Red Scare

• Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, America was on high alert, fearing Communist revolutionaries on their own shores
• The Sedition Act of 1918, which was an expansion of the 1917 Espionage Act, was a direct result of the paranoia
• Sedition Act


  Targeted those who criticized the government, set into motion an effort to monitor radicals, especially labour union leaders, with the threat of deportation looming over them
• The anti-labour atmosphere contributed to the success of Harding due to his anti-trade union stance in his 1920 campaign
• Series of bombs targeting government and law enforcement officials

  1. Package bomb delivered at the home of former U.S. Senator Thomas Hardwick in Georgia

  2. Mail bomb sent from New York City to the office of Seattle mayor Ole Hanson

  3. Postal worker Charles Caplan intercepted 36 mail bombs targeting Oliver Wendell Holmes, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and other notable citizens
• Raids and mass arrests under the Sedition Act in the fall of 1919


  1. Police raided locations like the Russian People's House in New York City

  2. Department of Justice agents stormed a meeting room and beat the 200 occupants

  3. Algebra class interrupted by armed agents, with the teacher being beaten

  4. Detainees ordered to hand over their money to agents, who were then directed to tear the place apart

  5. Dragged and shoved into patrol wagons and taken into custody, agents searched among the detainees for members of the Union of Russian Workers
• Seventy-five percent of the arrestees under the sedition act were released
• Many of the alleged Communist sympathizers that were rounded up were deported in December 1919
• The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, was created in 1920 as a direct result of the Palmer Raids
• The ACLU's first action was to challenge the Sedition Act
• Though the first raids were popular with American citizens, they eventually elicited much criticism, particularly after the second wave of raids, and Palmer faced rebukes from numerous sources, including Congress
• Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post joined in the chorus of criticism after reviewing deportation cases, claiming that innocent people were punished under Palmer's efforts
• An attempt by Palmer's Congressional allies to impeach Louis Post backfired, instead providing an opportunity for Post to publicly outline and decry Palmer's abuses
• Palmer sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1920 but lost to James M. Cox
• Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were radical, working-class Italian immigrants who advocated for the violent overthrow of political and capitalist institutions
• Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced to death for two murders committed during a robbery at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1920
• Nativism and xenophobia were on the rise in the United States, with the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan targeting Black Americans, Catholics, and immigrants—including Italians
• In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed restrictive immigration acts intended to stem a post-war influx of "undesirables" and the radical politics they feared might accompany them
• The Russian Revolution of 1917 had given rise to the first Red Scare, and a slate of assassinations of world leaders since the 1890s —including that of President William McKinley —had further sowed fears of anarchism
• In early 1919, a series of bombings enacted by followers of the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani against prominent American politicians and capitalists "put the violence on the front page", making anarchism feel all the more like "a palpable threat to people"
• Sacco and Vanzetti were suspected Galleanists and had met in 1916 at a factory strike Vanzetti helped organize
• The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee sought to raise awareness through the media, submitting articles to the New Republic and labour union publications, and publishing and distributing its own pamphlets, newsletters and bulletins
• Judge Webster Thayer's behaviour both in and out of the courtroom drew accusations of bias, with Thayer referring to Sacco and Vanzetti as "Bolsheviki" and "anarchist bastards", and allegedly saying he would "get them good and proper" and "get those guys hanged"
• Sacco and Vanzetti were executed, but reactions to the case, both political and scholarly, literary and violent, have far outlived them
• The case motivated the Massachusetts Judicial Council to propose a series of reforms making it easier to secure a new trial and harder for a single judge to exert so much control over a future case
• The larger prejudice the case demonstrated, that "who you are and, in this instance, what you believe, has an enormous amount to do with how you're treated by the judicial system", remains endemic