Research Article: Cio Anticommunist Drive

United States 1949-1950

In November 1949, at its eleventh annual convention in Cleveland, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled two member unions—the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America and the Farm Equipment Workers—for their alleged disloyalty to the CIO and support for the Communist Party. Within a year, an additional nine affiliates had been expelled. The eleven unions together represented approximately one million members. The expulsions were the culmination of long-simmering tensions that erupted in the context of the developing cold war. The strife within the CIO halted the federation's growth and paved the way for its merger with the American Federation of Labor in 1955.

• 1928: At the first Academy Awards ceremony, the best picture is the silent Wings.
• 1933: Newly inaugurated U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt launches the first phase of his New Deal to put depression-era America back to work.
• 1938: The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act establishes a minimum wage.
• 1943: At the Casablanca Conference in January, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt agree on the demand of unconditional surrender for the Axis powers.
• 1948: Israel becomes a nation and is immediately attacked by a coalition of Arab countries. Despite being outnumbered, Israel will win the war in the following year.
• 1948: Stalin places a blockade on areas of Berlin controlled by the United States, Great Britain, and France. The Allies respond with an airlift of supplies, which, like the blockade itself, lasts into late 1949.
• 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established.
• 1949: The People's Republic of China is established under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
• 1950: North Korean troops pour into South Korea, starting the Korean War. Initially the communists make impressive gains, but in September the U.S. Marines land at Inchon and liberate Seoul. China responds by sending in its troops.
• 1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy launches his campaign to root out communist infiltrators.
• 1955: African and Asian nations meet at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, inaugurating the "non-aligned" movement of Third World countries.
• 1960: An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers shot down over Soviet skies brings an end to a short period of warming relations between the two superpowers. By the end of the year, Khrushchev makes a scene at the United Nations, banging his shoe on a desk. As for Powers, he will be freed in a 1962 prisoner exchange.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was an alliance of leftist and centrist elements of the U.S. labor movement. Communism was a source of both inspiration and conflict in the federation from its founding in 1936 until the final expulsion of...
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