The House Un-American Activities Protests

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was an investigative committee set up by the House of Representatives in 1947. It was charged with finding subversive elements in American society; communists and their sympathizers. However, in reality the committee was largely used to attack all sorts of leftist, progressive and liberal organizations and individuals. The HUAC would hold hearings where they would ask if individuals were communists, if they knew any communists, who their friends were, etc. Refusing to answer would lead to being blacklisted by society, the loss of jobs and friends, family members being persecuted and so on. The most famous of these blacklists happened in Hollywood, where over 300 actors, screenwriters and directors had their careers destroyed for refusing to answer HUAC questions.

In 1960 the HUAC decided to hold hearing in San Francisco's City Hall, calling a number of left-leaning individuals, including 11 teachers, to testify. This was a week before teachers were going to vote on their union contract. On May 13th a group of mostly-students held a protest in defense of free speech outside the hearings. The police attacked the protesters with clubs and fire hoses. 64 protesters were dragged down the marble steps of City Hall and arrested. Though the mainstream media called the protesters violent communists, television images showed peaceful students being brutalized by the police. In response to the police attack, the following day over five thousand people showed up, daring the police to attack a second time. This included not only students, but much larger and tougher longshoremen union members. The HUAC hearings shutdown and the charges were dismissed against all but one protester who was later found not guilty.

The May 13th protest is often seen as the beginnings of the New Left in the United States. 31 of those arrested that day were students from The University of California Berkeley, home to The Free Speech Movement a few years later. More so, a propaganda film called Operation Abolition was created by the HUAC and screened across school campuses around the country. This film had the opposite effect than what the HUAC intended, and students ended up identifying with the peaceful protesters being beaten by police. Soon hundreds of open minded and radically inclined young people started moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. They played pivotal roles in shaping the leftist landscape of the Bay Area in the turbulent 1960s and beyond.

The same marble steps where this all started can be freely visited by the public anytime City Hall is open, which is most weekdays during regular business hours. San Francisco's beautiful City Hall is located on Van Ness Avenue a few blocks from its intersection with Market Street. There are also free hour long tours of city hall held at 10:00am, 12:00pm and 2:00pm.