What is mccarthyism

Joseph R. McCarthy Career Timeline | Wisconsin Historical Society

Historical Essay

Joseph R. McCarthy Career Timeline | Wisconsin Historical Society

McCarthy Private Talk, 1954.

District of Columbia. During the first day of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy holds both hands over the microphones while speaking with counsel Roy Cohn. View the original source document: WHI 48224

Early Life, 1908-1944

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Captain Joseph McCarthy with Marines, 1943.

Captain Joseph R. McCarthy, a Marine intelligence officer, interviewing pilots who have just returned from raids on Japanese installations in the Solomon Islands. View the original source document: WHI 32010

1908, November 14. McCarthy is born in rural Grand Chute Township, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, the fourth of seven children to Timothy and Bridget Tierney McCarthy.

1922 Drops out of school at age 14; works on a farm; later runs a grocery store in Manawa.

1929 Returns to high school in Manawa, finishing in a year.

1935 Graduates from Marquette University Law School.

1935 Opens a law o

Senator Joseph McCarthy Timeline

1908,Nov. 14McCarthy born in Little Chute, Wisconsin.
 
1935 McCarthy graduates from Marquette University Law School.
 
1939 McCarthy elected circuit judge in Appleton, WI.
 
1942-1945 McCarthy enlists in U.S. Marine Corps, serving in the United States and the Pacific theater of operations.
 
1944 McCarthy runs unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate while serving in Marines.
 
1946,Nov. 5McCarthy elected to U.S. Senate.
 
1950,Feb. 9McCarthy delivers speech in Wheeling, West Virginia attacking Communists in the State Department. Marks the beginning of his anti-communist crusade.
 
1950,March 8U.S. Senate establishes Foreign Relations Subcommittee chaired by Senators Tydings and MacMahon. The Tydings-MacMahon Committee begins investigating McCarthy's accusations against the State Department.
 
1950,June 25North Korea invades South Korea.
 
1950,Dec.U.S. Senate establishes Internal Security Subcom

Elected to the Senate in 1946, Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) did not draw major national attention until 1950. On February 9th of that year, he delivered a Lincoln Day address in Wheeling, West Virginia, blaming failures in American foreign policy on Communist infiltration of the U.S. government. The Wisconsin Republican claimed to have a list of known Communists still working in the Department of State. A special subcommittee investigated McCarthy's charges and rejected them as “a fraud and a hoax,” but the outbreak of the Korean War and the highly publicized conviction of Alger Hiss lent credibility to the charges. When McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, he launched a series of investigations into alleged subversion and espionage. In 1954 a confrontation with the army led to the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which tarnished McCarthy's public image, undermined his charges, and prompted his censure by the U.S. Senate.

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