elected President Warren G. Harding orders the release of Eugene V. Debs from prison. In 1920, while in prison, Debs had run as the Socialist Party candidate for president. He boldly stated: "I consider the Russian Revolution] the greatest single achievement in all history. I am still a Bolshevik. I am fighting for the same thing here they are fighting for there."

April 3, 1922: Stalin is elected general secretary to the Central Committee, the most important post in the Party.

December 1922: The USSR is officially formed.

January 21, 1924: Lenin dies and is succeeded by Josef Stalin.

January 1925: Leon Trotsky is removed from his position as commissar for the army and navy and chairman of the military council.

October 1925: The National Negro Labor Congress is organized by the Communist Party.

August 23, 1927: Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are electrocuted. They were convicted of robbery and murder in 1921. Their trial and execution become rallying points for American progressives.

Thanks to Red Scared a book by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, for the information presented in this post.

If you're interested in the Red Scare, be sure to take a look at Cold War Studies latest post. Click here to read.

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THE FIRST RED SCARE: A TIMELINE | Cold War

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Known to some as the Red Scare of 1919, the First Red Scare was a precursor to the Red-baiting and witch hunting that occurred in the years following World War II. During this period: People truly believed that Reds were under the bed - not to mention in the water supply, creeping through the halls [...]

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The Red Scare took place in 1920

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Citation: C N Trueman "The Red Scare in the 1920"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 22 May 2015. 16 Aug 2016.

America may be famed for its Jazz Age and prohibition during the 1920's, and for its economic strengthbefore the Wall Street Crash, but a darker side existed. The KKK dominated the South and those who did not fit in found that they were facing the full force of the law. Those who supported un-American political beliefs, such as communism, were suspects for all sorts of misdemeanors.

The so-called "Red Scare" refers to the fear of communism in the USA during the 1920's. It is said that there were over 150,000 anarchists or communists in USA in 1920 alone and this represented only 0.1% of the overall population of the USA.

However many Americans were scared of the communists especially as they had overthrown the royal family in Russia in 1917 and murdered them in the following year. In 1901, an anarchist had shot the American president ( McKinley ) dead.

The fear of communism increased when a series of strikes occurred in 1919. The police of Boston went on strike and 100,000's of steel and coal workers did likewise. The communists usually always got the blame.

A series of bomb explosions in 1919, including a bungled attempt to blow up A. Mitchell Palmer, America's Attorney-General, lead to a campaign against the communists. On New Year's Day, 1920, over 6000 people were arrested and put in prison. Many had to be released in a few weeks and only 3 guns were found in their homes. Very few people outside of the 6000 arrested complained about the legality of these arrests such was the fear of communism. The judicial system seemed to turn a blind eye as America's national security was paramount

However, far more people complained about the arrest of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

They were arrested in May 1920 and charged with awages robbery in which 2 guards were killed.

Both men were from Italy and both spoke little English. But both were known to be anarchists and when they were found they both had loaded guns on them. The judge at their trial - Judge Thayer

- was known to hate the "Reds" and 61 people claimed that they saw both men at the robbery/murders. But 107 people claimed that they had seen both men elsewhere when the crime was committed. Regardless of this both men were found guilty. They spent 7 years in prison while their lawyers appealed but in vain. Despite many public protests and petitions, both men were executed by electric chair on August 24th, 1927.

Vanzetti and Sacco

Throughout the 1920's and 1930's a culture developed within America which both feared and despised communism. This stance against the "Reds" only become diluted when America and Russia allied against a common foe in the Second World War.

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The Red Scare in the 1920 - History Learning Site

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The Red Scare in the 1920 America may be famed for its Jazz Age and prohibition during the 1920's, and for its economic strengthbefore the Wall Street Crash, but a darker side existed. The KKK dominated the South and those who did not fit in found that they were facing the full force of the ...

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This article briefly discusses the Communist party.

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The conviction of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti sparked protests throughout the world.

World War I was over, but the hysteria lingered. The Eastern front had not gone well for Russia. The pressures of their losing effort forced the Russian czar to abdicate. The new government had not fared much better. Finally in November 1917, Lenin led a successful revolution of the Bolshevik workers. The ideas of Karl Marx had been known since 1848, but nowhere in the world until now had a successful communist revolution occurred. Once the war against Germany was over, the Western powers focused their energies at restoring Czar Nicholas. Even the United States sent troops to Russia hoping the White Russians could oust the communist Reds. All this effort was in vain. The Bolsheviks murdered the entire royal family and slowly secured control of the entire nation.

The Communist Party Forms

Back in the United States, veterans were returning home. Workers who avoided striking during the war were now demanding wage increases to keep pace with spiraling inflation. Over 3,300 postwar strikes swept the land. A small group of radicals formed the Communist Labor Party in 1919. Progressive and conservative Americans believed that labor activism was a menace to American society and must be squelched. The hatchetman against American radicals was President Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer. Palmer was determined that no Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the United States.

The Sacco-Vanzetti Case

Palmer's Efforts

From 1919 to 1920, Palmer conducted a series of raids on individuals he believed were dangerous to American security. He deported 249 Russian immigrants without just cause. The so-called "Soviet ark" was sent back to Mother Russia. With Palmer's sponsorship, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was created under the leadership of J. Edgar Hoover. In January of 1920, federal agents broke into the homes of suspected anarchists without search warrants, jailed labor leaders, and held about 5,000 citizens without respecting their right to legal counsel. Palmer felt that American civil liberties were less important than rooting out potential wrongdoers. Eventually most of the detainees were released, but some were deported.

The climate set by Palmer and Hoover could not be contained. Still agitated by wartime propaganda, members of the American public took matters into their own hands.

American Legionnaires in Centralia, Washington attacked members of the Wobblies. Twelve radicals were arrested; one of them was beaten, castrated, and then shot. The New York State Legislature expelled five Socialist representatives from their ranks. Twenty-eight states banned the public display of red flags. It seemed as though the witch hunt would never end. Responsible Americans began to speak out against Palmer's raids and demand that American civil liberties be respected. By the summer of 1920, the worst of the furor had subsided.

Palmer Raids
In 1919, Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer claimed to have knowledge of a Communist plot to overthrow the American government. On November 7th of that year, over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists were arrested. In January 1920, another 6,000 were taken into custody. Read more at this FBI site.

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American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election
Hear history from the mouths of the people who made it. This Library of Congress site contains almost 60 recorded speeches by figures who were prominent during World War I and its aftermath. The collection includes a speech by Attorney General Palmer and one by General Leonard Wood who declares, "There is no room for the Red flag. It is opposed to everything our government stands for. It stands for anarchy, chaos, and ruin. Smash it!"

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The conviction of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti sparked protests throughout the world. World War I was over, but the hysteria lingered. The Eastern front had not gone well for Russia. The pressures of their losing effort forced the Russian czar to abdicate. The new government had not fared much better.

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Video explaining the Red Scare

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Uploaded by Stephanie Posthuma on 2015-12-02.

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This YouTube video gives a brief summary on what occurred during The Red Scare

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History Brief: The Red Scare in the 1920s