Aug 06, 2013 · A. Mitchell Palmer was the Attorney General of the United States during the First Red Scare. He was newly appointed in 1919, and therefore targeted as an important political leader by radicals.
Feb 13, 2020 · Attorney General A. MItchell Palmer led effort to deport aliens without due processs, with widespread support. Did not last long as some Americans came to their senses. Attorney General during the "red scare" who earned the title of "Fighting Quaker" for his zeal in rounding up radicals and political leftists.
Feb 28, 2020 · The first Red Scare climaxed in 1919 and 1920, when United States Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer ordered the Palmer raids, a series of violent law-enforcement raids targeting leftist...
Jan 31, 2018 · Named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with assistance from J. Edgar Hoover, the raids and subsequent deportations proved disastrous and sparked a vigorous debate about constitutional...
Alexander Mitchell PalmerMitchell Palmer, in full Alexander Mitchell Palmer, (born May 4, 1872, Moosehead, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died May 11, 1936, Washington, D.C.), American lawyer, legislator, and U.S. attorney general (1919–21) whose highly publicized campaigns against suspected radicals touched off the so-called Red Scare of 1919–20.
Despite two attempts on his life in April and June 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer moved slowly to find a way to attack the source of the violence. An initial raid in July 1919 against a small anarchist group in Buffalo failed when a federal judge tossed out his case.
Second Red Scare (1947–1957)
The raids particularly targeted Italian immigrants and Eastern European Jewish immigrants with alleged leftist ties, with particular focus on Italian anarchists and immigrant leftist labor activists. The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with 3,000 arrested.
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 ...
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 ...
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).
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.
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.
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.
Americans also felt the effects of the Red Scare on a personal level, and thousands of alleged communist sympathizers saw their lives disrupted. They were hounded by law enforcement, alienated from friends and family and fired from their jobs. While a small number of the accused may have been aspiring revolutionaries, most others were the victims of false allegations or had done nothing more than exercise their democratic right to join a political party.
RED SCARE. Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, America was on high alert, fearing Communist revolutionaries on their own shores. The Sedition Act of 1918, which was an expansion of the 1917 Espionage Act, was a direct result of the paranoia.
SOURCES. Palmer raids were a series of violent and abusive law-enforcement raids directed at leftist radicals and anarchists in 1919 and 1920 , beginning during a period of unrest known as the “Red Summer.”. Named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with assistance from J. Edgar Hoover, the raids and subsequent deportations proved disastrous ...
More raids followed on January 2, 1920. Justice Department agents conducted raids in 33 cities, resulting in the arrest of 3,000 people. Over 800 of the arrested suspected radicals were living in the Boston area.
ACLU IS CREATED. The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, was created in 1920 as a direct result of the Palmer Raids. It was suggested in a January 13 meeting to reorganize the National Civil Liberties Bureau as the ACLU, which held its first meeting on January 19.
The ACLU took on cases defending immigrants that were being targeted and members of Industrial Workers of the World, as well as other trade union members and political radicals, directly combating the efforts of the Palmer raids.
Targeting those who criticized the government, the Sedition Act set into motion an effort to monitor radicals, especially labor union leaders, with the threat of deportation looming over them. Anyone who was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World union was particularly at risk.
Though the first raids were popular with American citizens, they eventually elicited much criticism, particularly after the second wave of raids, and Palmer faced rebukes from numerous sources, including Congress.
Edgar Hoover that nearly eviscerated Paterson's anarchist community. Among the bomb targets was the U.S. attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, whose posh Washington home was attacked.
Yet, despite the successful raids across the country in 1919 and 1920, the Red Scare soon waned. In March 1920 a liberal, Louis Post, took the reigns of the labor department and began subjecting all deportation cases to close review, dismissing most for lack of evidence, Zimmer writes.
After months of investigation that included the use of an undercover agent who infiltrated Paterson anarchist groups, some 200 federal agents and Paterson detectives raided anarchist homes and institutions on Valentine’s Day in 1920, and arrested 17 people in Paterson, Prospect Park and East Paterson (now Elmwood Park).
A front page headline in The Record on June 4 announced that “Bolshevists and Anarchists Are Warned to Keep Out of Paterson.”. Paterson Police Chief John Tracey told reporters, “When the anarchists come to Paterson they will find they have struck a rock that will wreck them.”.
After the June 2 bombings, the response by the government at the national and local levels was swift. In many cities, anarchist clubs were raided, and many suspected anarchists were arrested.
While the circumstances in 1920 were different, the efforts by national leaders to pass laws making it easier to suppress the anarchist movement and conduct raids to sweep up suspected anarchists and deport them have striking parallels to today’s immigration policies, including the Trump administration’s ban on travel from some Muslim countries and the intensifying roundups of illegal immigrants by ICE agents.
Anarchists believed the real wealth being produced in the mills of Paterson and elsewhere should be distributed to those who created it – the workers themselves. “Anarchism was a form of libertarian socialism,” Zimmer said in an interview. “They were anti-capitalist and anti-statist.