The Red Scare
The hysteria around communism in the world of CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY
In Lynn Nottage’s Crumbs from the Table of Joy — onstage at Lantern Theater Company November 9 through December 17, 2023 — Godfrey Crump moves his family from Pensacola, Florida to Brooklyn, New York in search of a new life. But the arrival of brash, politically minded Aunt Lily opens up a whole new world to 17-year-old Ernestine — a world her father Godfrey knows could be dangerous. At the height of the Red Scare, proudly espousing communist views and sympathies could throw their tenuous new life into disarray.
After World War II, there were two primary superpowers: the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. Communism, in simplified terms, is a political ideology that says goods, property, and the means of production should be communally owned, eventually leading to a classless society; it is in many ways the opposite of capitalism, which is based in individualism rather than collectivism. Though allies during the war, the United States and the Soviet Union’s opposing political structures and their fight for dominance on the world stage swiftly put them at odds.
This tension resulted in the Cold War, the period from approximately 1947 through 1991. During this period, the two countries never directly fought each other, but the threat was ever present. In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, raising the stakes on a potential conflict with the similarly armed United States. The period was also characterized by proxy wars — wars between other countries in which the U.S. and Soviet Union took opposing sides and supported them financially and militarily.
The mid-century saw several armed conflicts and political schisms that concerned the United States. In 1949, Germany divided into two separate countries: communist East Germany and constitutional republic West Germany. The following year, the Korean War began when the communist North Korea invaded the capitalist South Korea. The U.S. and communist powers (China and the Soviet Union) supported opposite sides. It ended in an armistice in 1953. In 1955, war broke out in Vietnam, then occupied by France. U.S. combat forces arrived in 1965, aiming to limit the spread of communism and the Soviet Union’s influence. And in 1959, the Cuban Revolution succeeds in ousting the government and instituting communism.
In this climate of global tensions, with the specter of nuclear war looming large, domestic fear of communists infiltrating and overthrowing the United States reached a fever pitch. The Cold War turned to the Red Scare, named for the distinctive color of the Soviet flag. Paranoia about Soviet spies moving undetected among American society created widespread fear and distrust of both avowed communists and those who might be sympathetic to the cause — and the resulting hysteria affected every level of American life.
Beginning in 1947, federal employees were required to be screened to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government. Formed in 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee focused many of its efforts in the late 1940s and 1950s on identifying communists, or those with beliefs deemed “subversive,” among government officials and employees, Hollywood artists, or others in public life. Suspected communists were often officially or unofficially blacklisted from employment in their industries.
In the Senate, third-year senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) became one of the most prominent forces of the Red Scare beginning in 1950. For four years, he used rumor, intimidation, and other controversial tactics in an effort to root suspected communists out of government and to expose those with intellectual and cultural prominence. Until his power waned in 1954, he cost many people their livelihoods; by then, distaste for his tactics put him out of favor. In 1954, when an opposing lawyer famously asked, “Have you no sense of decency?” during a televised hearing, his popularity and influence diminished. In late 1954, McCarthy was censured by the Senate, and he died in office in 1957, due to substance abuse.
Law enforcement also played a role in the Red Scare. The FBI under J. Edgar Hoover aggressively investigated and pursued alleged communists, calling forms of democratic dissent radicalism and compiling files on public figures, political and civil rights activists, and private citizens alike. These private citizens also felt the heat of the Red Scare — as fear of communists infiltrating and overthrowing the U.S. grew (and was encouraged by public figures), those suspected of communist beliefs or sympathies were shunned, fired from their jobs, and even pursued by law enforcement. Support for civil liberties and free expression eroded, and tolerance for questionable tactics in the pursuit of radicals increased.
The consequences could be even more dire. In 1951, private citizens and committed communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried and given the death penalty for espionage amid accusations that they were spying for and passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Despite persistent questions about their guilt (especially for Ethel), in 1953 they become the first civilians executed for espionage.
In the heyday of his movement in the 1930s, Godfrey Crump’s beloved Father Divine and his Peace Mission formed an alliance with the Communist Party, as their tenets of communal living and collectivism aligned with the beliefs he preached. However, by 1950 — the year in which Crumbs from the Table of Joy begins — Father Divine joined much of the rest of America in rejecting communism. That nationwide conflict plays out in miniature in the Crumps’ apartment as Lily’s outspoken beliefs threaten to upend Godfrey’s quiet, devout life.
More great reading: See other recent articles and interviews on the Lantern Searchlight blog
Lantern Theater Company’s production of Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage is onstage November 9 through December 17, 2023, at St. Stephen’s Theater. Visit our website for tickets and information.
