In the Video above Paul Robeson a Civil Rights Activist, Lawyer, Singer and much more testifies before the House Un-American committee.
Many young people living today may not have an understanding or even the knowledge of the paranoia which was pervasive across America as it relates to Communism.
Today Presidential Candidate Vermont Senator can run for the presidency as a Democratic Socialist and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can win a seat in the Congress as a socialist but it wasn’t always so.
In fact, just two decades ago no Democrat wanted to be labeled a liberal much less a socialist.
It was in this toxic environment of fear and paranoia that Paul Robeson was answering questions from that house committee of white men hostile to communism and hostile to mister Robeson based on the color of his skin.
It was in that environment that Joesph McCarthy became the tip of the spear of the communist paranoia.
According to [History.com] during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the prospect of communist subversion at home and abroad seemed frighteningly real to many people in the United States. These fears came to define – and, in some cases, corrode – the era’s political culture. For many Americans, the most enduring symbol of this “Red Scare” was Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin. Senator McCarthy spent almost five years trying in vain to expose communists and other left-wing “loyalty risks” in the U.S. government. In the hyper-suspicious atmosphere of the Cold War, insinuations of disloyalty were enough to convince many Americans that their government was packed with traitors and spies. McCarthy’s accusations were so intimidating that few people dared to speak out against him. It was not until he attacked the Army in 1954 that his actions earned him the censure of the U.S. Senate.