The Cold War (1945–1963): Eisenhower at Home: 1952–1959

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Eisenhower did, however, exert federal authority that same year when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus defied a federal court order and mobilized National Guard units to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. Eisenhower resolved the Little Rock crisis by placing the National Guard under federal control and sending more than 1,000 U.S. Army soldiers to protect the students and integrate the school by force.

McCarthyism

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt overshadowed all other domestic issues during Eisenhower’s two terms in office. Hoping to boost his own status as a national politician, McCarthy first capitalized on Americans’ fears of Communism when he announced in 1950 that the State Department had become overrun with more than 200 Communists. He claimed that these Communists, including Truman’s own secretary of state, Dean Acheson, were working secretly to hinder American efforts against the Soviet Union.

Although McCarthy never offered any actual proof to back up his claims, “McCarthyism” swept across the nation like wildfire. Thousands of individuals, including liberals, critics of the Korean War and the Cold War, civil rights activists, homosexuals, feminists, and even critics of McCarthy himself, were blacklisted and fired from their jobs.

The Army-McCarthy Hearings

As a congressman and later as vice president, Richard Nixon fully supported McCarthy, as did future president Ronald Reagan, who at the time held the influential position of president of the Screen Actors Guild. In response to McCarthyism, author and playwright Arthur Miller, who had himself been branded a Communist, wrote the 1953 play The Crucible, a critique of the Red hunts disguised as a play about the Salem witch trials of the 1600s.

Eventually, McCarthy ruined his own name after accusing high-ranking members of the U.S. military of being Communists. During the televised Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, millions of Americans watched as the senator made wild accusations without a shred of evidence. These hearings and the Senate’s subsequent formal reprimand of McCarthy effectively ended the Red hunts. Disgraced and discredited, McCarthy became an alcoholic and died in 1957.