what attorney general led a mass arrest of suspected communists i the red scare after ww1

by Kale Hahn DVM 7 min read

The raids, fueled by social unrest following World War I, were led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and are viewed as the climax of that era's so-called Red Scare.

Who was involved in the Red Scare?

The Red Scare. After ... his Attorney General. Palmer claimed that Communist agents were trying to overthrow the American government and he ordered the …

What was the Red Scare of the 1920s?

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, a series of major strikes in American cities, bombings by anarchists on Wall Street and in Washington, DC, and revolutionary rhetoric by newly energized American radicals had led to a crackdown on suspected communists. The Palmer Raids, orchestrated by the attorney general, led to the arrest and ...

Who was involved in the Palmer Raids of 1919?

arrested 16,000 suspected communists and anarchist without trial within the ... By 1919, Hoover was promoted and became an assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer shortly after the Red Scare began . With the rising awareness of the Red Scare, it allowed Hoover to further his career and at the same time allowed him to play a key role.

How many communists were arrested by Palmer in the US?

The Red Scare resulted in a nationwide crusade against left-wingers whose Americanism was suspect. Bombs were mailed to government officials. The Palmer raids were also a reaction to the Red Scare. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer hunted down suspected communists, socialists, and anarchists. Many were jailed and deported during this time ...

Who was the US attorney general who deported suspected communists during the Red Scare of the 1920's?

The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with 3,000 arrested.

Which attorney general created a Red Scare in 1920 by arresting 5000 suspected communists and anarchists who were held without trial and denied their basic civil rights?

The period of 1919-20 came to be known as the "Red Scare" and was marked by numerous labor strikes, widespread fear of radicals, and a series of bomb attacks against government officials, among them United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Who led raids to deport suspected communists?

Attorney General Mitchell PalmerThe Constitution faced a major test on this day in 1920 when raids ordered by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer saw thousands of people detained without warrants merely upon general suspicion. This occurred during the “Red Scare” of the 1920s, a period of anti-Communist fervor in the United States.Jan 2, 2022

Who was involved in the Red Scare?

In April 1919, authorities discovered a plot for mailing 36 bombs to prominent members of the U.S. political and economic establishment: J. P. Morgan Jr., John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer, and immigration officials.

Why did Attorney General Palmer launch a series of raids against suspected communists?

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launch a series of raids against suspected Communists? He believed that a Communist revolution was imminent in the United States, and he needed an issue on which to campaign for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination.

What led to the Red Scare?

Origins. The First Red Scare's immediate cause was the increase in subversive actions of foreign and leftist elements in the United States, especially militant followers of Luigi Galleani, and in the attempts of the U.S. government to quell protest and gain favorable public views of America's entering World War I.

Who were Reds 1920s?

The 1920 Cincinnati Reds season was a season in American baseball. The team finished third in the National League with a record of 82–71, 10½ games behind the Brooklyn Robins.

How did Attorney General Palmer justify the Palmer Raids?

The disregard of basic civil liberties during the “Palmer raids,” as they came to be known, drew widespread protest and ultimately discredited Palmer, who nevertheless justified his program as the only practical means of combating what he believed was a Bolshevik conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.

What happened during the Red Scare of the 1920s?

Enraged by the bombings, the United States government responded by raiding the headquarters of radical organizations and arresting thousands of suspected radicals. Several thousand who were aliens were deported. The largest raids occurred on January 2, 1920 when over 4000 suspected radicals were seized nationwide.

Which freedom did the Attorney General of the United States violate during the Red Scare?

Attorney General Palmer violated Constitutional rights by letting his agenst put 5000 people in jail without allowing them phone calls, and treating them terribly. True or False.

What led to Joseph McCarthy's downfall?

Despite McCarthy's acquittal of misconduct in the Schine matter, the Army–McCarthy hearings ultimately became the main catalyst in McCarthy's downfall from political power.

Which factor contributed to the Red Scare in the United States during the 1920s?

The first anti-Communist alarm, or Red Scare, in the United States occurred between 1917 and 1920, precipitated by the events of World War I and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

What was the Red Scare?

Contents. The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Communists were often referred to as “Reds” for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions ...

When was the first red scare?

First Red Scare: 1917-1920. The first Red Scare occurred in the wake of World War I. The Russian Revolution of 1917 saw the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, topple the Romanov dynasty, kicking off the rise of the communist party and inspiring international fear of Bolsheviks and anarchists. In the United States, labor strikes were on ...

Who was the FBI director?

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, and its longtime director, J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), aided many of the legislative investigations of communist activities. An ardent anticommunist, Hoover had been a key player in an earlier, though less pervasive, Red Scare in the years following World War I (1914-18).

What was the Cold War?

Following World War II (1939-45), the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union became engaged in a series of largely political and economic clashes known as the Cold War. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security.

Who took control of China in 1949?

In 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb and communist forces led by Mao Zedong (1893-1976) took control of China. The following year saw the start of the Korean War (1950-53), which engaged U.S. troops in combat against the communist-supported forces of North Korea.

What was the first effort to investigate communist activities?

House of Representatives, where the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC) was formed in 1938. HUAC’s investigations frequently focused on exposing Communists working inside the federal government or subversive elements working in the Hollywood film industry, and the committee gained new momentum following World War II, as the Cold War began. Under pressure from the negative publicity aimed at their studios, movie executives created Hollywood blacklists that barred suspected radicals from employment; similar lists were also established in other industries.

What was the Sedition Act of 1918?

The Sedition Act of 1918 targeted people who criticized the government, monitoring radicals and labor union leaders with the threat of deportation. The fear turned to violence with the 1919 anarchist bombings, a series of bombs targeting law enforcement and government officials.

Palmer served in Woodrow Wilson's administration

Born in Moosehead, Pennsylvania, Palmer graduated summa cum laude in 1891 from Swarthmore College. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the practice of law in 1893 and became a prominent lawyer and a leader of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party.

Repression of radicals, First Amendment rights began during World War I

The repression of radicals and dissenters had begun during World War I, before Palmer became attorney general.

Palmer became zealous opponent, deporter of radicals as attorney general

He wrote articles and gave speeches warning of dangers posed by leftists.

Palmer mass arrests were criticized, led to founding of ACLU

Public support for continuing repression gradually eroded, as the raids increasingly became the subject of public criticism.

What happened after the Bolshevik Revolution?

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, a series of major strikes in American cities, bombings by anarchists on Wall Street and in Washington, DC, and revolutionary rhetoric by newly energized American radicals had led to a crackdown on suspected communists. The Palmer Raids, orchestrated by the attorney general, ...

How did McCarthy die?

Although McCarthy remained in the Senate, he lost control of his committee chair when Democrats won a Senate majority in 1955, and he died of complications related to alcoholism in 1957. This 1954 political cartoon represents McCarthy’s fall from grace in the U.S. Congress.

Did the CPUSA cooperate with the Soviets?

The CPUSA had cooperated with Soviet intelligence. A handful of the people named by McCarthy had been spies. These facts did not end the debate about the Red Scare, but they made it clear that the internal security threat was not a mirage.

What was the name of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki?

By then, the testing by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) of an atomic bomb, modelled on “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki, had profoundly shaken American policy makers and the public.

What was the Waldorf Declaration?

The Waldorf Declaration was. an executive order issued by President Truman outlawing the Communist Party USA. a decision made by Hollywood studios not to employ persons who refused to testify before HUAC. the decision by Congress that allowed the federal government to arrest suspected communists.

Who was Hoover's assistant?

By 1919, Hoover was promoted and became an assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer shortly after the Red Scare began [1]. With the rising awareness of the Red Scare, it allowed Hoover to further his career and at the same time allowed him to play a key role.

What was the Sedition Act?

information.1 The Sedition Act “made it a crime to criticize by speech or. writing the government or Constitution”.3 In addition, Palmer. arrested 16,000 suspected communists and anarchist without trial within the. following two years.3 As a result of these raids, fear and animosity increased. between average citizens.

What was the purpose of the Palmer Raids?

The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 during the First Red Scare by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected leftists, mostly Italian immigrants and Eastern European immigrants and especially anarchists ...

How many people were arrested in the Palmer raids?

The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with 3,000 arrested. Though 556 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, which had authority for deportations ...

Who organized the next raids?

As Attorney General Palmer struggled with exhaustion and devoted all his energies to the United Mine Workers coal strike in November and December 1919, Hoover organized the next raids. He successfully persuaded the Department of Labor to ease its insistence on promptly alerting those arrested of their right to an attorney. Instead, Labor issued instructions that its representatives could wait until after the case against the defendant was established, "in order to protect government interests." Less openly, Hoover decided to interpret Labor's agreement to act against the Communist Party to include a different organization, the Communist Labor Party. Finally, despite the fact that Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson insisted that more than membership in an organization was required for a warrant, Hoover worked with more compliant Labor officials and overwhelmed Labor staff to get the warrants he wanted. Justice Department officials, including Palmer and Hoover , later claimed ignorance of such details.

How many cities were bombed in 1919?

There were strikes that garnered national attention, and prompted race riots in more than 30 cities, as well as two sets of bombings in April and June 1919, including one bomb mailed to Palmer's home.

How many warrants were canceled in Palmer?

In a few weeks, after changes in personnel at the Department of Labor, Palmer faced a new and very independent-minded Acting Secretary of Labor in Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Freeland Post, who canceled more than 2,000 warrants as being illegal. Of the 10,000 arrested, 3,500 were held by authorities in detention; 556 resident aliens were eventually deported under the Immigration Act of 1918.

What was the cause of the Seattle strike?

The general strike in Seattle in February 1919 represented a new development in labor unrest. The fears of Wilson and other government officials were confirmed when Galleanists —Italian immigrant followers of the anarchist Luigi Galleani —carried out a series of bombings in April and June 1919.

Palmer Served in Woodrow Wilson's Administration

  • Born in Moosehead, Pennsylvania, Palmer graduated summa cum laude in 1891 from Swarthmore College. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the practice of law in 1893 and became a prominent lawyer and a leader of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party. He was elected to Congress in 1908 and served three terms in the House of Representatives. He supported wome…
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Repression of Radicals, First Amendment Rights Began During World War I

  • The repression of radicals and dissenters had begun during World War I, before Palmer became attorney general. The Department of Justice and its Bureau of Investigation, an agency that later developed into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began to conduct surveillance on immigrant anarchist groupssuspected of bombings that had occurred throughout the country. The surveilla…
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Palmer Became Zealous Opponent, Deporter of Radicals as Attorney General

  • He wrote articles and gave speeches warning of dangers posed by leftists. Armed with supplementary congressional appropriations earmarked for matters of internal security and relying on recently passed laws, such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Palmer’s agents raided headquarters of communist, socialist, and anarchist organizations as we…
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Palmer Mass Arrests Were Criticized, Led to Founding of ACLU

  • Public support for continuing repression gradually eroded, as the raids increasingly became the subject of public criticism. In May 1920, an influential pamphlet, Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice, was written and circulated by 12 prominent lawyers, including Felix Frankfurter and Zechariah Chafee Jr., charging Palmer with conducting illegal sea…
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