About Eras
Abolitionism & the Slave Power (1850–1861)
The Haymarket Affair & the Anti-Anarchist Era (1886–1903)
The First Red Scare (1917–1920)
World War II: Japanese Incarceration & the First Smith Act Trials (1941–1945)
McCarthyism (1947–1957)
COINTELPRO (1956–1971)
The Vietnam War Era (1964–1975)
The American Indian Movement & Wounded Knee (1973–1977)
The Reagan Era (1981–1989)
The Anti-Globalization Movement (1999–2001)
The War on Terror (2001–)
The Green Scare (2005–2010)
Occupy Wall Street (2011–2012)
Ferguson & the Movement for Black Lives (2014–2016)
Standing Rock & the #NoDAPL Water Protectors (2016–2017)
J20: The Inauguration Day Prosecutions (2017)
The George Floyd Uprising (2020)
The Stop Cop City Era (2022–)
The Trump-Era Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity (2024–)
Civil Rights & Black Power
MCCARTHYISM (1947–1957)
The Smith Act of 1940 was used to prosecute Communist Party USA leadership in waves of trials beginning in 1949. The Rosenberg execution (1953), the imprisonment of W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson's passport revocation, and the Hollywood Ten contempt-of-Congress prosecutions defined the era. Several Smith Act prisoners served time at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.