In the middle of McCarthyism – Historian says American concept of communist influence drew on ignorance, misinformation

WISE — The House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthyism gained renewed popular attention this summer with the movie "Oppenheimer."The movie recounts not only the development of the atomic bomb, but Oppenheimer's fight to save his national security clearance as HUAC and the FBI focused on his pre-war association with members of the American Communist Party as well as anti-fascist supporters.Walter "Brownie" McGhee's life was far from the world of atomic secrets, but UVA Wise history professor Brian McKnight says McGhee's surveillance by the FBI represents what was part of a broader misconception by Americans about communism.The congressional House Un-American Activities Committee started in 1938 as a temporary subcommittee to investigate Communist propaganda and fascist activities, McKnight said. By 1945, it gained permanent committee status."The committee really didn't get a lot of attention until after 1945, because the Soviets were our allies until then," said McKnight.Before the postwar era, though, the U.S. had a longtime Communist hunter in the form of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, McKnight said. Hoover had worked in the U.S. Department of Justice to root out suspected communists and anarchists after World War I, and his agents' continued surveillance of suspected communist sympathizers on into the pre- and post WWII era."Prior to Senator Joe McCarthy, Hoover was the only real Communist hunter in the federal government," said McKnight. "McCarthy didn't become active with his anti-communist activity until around 1950."McKnight said Americans in general did not know a lot about communism since Soviet Russia was an ally against Germany. Only after WW II did HUAC begin its activities including investigating alleged communist activity by authors, Hollywood screenwriters and actors and other entertainment and political figures before and during the war."The U.S. has been susceptible to redefining terms like Communism without really knowing what they mean," McKnight said."A young Richard Nixon was also active with HUAC in the late 1940s," McKnight said. "Blacks were a major target of HUAC investigations and FBI surveillance at the time because they considered blacks likely to have communist leanings."Much of the FBI's anti-communist surveillance efforts included watching blacks in the academic, civil rights and entertainment fields, McKnight said, and that led to accusations against people like actor and singer Paul Robeson, who was the target of allegations of Communist sympathies. Martin Luther King, Jr. got similar FBI attention beyond the McCarthy era."King was for peace and civil rights," McKnight, "and that meant he must be a Communist, they thought."McCarthy, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, had no role in HUAC, McKnight said, but his work with staffer Roy Cohn — later an attorney for Donald J. Trump — and accusations of communist sympathies against various government figures during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations helped feed anti-communist sentiment in the U.S.McCarthy's anti-communist activities faded in 1954 when U.S. Army civilian counsel Joseph Welch attacked McCarthy over accusations that one of Welch's assistants was a Communist during a televised hearing of McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.In a Dec. 7, 1953 FBI interview report, two FBI agents said McGhee told them he "never knowingly attended a (Communist Party) meeting."McGhee, who also worked with folk singer Pete Seegar during his time in New York City, admitted he became a member of the group People's Songs, Inc. "to advance himself professionally and to secure employment" adding that he did not know of any connection between the group and the Communist Party.In the post-Korean War years, McKnight said military and civilian researchers looked at cases where some prisoners-of-war had decided to remain in North Korea."What they found was that most of those prisoners didn't know much if anything about Communism other than what they were getting from China," McKnight said. "Once they started getting an idea what communism meant under what the Chinese was telling them, most of them wanted to go back home.While FBI records included in 1955 and later that allegations of McGhee's work with the Communist Party came from an unreliable informant, they still included calling People's Songs, Inc. a Communist front organization even in 1973, when New Zealand authorities asked for a name check before he played concerts there."When you look at Brownie McGhee's FBI file, what you really see is a black man trying to make a living and support his family as a musician," said McKnight. "If he was playing at American Communist Party functions and social events, it was probably because they paid for him to play."