Red Scare America 1920 :: essays papers

Red Scare America 1920 World War I was finally over, however, there was a new threat to Americans. This threat was Communism, which was greatly feared by most U.S. citizens. Communism is "a system of social and economic organization in which property is owned by the state or group, to be shared in common or to be distributed among members of the community equally or in proportion to their respective needs."* In 1919, no more than one-tenth of the adult American population belonged to the newly formed Communist movement, and even this small percentage were greatly persecuted. Although American "Reds" caught most of the fury of the raids, it was not just the Communists who had stirred national panic. Emotions that had been building since the turn of the century were brought out during World War I, and then burst into a "xenophobic" (fear and hatred of foreigners) repression. Late in the afternoon of Friday, January 2, 1920, agents from the Department of Justice raided a Communist headquarters and began arresting thousands of people in major American cities throughout the nation. They poured into private homes, clubs, pool halls and coffee shops, arresting citizens and aliens, Communists and non-Communists, tearing apart meeting halls and destroying property. The Agents put their victims in jail, held them without an attorney, and interrogated them. The prisoners who could demonstrate that they *As quoted from The Lincoln Library copyright 1961 were American citizens were released. Aliens were released a few days later unless they were members of the Communist Party or the Communist Labor Party. These were the two groups that were formed from the American Communist movement. In two days, nearly five thousand people were arrested, and nearly five thousand were seized in the cleaning up that followed during the next two weeks. The arrests were carried out with total disregard for the rights of the prisoners. There are some psychological views that might help to explain why the events of 1919 -1920 took place. Some Americans during this time were always on the verge of attacking. They were hostile toward minorities, extremely patriotic, and ready to rid their nation of any intruder that seemed to threaten them. The postwar effort for "one hundred percent Americanism" may have left our citizens with the desire to keep our country pure. The Russian Revolution in the fall of 1918 also contributed to America's unrest. In a violent outburst, the Communists took control of the Russian government and murdered the Tsar and his entire family