The Green Feather Movement was a series of college protests directed against McCarthyism at the height of the Red Scare in the United States. The movement arose in response to an attempt to censor Robin Hood because of its alleged communist connotations and eventually spread to universities across the nation.
Background
The Green Feather Movement came during the height of the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the United States following World War II and the establishment of Communist governments abroad and the Great Depression, after which many were disillusioned by capitalism. Americans were especially paranoid about possibly having communists in the country, especially in the government, so alleged communists were often tried and fired. People like Senator Joseph McCarthy were able to capitalize on this widespread fear of communism to gain political power. McCarthy claimed to have the names of more than 200 communists in the state department, and he held a series of televised smear campaigns in order to rid the government of communists. However, his attempts to find communists were largely unsuccessful; he ended up accusing the US army of containing communists, leading to his downfall and irrelevance after his inquiry of the army starting in 1953.
Censorship
Censorship was an important part of the Red Scare and containment of communism in the United States. The film and music industries were especially censored, as well as literature. Writers, screenwriters, directors, etc. were often investigated and blacklisted due to claims of their alleged communist beliefs. Lawyers, social workers, and especially teachers lost their jobs for the same reason. Loyalty oaths from teachers were also required in more than 39 states to ensure that they will not teach communist-leaning lessons to students. Educational literature and literature in college curricula were especially targeted under McCarthyism due to the fear that communism will be taught to students. As a result, many famous works were censored during the 1950s, including Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Civil Disobedience (Thoreau) by Henry David Thoreau, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. The newly popular genre of writing, comic books, was also especially targeted because they were seen as corrupting the minds of young people. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenal Delinquency oversaw this problem and aimed to completely ban comic books.
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the period in American history when Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin started a series of investigations and hearings during the 1950s in an effort to expose supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government. McCarthy gained prominence when in February 190 he delivered a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia claiming he had a list of communists who had infiltrated the State Department. In 1952 he was elected as chairman of the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate and of its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and for the next couple of years he ran a smear campaign. Although he investigated various government departments and questioned witnesses about their suspected communist affiliations he failed to identify any communists in the government. McCarthyism both reached its peak and began its decline when he launched an investigation into possible espionage and subversive activities at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. These 36 days of televised investigative hearings in 1954 were called the McCarthy hearings. McCarthy however then switched the investigation into whether the Army had promoted a dentist who had refused to answer questions for the Loyalty Security Screening Board. The hearings reached their climax when McCarthy claimed that Joseph Welch, the Army's lawyer had employed a man who at one time had belonged to a communist front group. Welch rebuked the senator saying, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” and discredited McCarthy and his investigation. This and the broadcast of McCarthy tactics turned the public against him and support for him plummeted. Moreover, McCarthy was also undermined significantly by the criticism of a journalist, Edward R. Murrow, who ran a television editorial on McCarthy. In December 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure McCarty for unbecoming conduct, and in 1957 he died. McCarthyism ended with the senator.