Red ScareEssay title: Red ScareThe documents presented here are designed to be used in classes about Pacific Northwest history or US history. Although the documents deal specifically with events in Washington state, they are still potentially useful for a course about US history as a whole. As historian Richard Fried has observed, “McCarthyism is so often characterized in abstract terms that its meaning remains fuzzy. To sense the emotional bite of the Communist issue and to understand both how it affected life for those who ran afoul of it and how it shaped the nations political culture, it is useful to look at specific cases.” These documents allow students to explore such specific cases.
Section II is a rather lengthy essay which tries to place the Cold War and Red Scare into historical perspective. It also analyzes the effect of the Cold War on Washingtons economy and describes the major events of the Red Scare in Washington state. Much of this information is presented very briefly in a timeline in Section III. Teachers may wish to distribute photocopies of Section III to orient students to the main events of Cold War and Red Scare and to allow the students to place the documents in a chronological framework. Teachers may also with to distribute copies of the glossary in Section IV to familiarize students with Cold War terminology. The bibliography in Section V suggests books and videocassettes about the Cold War and Red Scare that teachers may find useful.
The documents in Section VII can be used in a vast number of ways. Section VI offers suggestions for in-class and homework assignments based on the documents. The concordance in Section VII not only lists the source of each document, but also offers some possible discussion questions about many of the documents.
II. The Cold War and Red Scare in Washington: Historical ContextThe Cold War created many aspects of modern Washington. Military spending sustained Washingtons rapid economic growth after WW II. Although federal hydropower projects and WW II had initially industrialized Washington state, the struggle against the Soviets ensured that federal money continued to pour into the state. The Cold War left a physical legacy across the state that can still be seen today. Military bases were created and expanded. The production of plutonium at Hanford created radioactive waste that will exist for thousands of years. Even Seattles most famous iconВ—the Space NeedleВ—is a concrete monument to one aspect of the Cold War, the space race. In addition, the fear of communism fueled important political changes in Washington. The Red Scare, which was more intense in Washington than in most states, deprived communists of their First Amendment rights, permanently destroyed several radical political organizations, temporarily frightened many liberals into silence, and allowed conservatives to virtually dismantle Washingtons state-level health care system for the poor.
A. Radicalism and Anti-radicalism in Washington PoliticsThe rise of the Communist Party in the 1930s and the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s were not unprecedented events in Washington history. Indeed, the ebb and flow of radical movements, and reactions against them, have profoundly shaped the political history of Washington state. In the 1880s, white laborers demanded higher wages and began to form Washingtons first successful labor unions. White working-class mobs also forcibly evicted Chinese immigrants from Seattle, Tacoma, and other coastal towns in this same period. The Populist and Progressive movements were both very strong in Washington around the turn of the century, partially because of aid they received from Washingtons relatively sizable Socialist Party.
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