"I have here in my hand a list of 205,” said Senator Joe McCarthy during a speech given in 1950.
“A list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."
What the senator said was completely untrue, but it didn’t stop his tactics- which came to be known as McCarthyism- from spreading across the country.
The nation was gripped by a communist panic, and baseless accusations were soon flying in both the public and private sphere.
Sixty years ago, five employees at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation’s East Pittsburgh plant were fired for being named in McCarthy’s Washington hearings as “undesirable”. Historian and author Charles McCollester stopped by Studio A to recall what happened.
“There was definitely collusion between Westinghouse and the committee because the day that these people were to come to Washington to testify, they also received notices from Westinghouse that they were fired.”
