A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father

by David Maraniss,
Psychology Today, May 9, 2019

In 1952, the House Un-American Activities Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives summoned Elliott Maraniss to Room 740 of the Federal Building in Detroit. Asked about his membership in the Communist Party, Maraniss cited his constitutional privileges under the 5th Amendment and refused to answer. In a statement, which HUAC Chairman John S. Wood did not allow him to read, Maraniss blasted a process that resembled the Spanish Inquisition and Salem witch trials. Many Americans, he declared, had not—and would not—“acquiesce in the proposition that persons could be punished for their beliefs.”