The Red Scare
The reasons for the Red Scare were myriad. First, World War I itself led many Americans to adopt strong nationalistic and anti-immigrant sentiments. Additionally, the end of World War I meant scaled back production needs, which caused unemployment to rise. This rise in unemployment caused workers to join labor unions in droves. A wave of labor strikes in 1919 contributed to government fears that organized labor wished to spark a revolution. Finally, after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the United States government became increasingly concerned about agitation and protests from anarchists, socialists, and communists. The mass immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans and Russians also fueled fears for many Americans who believed stereotypes that held that the ethnic and political differences of people from those regions would be dangerous to American life.
President Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, was determined to quash political dissent from people he perceived as anarchists and leftists. From 1919 to 1920, Palmer conducted a series of raids, known as the Palmer Raids, on individuals he believed were dangerous to national security. In January of 1920, federal agents broke into the homes of suspected anarchists without search warrants, jailed labor leaders, and detained nearly 5,000 people. Most of those who had been unlawfully detained were released, but thousands of immigrants were deported for their suspected ties to leftist politics.
The Palmer Raids were short-lived as American public opinion shifted after news of the brutality of the raids became public, and the constitutionality of the raids were brought into question. The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups publicly challenged Palmer’s actions. After Palmer made an erroneous prediction that a revolution would begin on May Day in 1920, his credibility with the public diminished.
