House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1975

Spanning 37 seven years, from the later New Deal period to the immediate post-Watergate years, the FBI headquarters file on the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) represents a detailed source for the study of the relationship between one of the most powerful branch bureaucracies and one of the most controversial congressional investigating committees of the twentieth century. The file contains hundreds of substantive documents on such major historical issues and developments as the legislative-executive conflict of the Franklin Roosevelt and early Cold War eras; the Hollywood Ten hearings and the entertainment industry blacklist of the McCarthy era; and the civil rights, antiwar, and black nationalist movements of the 1960s. From 1938 through 1975 this House Committee and the FBI fruitfully cooperated to find suspected Communists. These FBI files contain hundreds of reports about the disagreements between HUAC chairman Martien Dies and the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, about the strategies of the FBI and HUAC and its successor, the Internal Security Committee, which tried to protect the FBI from congressional investigations (9 reels).

FINDING AID: FBI File on the House Committee on Un-American Activities