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During World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States were allies against Nazi Germany. When the war ended in 1945, a rapid worsening of Soviet-American relations turned the American Communist Party, advocating the Soviet model of socialism, from a tolerated political sect into a band of persecuted political outcasts. As Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin installed puppet governments in one Eastern European country after another, blockaded Berlin, and acquired the atomic bomb, American Communists came to be seen as actual or potential traitors, who, for the safety of the country, needed to be purged from trade-union leadership, government employment, the teaching profession, and even the entertainment industry. American anxiety about domestic communists later was heightened by the Korean War.

During the mid-1930’s, opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation prepared the way for a move to appoint a committee to investigate subvention of the security of the United States. A key figure behind this move was Texas Democratic congressman Martin Dies, Jr., who was elected to the House of Representatives in l930. During the height of the Depression, Dies blamed part of the country’s economic woes on the high numbers of immigrants to the United States, many of them poor, who he said often brought with them nondemocratic ideologies.

The Hollywood blacklist was a semiformal list of American entertainers who were barred from employment because of their real or suspected links to the Communist Party. In November, 1947, ten writers, directors, and actors (the so-called Hollywood Ten) refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). As a result, studio executives began compiling a list of individuals who either had ties to the American Communist Party or were less than enthusiastic in their dealings with congressional investigations into communist activities in the entertainment industry.

In the years immediately following World War II, anticommunist sentiments pervaded American politics and culture in reaction to the rise of the Soviet Union, the communist revolution in China, and the arrest and trial of Alger Hiss, a prominent former U.S. government employee, on charges of spying for the Soviet government. In this Cold War environment, politicians such as Richard Nixon reaped significant success from adopting staunch anticommunist stances, while others perceived as “soft” on communism saw their careers diminished as a result.

The Reverend Samuel Parris prays over his daughter, who lies stricken with a nameless malady. As he prays, he is angered by the interruption of his African slave, Tituba, whom he brought with him from the island of Barbados. Parris is frightened and furious, for he discovered his daughter Betty, Tituba, and some of the village girls dancing in the woods. Now two of the girls, Betty and Ruth Putnam, are ill, and witchcraft is rumored about the village. His daughter Betty and his ward and niece, Abigail Williams, had been participants in a secret and sinful act. Parris feels his position as minister to the community of Salem is threatened. Moreover, he suspects that more than dancing took place.

The struggle between the House Committee on Un-American Activities (also known as the House Un-American Activities Committee, or the HUAC) and the Hollywood Ten embodied, in a theoretical sense, the struggle between the right to national security and the right to believe, think, and speak without restraint and fear of reprisal. The case also involved the rights of a congressional committee to gather facts versus witnesses’ rights not to disclose information. Hollywood Ten House Committee on Un-American Activities Communist Party