Court of Appeals overturned Miller’s contempt conviction.
He adamantly refused to provide names and was convicted of contempt. In 1956 Miller was subpoenaed to appear before HUAC. Meanwhile, HUAC, McCarthy and the subsequent paranoia were growing stronger by the day. His concern for the common man and his “indictment” of McCarthy were presented through his play, The Crucible, written in 1952. The prospect of being subpoenaed loomed over Arthur Miller. These hearings created an omnipresent fear that permeated everyday life. This included Arthur Miller.Īrmed with FBI intelligence, HUAC pressured witnesses to recant wayward political beliefs and to provide names of communists and sympathizers. Once HUAC hearing began, however, anyone who had ever shown the slightest interest in communism would face persecution. The attraction didn’t last, and by the late 1940s, communism became associated with Stalin-era atrocities and many moved on. Two decades prior, during the Depression, it had not been uncommon for the many who were disillusioned with the failing capitalist system to show interest in the Communist Party. His heavy-handed style of interrogation and notorious tactic of questioning the loyalty of anyone who criticized his agenda gave ride to the term McCarthyism. Widely covered in the media, McCarthy’s oft-changing claims were never substantiated, but his influence grew. In a 1950 speech to a Women’s Republican Club, Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of 205 communists in the State Department. That same year the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating communist activity in Hollywood in what critics considered an outrageous infringement of First Amendment rights, labeling the hearings a “witch hunt.” Eventually 8,000 employees were forced to resign.
With the 1947 Federal Employee Loyalty Program, federal employees were dragged before loyalty boards on murky charges, their names often cleared only to be charged again and again. government only increased after the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear weapon in 1949. All remaining accused prisoners were freed by May 1693.Ī similar paranoia would take hold of America during the Cold War, when fears of communist infiltration into U.S. The hysteria came to an end when Governor William Phips ordered the trials halted and the court disbanded. Many cases relied on “spectral evidence”-belief that the devil would assume a person’s form in order to carry out his deeds.
The accused were not allowed access to legal counsel by the court, and the judges were able to set aside jury verdicts. The witch hunt in Salem, Mass., lasted much of 1692 and resulted in the executions of 20 people and the imprisonment of approximately 200 others. The accusations soon multiplied, as those who stood accused would only be saved from hanging if they admitted guilt and provided the names of others who conjured the devil alongside them. In 1692, a group of young girls accused three women of working with the devil. In 17th century America, the belief in witches was so commonplace that anything out of the ordinary, from odd weather to a cow’s milk going sour, was explained away as “witchcraft.” In the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, fear of witches was rampant.
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