The Red Scare and the Palmer Raids By Encyclopaedia Britannica, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.15.17 Word Count 762 Level 930L

A political cartoon featuring the "Soviet Ark" during the Palmer Raids. On December 21, 1919, a ship called the "Soviet Ark" left New York with 249 radicals and deported them to Russia. Photo from public domain.

As World War I ended in 1918, some groups wanted the world to change. These groups were communists, socialists and anarchists. Communists took over Russia in 1917. They named it the Soviet Union, or USSR. The new government was not very democratic. It allowed only one political party, called the Communist Party. The Communist Party controlled property and business. America followed capitalism where companies, owned by some people, controlled business. People also had the right to own land and homes, and open stores.

Communists and socialists mostly believed the same thing. Both communists and socialists wanted to end capitalism. Anarchists wanted complete freedom in a country that had no laws. In 1919, the United States started worrying that people from these groups had come to the U.S. from other countries. The U.S. government arrested and sent members of these groups back to Europe. These actions, called Palmer Raids, were named for Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. The attorney general is in charge of the Department of Justice and making sure laws are followed. A feeling, called the "Red Scare," had spread across America. The name came from "The Red Army" that had led the revolution in Russia and brought the communists to power.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 1 There were other problems that led to increased fears in America. During the war many people were soldiers, or they worked in factories making weapons and planes for the war. After the war, many of those people lost their jobs. They needed to find new jobs, which led to strikes. Blacks and whites tried to get the same jobs and this led to race riots.

A. Mitchell Palmer becomes the U.S. attorney general

In March 1919, President Woodrow Wilson made Palmer the attorney general. Less than two months later, 36 mail bombs were found in a New York City post office. Some of the bombs were addressed to millionaires like J.P. Morgan, Jr. and John D. Rockefeller, and to a judge on the Supreme Court.

They were set to explode on May 1. Also called May Day, or International Workers Day, May 1 is a holiday for many workers around the world. Some people felt the bombs showed that communists wanted to overthrow the United States government. On June 2, 1919, some bombs did explode, with one bomb destroying Palmer’s home.

In August 1919, Palmer chose J. Edgar Hoover to head the General Intelligence Division, which eventually became part of the FBI. Together they received money from Congress to fight communism. Palmer hoped this work would make him popular, so he could run for president in 1920.

Raids on the Union of Russian Workers

On November 7, 1919, Palmer's people raided the headquarters of the Union of Russian Workers in New York City, where more than 200 were arrested. On November 25, a second raid on the Union of Russian Workers headquarters discovered a bomb factory. Palmer believed that the way to deal with this problem was to send these people back to Russia. On December 21, 249 Russians were put aboard a ship which took them back to Russia. Palmer felt that if these people stayed in America, their communist ideas would destroy the U.S.

On January 2, 1920, the largest Palmer Raid took place. Thousands of people were arrested in more than 30 cities. Palmer got support from the American public with statements like, "Fully 90 percent of the communist and anarchist agitation is traceable to aliens." He felt that these "aliens" were criminals, who came to destroy the American way of life.

But many of those arrested were only guilty of having a foreign accent. The jails were not large enough to hold all who were arrested, so they were sent to the Bureau of Immigration for deportation. But other government leaders did not share Palmer’s fear, so more than 70 percent of these 1,600 aliens were allowed to stay in America.

The end of the Palmer Raids

Palmer said the raids were a success, but claimed that there were still more than 300,000 dangerous communists inside the United States.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 2 But, the news of the cruelty of the raids became public and people began to question if the Constitution really allowed these actions. The National Civil Liberties Bureau publicly challenged Palmer. Palmer made predictions that there would be a communist May Day Revolution in 1920. It did not happen. The Palmer Raids ended. He did try to run for president in 1920, but was unsuccessful. Palmer's term as attorney general ended in March 1921. He returned to his work as a lawyer and died in 1936.

This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 3