I’m working on a history question and need guidance to help me understand better.

This Reading Check focuses on a few videos that should set the tone for the atmosphere of fear and paranoia gripping American society in the 1950s. A cold war between the US and the Soviet Union went through phases of “heating up” and “cooling down” throughout the 1950s. The beginning of the decade witnessed the Korean War, a proxy war within the greater Cold War with the US and the Soviet Union on opposing sides (although not meeting directly on a field of combat). The threat of Soviet communism retreated a little with the death of dictator Stalin, but Cold War tensions would “thaw” early in the 1960s.

For this Reading Check, we’ll explore a few primary source videos (made in the 1950s) that give us insight to the fear and anxiety felt within the nation during the 1950s. Faced with another Red Scare, Americans not only feared atomic or nuclear war, but also feared their coworkers, neighbors, and other fellow Americans. Some blamed movements like second-wave feminism and the Civil Rights Movement on communist conspiracies, but we’ll get to that in coming weeks.

Keep in mind as you watch and read that these are different moments in time. We look below at an instructional video on how to respond to an atomic attack from 1951. We will also look at testimony by screenwriter John Howard Lawson during HUAC’s investigation into communism in Hollywood in 1947. Last, we will look at Edward Murrow’s journalism segment that aired on CBS in 1954 as the Army-McCarthy hearings were wrapping up. Remember from the background reading that Joseph McCarthy didn’t invent anticommunism, nor was his political saga in the 1950s connected to the HUAC Hollywood trials of 1947, other than he may have been influenced at that point to use anticommunism to further his career. There were many manifestations of political and cultural anticommunism during the Cold War.

Assignment Instructions

Step 1: Watch the videos and answer the questions.

Watch each of the short videos below. Answer the questions that follow. I have provided directions in each question so that you can pause the video and answer the questions as you watch. All the videos have closed captions that can be turned on. There are three questions to answer in total.

Confine each response to a few sentences, but be sure that you’ve answered the question completely. Compose your responses in a file that can be uploaded.

1. WATCH: “Duck and Cover”, a 1951 government-produced instructional video for children, instructing them on how to react during a nuclear attack. Indeed, people at the time were aware that newspaper and coats would not help someone in the case of a nuclear explosion. The US’s use of atomic weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII had shown Americans what these weapons were capable of. Perhaps this video is most useful in the details we see in the video, like the signs shown that indicate a nearby public shelter point. ANSWER: What tone does this video set for children growing up in the 1950s? What was the purpose of this video? Was it really to prepare children for what was known to be a practically hopeless survival? Do you sense any underlying messages being conveyed in this video? In what ways in this video a subliminal piece of anti-Soviet propaganda for children, despite not mentioning the Soviet Union?
2. WATCH and/or READ: Hollywood screenwriter John Lawson refuses to answer HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) questioning regarding his knowledge of Communists in Hollywood (connected to the screenwriters’ union) in 1947. Read the transcriptas you listen along– be aware that the closed captions include a few errors. ANSWER: Why doesn’t Lawson answer the question as to whether he or anyone he knows is or ever was a member of the Communist Party? What is Lawson’s commentary on the state of Free Speech in 1947?
3. WATCH and/or READ: CBS journalist Edward Murrow condemns McCarthyism amid the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in a 1954 episode of “See It Now.” Joseph McCarthy had suggested that communists were operating within State department and the Army, but could not produce names or evidence when brought to court by Army investigators in 1954. The Army-McCarthy hearings remained the most-watched (and most controversial) things on television for most of the 1950s. McCarthy himself was censured for the remainder of his term. Murrow had been reporting frequently on Joseph McCarthy’s accusations and the trial, and offered this message in its conclusion. The video has near-perfect closed captions, but read the transcriptas you listen along. ANSWER: Why does Murrow say that McCarthy is not to blame for the atmosphere of anticommunist fear? What does he mean that we cannot “defend freedom aboard by deserting it at home”? Are there any lessons that remain relevant from Murrow’s message?