The Hollywood Ten

Kendra Quinlan, Kurt Ringer, Mario Vargas Senior Division Group Website

After deciding we wanted to learn more about the 1940s and 1950s, we skimmed over court cases about civil rights. One of the members of our group enjoys learning about various political ideologies, so we narrowed our search to court cases about the clash between communism and capitalism. We started to see cases involving the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities popping up a lot so we looked deeper into that. We chose the Hollywood Ten as our subject because we find the topic interesting, and feel that it epitomizes this battle between clashing ideologies and the rights of citizens. First, we browsed the Internet for details on the Hollywood Ten. After discovering what groups were involved and creating a general outline of the topics wed like to cover, we split up the research so we could show each other our findings later on. Individually, we went to the school library, to the local library, and on the Internet. The primary sources, particularly the videos, helped us understand the prejudice towards communists during McCarthys reign of terror. We were able to compare primary sources from videos, books, and the Internet to our secondary sources, which were found mostly online and in the library, to see how Americans attitudes towards the Hollywood Ten has changed in the past fifty years. We chose to create a website. At first we were going to do a documentary, but we thought making a website would be more fun because it is a move versatile medium. Additionally, one of the members of our group has had experience creating websites. We had gone into the project with an idea of the outline we would have for our site. After conducting research, we started crafting our information and adding videos, quotes, and images to our pages to engage the audience.

In twentieth century, the Cold War battle between communism and capitalism created a wave of hysteria and a fear of communism infiltrating America. During the first and second Red Scare, communists were singled out and shunned from society. Many Americans feared that communist spies were working to bring down the U.S. from the inside. Under the leadership of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, the witch-hunt for communists recommenced, and the Hollywood blacklist was created. Persecuted for supporting either a political ideology or refusing to cooperate when questioned; the rights of these alleged communists as stated in the first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth amendments were violated.