Senator Joseph McCarthy called nearly 500 witnesses
before his subcommittee and made them answer all
sort of invasive questions about their loyalty to the US
and/or allegiance to the Communist Party. The
transcripts of most of these interviews were sealed for
50 years and have just been made available
online, in annotated form, all 4,200 pages of
them.
“the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
held extensive hearings, in both executive and public
session, that focused on the U.S. Information Libraries
worldwide. It examined the books that the libraries
stocked, and called some of the authors to testify.
During the course of the investigation, chief counsel
Roy Cohn, and chief consultant David Schine,
embarked on a highly publicized tour of the overseas
libraries in major European capitals…
…the State Department ordered the
removal of any books by Communist authors or
Communist sympathizers from the Information
Libraries’ shelves. Hundreds of works of fiction and
non-fiction were discarded, and some were burned.”
[The libraries contained the poetry of Langston
Hughes, who was questioned by the committee.]
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