Macarthur FOUNDATION, Formally Known As the John D. And
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M MacARTHUR FOUNDATION, formally known as Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. But it also removed race The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as a bar to immigration and naturalization, so that coun- is a private general-purpose foundation created in 1978 tries whose citizens were previously ineligible were as- and headquartered in Chicago. At the time of his death, signed annual quotas of not fewer than 100 persons. In John D. MacArthur (1897–1978) was one of the three addition, it removed gender discrimination; gave prefer- wealthiest men in America and the owner of the nation’s ence to aliens with special skills; and provided for more largest privately held insurance company, Bankers Life rigorous security screening. The law aroused much op- and Casualty Company. Catherine T. MacArthur (1909– position, mainly on the grounds that it discriminated in 1981) worked closely with her husband and was a director favor of northern and western European nations. It passed of the Foundation until her death. over President Harry S. Truman’s veto and remained in One of the nation’s ten largest foundations, the Mac- effect until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Arthur Foundation’s assets are around $4 billion and it BIBLIOGRAPHY distributes approximately $180 million in grants annually. Hing, Bill Ong. Making and Remaking Asian America through Im- Stanford, Calif.: Stanford .1990מIt is organized into four divisions: Human and Commu- migration Policy, 1850 nity Development, focused on public education, juvenile University Press, 1993. justice, mental health policy and neighborhood develop- Ueda, Reed. Postwar Immigrant America. Boston: St. Martin’s ment, with special emphasis upon Chicago and Florida; Press, 1994. Global Security and Sustainability, with grants for con- Charles S. Campbell Jr. servation, international peace, population and reproduc- Andrew C. Rieser tive health, with special initiatives in Russia, south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa; the General Program, which See also Immigration; Immigration Restriction; Naturali- provides institutional grants to such organizations as zation. National Public Radio; and the controversial MacArthur Fellows Program, which awards between twenty and forty five-year fellowships, or “genius grants,” of around McCARTHYISM has been misnamed. Often identi- $500,000 to “talented persons” who “show exceptional fied with the bizarre antics of the Wisconsin senator merit and promise of continued and enhanced creative Joseph McCarthy, the anticommunist political repression work.” The Foundation has field offices in Florida, Mex- to which he gave a name had been in operation for years ico, Brazil, Nigeria, India, and Russia. before he appeared at a Republican banquet in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950. And it was to continue BIBLIOGRAPHY for several years after he self-destructed before the na- MacArthur Foundation Web site. Home page at www.mac tion’s television viewers at the Army-McCarthy hearings found.org. in the spring of 1954. There was nothing unique about The Work Ahead: New Guidelines for Grantmaking. John D. and McCarthy’s charges of subversion in high places. Ever Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation: Chicago, 1998. since the 1930s, conservative politicians and journalists had been attacking the New Deal administrations of Fred W. Beuttler Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman for being “soft on See also Foundations, Endowed; Philanthropy. communism.” But it took the Cold War to bring the orig- inally partisan issue of anticommunism from the margins into the political mainstream. McCARRAN-WALTER ACT (1952). The act re- Although McCarthyism came in many flavors, all its vised and consolidated all previous laws regarding im- adherents agreed that it was essential to eliminate the migration, naturalization, and nationality. It retained the danger of American communism. They differed, however, national-origin system of the Immigration Act of 1924, in their assessment of what that danger was. Right- which gave preference to immigrants from the United wingers, hostile to everything on the left, attacked liberals 181 McCARTHYISM wise moderate and even liberal Americans were able to collaborate with it. Claiming to deplore the excesses of the congressional investigations, they nonetheless applied sanctions against the people McCarthy and his allies had fingered. They now realize they were wrong. The sanctions imposed on thousands of school teachers, longshoremen, film directors, union officials, civil servants, automobile workers, and housewives during the late 1940s and 1950s seriously violated those people’s constitutional rights. But at the time, most Americans believed that communists were Soviet puppets who might subvert the government, steal official secrets, or sabotage defense plants whenever their Kremlin masters gave the word. Since some Amer- ican communists had spied for the Soviet Union during World War II, that demonized stereotype, though exag- gerated, was quite plausible. The highly publicized cases of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs reinforced the stereo- Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Wisconsin Republican’s own type, convincing liberals and conservatives alike that com- actions in pursuit of communism in the early 1950s played munists were so dangerous they did not deserve the same only one part in the longer Cold War period of excessive zeal rights as other Americans. That consensus made it pos- named for him. AP/Wide World Photos sible for a wide range of government officials and private employers to punish people for their political views and affiliations. as well as communists, while moderates, who were willing Washington led the way. Not only did the federal to purge actual Communist Party members, tried to pro- government create and carry out some of the earliest an- tect noncommunists from unfounded persecution. They ticommunist purges, but it also developed the ideological did not always succeed. In the supercharged atmosphere justification for them. The FBI and its militantly anticom- of the early Cold War, the anticommunist crusade spun munist director, J. Edgar Hoover, oversaw the process. out of control, creating the most widespread and longest Much of the information about communism that fed the lasting episode of political repression in American history. loyalty-security investigations, criminal prosecutions, and By the time that repression sputtered to an end in congressional hearings that dominated the McCarthy era the late 1950s, thousands of men and women had lost came from the FBI and reflected that organization’s dis- their jobs, hundreds had been deported or sent to prison, torted view of the red menace. In addition, because Hoo- and two—Ethel and Julius Rosenberg—had been exe- ver and his men were so eager to eradicate American com- cuted. Most, but not all, of these people had once been munism, they supplemented their normal operations with in or near the American Communist Party. Because that a wide range of unauthorized and even illegal activities, party had been the most dynamic organization on the including wiretaps, break-ins, and leaks to right-wing American left during the 1930s and early 1940s, thou- journalists and politicians. sands of activists gravitated into its orbit, attracted by its HUAC and the other congressional investigators opposition to war and fascism and its support for the labor were among the main recipients of those leaks. Not movement and racial equality. Most of these men and only did the committees identify specific individuals as women were idealistic individuals who had not antici- communists, but they also helped disseminate the anti- pated that their political activities would get them into communist scenarios that fueled the purges. Friendly wit- trouble years later, when anticommunism came to dom- nesses told stories about their experiences in the Com- inate American politics. munist Party and identified its members, while unfriendly What made McCarthyism so powerful was that so witnesses remained silent. Most of them would have been many different agencies and individuals took part in its willing to talk about their own political activities, but they operations. It functioned in accordance with a two-stage balked at describing those of others. However, because procedure. The supposed communists were first identi- the Supreme Court did not protect people accused of fied; then they were punished—usually by being fired. communism during the late 1940s and early 1950s, wit- Most of the time, an official body like the Federal Bureau nesses who did not want to name names had to rely on of Investigation or the House Un-American Activities the Fifth Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimina- Committee (HUAC) handled the first stage, while a pub- tion and refuse to answer any question that might subject lic or private employer took care of the second. Because them to prosecution. Although they did not go to prison, it was common to identify McCarthyism only with the most of these “Fifth Amendment” witnesses lost their initial identification stage of the procedure, many other- jobs. 182 McCORMICK REAPER The most well-known unfriendly witnesses were the The McClellan Committee’s efforts culminated in so-called Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of directors who had defied HUAC on First Amendment 1959, which established for the first time close regulation grounds in 1947. Even before they went to prison, the of unions by the federal government. The law created Ten were