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Editorial on "Sen. Joseph McCarthy" from the Greenfield Recorder-Gazette newspaper

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This editorial, reprinted from a newspaper connected to a labor union, refers to a speech made by Senator Joseph McCarthy on February 9, 1950 to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. In the years directly following the end of World War II, people in the United States worried that communists might try to subvert schools, labor unions, and other institutions. McCarthy's allegations were never backed up, but for the next four years, he managed to keep at the forefront of the anti-communist movement. In 1954, he held hearings about communists in the army. Television coverage of these hearings began to turn the public against him. In December, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22.

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