Government Suppression of Social Activism

Government suppression of controversial political activity is an institutional feature of U.S. politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. While there is a strong American [Page 633]tradition of free speech and political assembly, with support in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, government concerns for stability and to fight social change created a large network of official spying, as well as state and federal sedition, criminal anarchy, and criminal conspiracy laws, which have been used to suppress activism. Political authorities grossly discriminated against the holders of certain beliefs. As the United States emerged as a leading industrial power, it also developed a national security state with a focus on monitoring and containing domestic critics.

At the city level, police “red squads” first formed as early as 1906 in New York City to monitor radicals and immigrants. At the state level, “sovereignty commissions” in the South, as in Mississippi, fought the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, amassing large dossiers on activists. In addition, many state legislatures established their own un-American activities committees to fight domestic communism and socialism during the Cold War. At the federal level, the investigation of dissidents was conducted primarily by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which was founded in 1908, as well as by congressional committees, such as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which often relied on the FBI for information.

The Justice Department led the assault on the Left during the First Red Scare (1917–1920), arresting and deporting several thousand radicals without proper due process, and closing radical newspapers. In these years, the U.S. Postal Service attempted to suppress anti-war and anti-draft literature by banning it from the mails. In several prominent free speech cases, the suppression of anti-war protest and writing resulted in the incarceration of socialist leaders Eugene Debs, Charles Schenck, and Congressman Victor Berger. Anarchist Jacob Abrams was convicted for distributing pamphlets opposing U.S. intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. Many other early battles over free speech were led by labor organizers, especially from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), hundreds of whom were arrested for urging workers to join anti-capitalist trade unions. Until the 1930s New Deal, trade union meetings sometimes were banned, and courts issued injunctions prohibiting strikes, picketing, and other labor protest. This government repression figured as a significant factor retarding the growth of the labor movement.

During the period of the Red Scare, the FBI began systematically to keep records on alleged “subversives.” By 1919, more than half of the FBI's field force was devoted to monitoring domestic radical activities. About 80,000 individuals or groups were listed in FBI files and these numbers continued to increase. By 1923, FBI files kept track of an estimated 450,000 Americans. Moreover, the bureau shared its files on radicals with business leaders to help prevent the outbreak of strikes and the growth of worker organizations. With World War II approaching, the FBI started its Custodian Detention List in 1939, designating thousands of Americans to be detained indefinitely by the government in the event of a wartime emergency. This practice continued into the 1970s.

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