Red Scare | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The Red Scare of 1919-1920 was the first, but not the last, widespread outbreak of anti-communist sentiment in U.S. history. In a national panic over alleged foreign-inspired subversion, people of varying political beliefs were termed "Reds" and became victims of public rage and government suppression. The culmination of these events was the arrest and deportation of hundreds of American citizens—particularly immigrants—in the Palmer Raids of 1920.

The event that initiated the Red Scare was the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 in Russia. Inspired by the writings of German philosopher Karl Marx, the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, believed that the revolution in Russia was the first in a chain of workers' revolutions that would spread throughout the world. In March 1919, the Bolsheviks founded the Communist International to coordinate communist parties worldwide and promote revolution abroad. Many Americans became fearful that, just as a small faction had seized power in Russia, so could a similar group take over the United States. Those under most suspicion were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a syndicalist labor union that had espoused revolution for the previous decade, and Bolshevik supporters who formed the Communist Labor Party and Communist Party of the USA in 1919.

The fear of a communist coup in the United States was fueled by a number of events. After World War I, the U.S. economy was in recession, living costs had risen, and many soldiers returned home to a country with high unemployment. In the summer of 1919, as blacks and whites competed for jobs, major race riots broke out in both the North and the South. Also labor unions, which had grown in size and influence during the war years, became involved in a number of major conflicts with employers. In 1919 alone, over four million workers went on strike. There was a general strike in Seattle in January and then a nationwide stoppage of steelworkers in September, both of which, employers alleged, were Bolshevik conspiracies. Worst of all, also in September, the Boston police force walked off the job, and Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge called out the state militia to replace the striking policemen and to stop incidents of looting.

In addition to economic distress and labor unrest, the public was further alarmed by a spate of bomb attacks on prominent figures in commerce and government. Although it was unclear who sent the bombs, newspapers and politicians blamed them on a Communist conspiracy. In April 1919, the maid of U.S. Senator Thomas R. Hardwick of Georgia had her hands blown off when she opened a package delivered to the senator's home. Fifteen other mail bombs were detected that were addressed to other notable figures, including J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. In June 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was one of the targets of another series of attempted bombings. Consequently, Palmer organized a new general intelligence division within the Justice Department and placed it under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, whose job it was to uncover the alleged conspiracy.

The panic over radicalism was chiefly directed at immigrants. Building on a tradition of nativism, many Americans came out of World War I inspired by a militant patriotism and a dislike of foreign influences. Many of the leading radicals were foreign-born, and newspapers and politicians portrayed anarchism, communism, and socialism as foreign ideologies. Moreover, many of the workers who went on strike in 1919 were recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Opponents of labor, such as the newly formed American legion, labeled the strikes as un-American and claimed that radical immigrants were fomenting unrest.

Fear and hysteria mounted as the press, politicians, and pressure groups called for action against subversives. All across the nation, police broke up meetings of radical groups, raided their headquarters, and closed down their newspapers. In May 1919, the newly opened offices of the Socialist paper the New York Call were ransacked by a mob and its workers hospitalized. On the weekend of November 7 and 8, 1919, federal agents raided the offices of the Union of Russian Workers in New York and arrested over 200 of its members. A few days later in Centralia, Washington, an IWW hall was attacked by American Legionnaires, many of those inside were arrested in the fighting, and one was dragged from jail, castrated, and shot. Also in 1919, socialist leader Victor Berger was elected to Congress from Milwaukee but the House of Representatives refused to allow him to serve his term. In April 1920, the New York State legislature expelled five elected Socialist members. A number of liberal figures and organizations, such as Chicago settlement house worker and pacifist Jane Addams, the League of Women Voters, and the American Civil Liberties Union, also came under attack for their lack of patriotism.

The Red Scare reached a climax with the Palmer Raids of January 2, 1920. On the orders of Attorney General Palmer, around 10,000 people were arrested in 33 cities for their part in alleged subversion. In violation of their constitutional rights, homes were searched, arrested were held without bail, and foreigners were sent to Ellis Island to face deportation hearings without the aid of lawyers. Many of those arrested spent days and weeks in jail with no formal charges filed against them before they were released. Of those arrested, nearly 600 foreigners were ultimately deported.

After the Palmer Raids, the Red Scare quickly subsided. As labor unrest receded, the economy strengthened, bolshevism refused to take root anywhere outside Russia, and the American public became less concerned with subversion. The effects of the Red Scare, however, lingered. Throughout the 1920s reformers were afraid to speak openly, fearing that they would be labeled radical or anti-American. Americanization programs flourished as states sought to stamp out the foreign roots of this radicalism. Twentieth century American radicalism never recovered from the Red Scare. The IWW was virtually destroyed, socialism's electoral strength declined, communism failed to grow, and radicalism was relegated to the margins of U.S. politics.

Murray, Robert K. Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920. Minneapolis, University of Minneapolis Press, 1955.

Preston, William, Jr. Aliens and Dissenters, Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933. Second edition. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1994.

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