What was the purpose of the House Committee on Un

Image courtesy of the Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives A 16–term Member of the House, John E. Rankin of Mississippi chaired the World War Veterans’ Legislation Committee and its successor, Veterans’ Affairs.

On this date, the Select Committee on House Un-American Activities became a standing House committee. Representative John E. Rankin of Mississippi resuscitated HUAC from the brink of elimination. Established as a select committee in 1938, the panel initially investigated domestic fascist groups. Under the control of Chairman Martin Dies, Jr., of Texas, however, it rapidly became a soapbox from which New Deal programs were denounced and real and imagined communist subversives were routed out. Many Representatives resented the committee’s costs and its tendency to conduct witch hunts. Most believed it would lapse after Dies’s retirement in early 1945. But Rankin, a committee member and a devout segregationist and anti-communist, outmaneuvered House leaders and introduced a resolution to confer HUAC full, standing status at the opening of the 79th Congress (1945–1947). Rankin argued, in part, that the committee should be given greater powers because the records it had assembled provided intelligence agencies “a wealth of information that has gone far toward protecting this Nation from saboteurs of all kinds.” Several Members tried to block the amendment, including Adolph Sabath of Illinois, John J. Cochran of Missouri, and Herman Eberharter of Pennsylvania. But faced with a roll call vote, many Representatives were reluctant to oppose a measure voters might perceive as strengthening America against the communist threat. Rankin’s amendment carried 208 to 186, with 40 Members not voting. At the height of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, HUAC’s influence soared and contributed to a climate of domestic fear stoked by its sensational and often unsubstantiated investigations.

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Thu, 05.26.1938

*On this date in 1938, The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed.  The HUAC was created to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of America’s private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.  

The House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee, reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties; however, it concentrated its efforts on communists.  

It was chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-Tex.), and therefore known as the Dies Committee. Its records are held by the National Archives and Records Administration as records related to HUAC.  In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, the head of the Federal Theatre Project, was subpoenaed to appear before the committee to answer the charge the project was overrun with communists.  

Blacklisted African Americans included:  Paul Robeson, Canada Lee, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Hazel Scott, Artie Shaw, Dean Dixon, Clifford Durr, Shirley Graham, Josh White, Hilda Simms, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and others were outlawed by the HUAC.  In 1939, the committee investigated leaders of the American Youth Congress, a Communist International affiliate organization.  The committee also put together an argument for the internment of Japanese Americans known as the "Yellow Report". Organized in response to rumors of Japanese Americans being coddled by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and news that some former inmates would be allowed to leave camp and Nisei soldiers to return to the West Coast, the committee investigated charges of fifth column activity in the camps.

A number of anti-WRA arguments were presented in subsequent hearings, but Director Dillon Myer debunked the more inflammatory claims. The investigation was presented to the 77th Congress and alleged that certain cultural traits Japanese loyalty to the Emperor, the number of Japanese fishermen in the US, and the Buddhist faith – were evidence for Japanese espionage. With the exception of Rep. Herman Eberharter (D-Pa.), the members of the committee seemed to support internment, and its recommendations to expedite the impending segregation of "troublemakers", establish a system to investigate applicants for leave clearance, and step up Americanization and assimilation efforts largely coincided with WRA goals.  In 1946, the committee considered opening investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, but decided against doing so, prompting white supremacist committee member John E. Rankin (D-Miss.) to remark, "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."  

Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project and the Federal Writers' Project. Twenty years later, in 1965–1966, however, the committee did conduct an investigation into Klan activities under chairman Edwin Willis (D-La.). From 1969 onwards, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. It was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives.   The committee's anti-communist investigations are often compared with those of Joseph McCarthy who, as a U.S. Senator, had no direct involvement with this House committee.  When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.  

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