Communist “Red Scare Sweeps Across Quincy

      In 1938, the U.S. government formed a House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate possible Communist ties within the country. This committee convicted Alger Hiss of perjury and sentenced him to five years in prison and blacklisted hundreds in Hollywood and the media. As the Cold War intensified after WWII, HUAC expanded its investigations and became a permanent committee. Then it exploded. 

      At a Lincoln Day speech in 1950 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Joseph McCarthy, the Republican junior senator from Wisconsin, told his audience that he had in his hands the names of 205 known Communists currently working in the State Department. This disclosure made newspaper headlines from coast-to-coast. The 1950s Communist scare began, and people now labeled it “Red”—an allusion to the Soviet flag’s background color. Senator McCarthy became chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations and HUAC’s most outspoken member.  

      While most Quincyans remained silent on this volatile issue, fearful of reprisal or themselves being accused, a few publicly broached their opinions. The local Community Chest, begun in 1936 to raise funds for civic causes, hired John D. Barrow as its campaign adviser. Barrow stated in a speech that Communism within the U.S. posed a grave threat. Nathan Kissell responded in a letter to the Quincy Herald-Whig on November 2, 1952. “Mr. John D. Barrow warns that communism and socialism are widening the gap between employer and employee. Mr. Barrow seems to feel that labor should make up for the deficiencies of the present economic system, in addition to acting as a pack mule for the carrying of thousands of profit-takers who aren’t producing anything.” 

      Other citizens expressed alarms about Communism. Oscar Grow in a letter to the Herald Whig on May 11, 1953, stated: “We have been made literal slaves one-third of our lives to support a collection of foreign derelicts, merely to indulge the fantasies of a gang of deranged internationalists…As for Senator McCarthy, his investigations have been fully vindicated by numerous exposures of disloyalty.”

      Illinois became a Cold War focal point when its Republican Senator, Everett Dirksen, staunchly defended McCarthy and derided Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson’s 1952 bid for the presidency against sitting President Dwight Eisenhower. Quincy entered this battle in October 1952 when Chicago-based national radio commentator, Paul Harvey, broadcast two shows from the Gem City and spoke to an audience of over 2,000 people, fervently supporting McCarthy’s efforts and calling Stevenson a “pinko”—a liberal leaning socialist.

      Senator McCarthy aimed his venom not only against Communists but also gay people, whom the American Psychiatric Association deemed mentally ill and a threat to the family’s sanctity. This became known as the “Lavender Campaign,” and several thousand government and private employees lost their jobs and reputations. The Herald Whig—which had taken the sobriquet “The Big Paper of the Big Valley—evenhandedly reported on McCarthy and the HUAC hearings and in a May 8, 1950, local editorial stated: “Senator McCarthy has turned up not a single disloyal person in the State Department. His total to date has been the discovery of a large number of perverts who were summary dismissed.”  

      McCarthy’s hostile and grandstanding tactics, along with his lack of evidence, began casting doubts on his credibility when the Korean War erupted. In the wake of that war fought against the spread of Communism, Congress added the words “Under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Long before that change, though, the Knights of Columbus, including Quincy’s local Council # 583, included “Under God” in its reciting of the Pledge at lodge meetings.

       After McCarthy accused the Army of harboring Communists within its ranks, major television networks began broadcasting the HUAC hearings. From April to June 1954, millions of Americans watched as the junior senator from Wisconsin badgered and harassed military personnel. Finally President Eisenhower and the public had had enough. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarthy for “conduct that tries to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrespect.” Senator Dirksen voted against this measure and stayed loyal to his fellow Republican senator. Quincy Mayor Leo Lenane applauded the Senate’s ruling and denounced Dirksen’s vote.

      The Cold War continued, though, with suspicions provoked by these hearings now popularized in the media. Quincy television Channel 10 broadcast “I Led Three Lives” about Communists in everyday American life and the Belasco and Orpheum Theaters showed the movie “The Woman on Pier 13,” originally titled “I Married A Communist” to standing-room only audiences. The Free Public Library banned some books, including “Johnny Got His Gun” by avowed Communist Dalton Trumbo and George Orwell’s novel 1984.

      The rabidly anti-Communist organization John Birch Society formed a local chapter and started an American Opinion Library at 911 Jersey Street. Robert Awerkamp, a Quincy native and Republican alderman, headed the group. The Quincy John Birch Society had about 100 active members and sponsored the program “Stand Up For Freedom” on WGEM TV. This Society led efforts to ban fluoridation in local water supplies as a possible Communist ploy to pacify citizens and make them more pliable to indoctrination. Awerkamp remained the sole member of the Quincy City Council to vote against mental health funding. 

      Being a Communist, though, has never been illegal in U.S. history, and in 1972 the American Communist Party placed Gus Hall’s name on the presidential ballot. Adams County citizens could now vote Communistic. That same year James Bond movies played to sold-out audiences in Quincy and TV programs like “I Spy” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” topped local ratings and stoked suspicions of Communist infiltration in American life.

Sources

“Birch Society Blames War on Administration.” Quincy Herald-Whig, Nov. 10, 1973, 8.

“Fast Getting Nowhere.” Quincy Herald-Whig, May 8, 1950, 6.

Giblin, James Cross. The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy. New York: Clarion Books, 1st Ed., 

2009.

Griffin, G. Edward. “This is The John Birch Society.” Filmed Dec. 17, 1969. YouTube. 1:51:17. 

jbs.org.      

“John Birch Society.” Quincy Herald-Whig, May 29, 1966, 8.

“Late News.” Quincy Herald-Whig, Oct. 28, 1952, 1.

“Millions Hear Paul Harvey.” Quincy Herald-Whig, Oct. 27, 1952, 2.

Nichols, David A. Ike and McCarthy: Dwight Eisenhower’s Secret Campaign Against Joseph 

McCarthy. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2017, 233-50.

Remini, Robert V. A Short History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins, 2005, 254-55, 257.

“The Soap Box on the Square.” Quincy Herald-Whig, Nov.2, 1952, 16.

“The Soap Box on the Square.” Quincy Herald-Whig, March 11, 1953, 10.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Collins, 2003, 428, 431.

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