The Red Scare (1950s).

For each term or name, write a concise sentence or two explaining its significance.
1. HUAC
This agency investigated the movie industry to see if their was communist propaganda being placed subvertly in the movies.

2. Blacklist
This was a list of people who the government thought were communist and this ruined their careers in the film industry and ruined their lifes in general.

3. Alger Hiss
He was a supposid Soviet spy and was accused by a former communist spy for spying for the Soviets and ws convicted of lying under oath about writing the documents.

4. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
Were two people convicted of helping leak the secrets about the American Atomic Bomb to the Soviets and this helped the Soviets make an atomic bomb a few years before they would have otherwise. They were executed 3 years after they were convicted.

5. Joseph McCarthy
He was a republican senator who lead the anti-communist movement and was the most well known anti-communist. He started the idea of communists taking over the government to help him get reelected.

6. McCarthyism
This was the idea of targeting people of being communists with unnsupported accusations.

7. In a paragraph, describe the motivations and actions of Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. What prompted his actions? What did he do? What happened as a result of his actions?
Joseph McCarthy started his accusations of people being communist to help him be elected back into his senate seat. He targeted many inocent people of being communist with hazy acusitions and accustions unsupported with facts. Republicans didn't stop him because they thought he would be a good presidential candidate becuase he was starcly anticommunist in a time when America was in the second Red Scare. His actions resulted in bringing shame in himself and his party when he accused the U.S. army of being communist and his methods angered the citizens and this lost him public support. In the end his actions led to his own downfall and died a few years later broken from his mistakes.