Red Scare sent shivers through area factories.

• Position: NEWS

Byline: Fred Sullivan

In many ways, 1954 was a very good year. The Korean War had ended in 1953, and now the soldiers were returning home. In the Earl Warren-led Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. declared that the "separate but equal" doctrine for public schools was unconstitutional, a decision that would ultimately end Jim Crow laws in the South. Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House, and Americans were quite comfortable with their beloved "Ike." Everybody loved Lucy, and Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason came into your living room every weekend on your newly bought television.

On Broadway, Joe Hardy and the Washington Senators defeated those "Damn Yankees," and in real life the Cleveland Indians captured the American League pennant to stop the Bronx Bombers. And in July 1954, the Jewish War Veteran Braves of the Fitchburg Eastern League had a two-game lead.

But life was not perfect, The French were defeated at a place called Dien Bien Phu by a communist rebel named Ho Chi Minh in

faraway Vietnam. The Soviet Union had established the "Iron Curtain" in Eastern Europe. Millions of people in countries like Poland and Hungary were controlled by Moscow-led regimes. China, under control of Mao Tse Tung, was a communist state, and the Cold War was upon us. Into this situation

stepped Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wisc., who along with the FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover, would prey upon the fears of the American public during the early 1950s. It was a time in which America went on a witch hunt not seeking to expose witches in Salem, but hunting their fellow Americans who were supposedly aiding and abetting the Communist conspiracy in America. These so-called "fellow travelers" were to be found everywhere.

In Hollywood, writers and actors like Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner Jr., Zero Mostel, John Garfield and Burgess Meredith were blacklisted because they refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Famous actors like Gary Cooper, James Stewart and Ronald Reagan turned upon their fellow performers out of fear. Arthur Miller, a suspected "fellow traveler," would depict this hysteria in his classic play, "The Crucible."

On television we watched "I Led Three Lives," which was the story of Herbert A. Philbrick, who worked undercover for the FBI while being an active member of the Communist Party, and believed traitors were everywhere. McCarthy's one-man subcommittee traveled across America accusing hundreds of...