First Red Scare

First Red Scare

"Step by Step" by Sidney Greene (1919)
Duration	1917 – 1921
Location	United States
Type	Mass hysteria
Cause	Russian Revolution of 1917
Participants	Lee Slater Overman Josiah O. Wolcott Knute Nelson A. Mitchell Palmer J. Edgar Hoover
Outcome	Warren G. Harding became President in 1920 with a landslide victory
Deaths	c. 165 (1919)
Inquiries	Overman Committee (1918–1919) Palmer Trials (1920)
Arrest(s)	c. 3000 (1920)
Accused	Luigi Galleani Eugene V. Debs John Reed
Convicted	c. 500 people expelled

The First Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included those such as the Russian Revolution. At its height in 1919–1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread of communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of paranoia.

The Scare had its origins in the hyper-nationalism of World War I as well as the Russian Revolution. At the war's end, following the October Revolution, American authorities saw the threat of Communist revolution in the actions of organized labor, including such disparate cases as the Seattle General Strike and the Boston Police Strike and then in the bomb campaign directed by anarchist groups at political and business leaders. Fueled by labor unrest and the anarchist bombings, and then spurred on by United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's attempt to suppress radical organizations, it was characterized by exaggerated rhetoric, illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. In addition, the growing anti-immigration nativism movement among Americans viewed increasing immigration from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe as a threat to American political and social stability.