HUAC Made Permanent Standing Committee, Institutionalizes Political Persecution

On January 3, 1945, the House of Representatives votes to make the Dies Committee a permanent standing committee, renamed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Mississippi Representative John Rankin, a virulent segregationist and antisemite, engineers the transformation through a parliamentary maneuver, ensuring that the apparatus of political persecution would become a permanent feature of American government.

The Dies Committee, chaired by Representative Martin Dies of Texas since 1938, had operated as a special investigating committee requiring periodic renewal. Dies used the committee to attack labor unions, New Deal agencies, and anyone he deemed insufficiently anti-communist. The committee’s loose procedures, reliance on guilt by association, and willingness to publicize unverified accusations destroyed reputations without due process.

Rankin’s resolution makes HUAC a permanent standing committee with ongoing authorization and budget. The change ensures that political investigations targeting the left would continue regardless of the party in power. Rankin himself embodies the merger of anti-communism and white supremacy that characterizes much of the committee’s work. He defends the Ku Klux Klan on the House floor and attacks civil rights organizations as communist fronts.

HUAC’s permanence transforms episodic red-baiting into institutionalized persecution. The committee maintains extensive files on suspected subversives, shares information with employers and blacklist organizations, and conducts public hearings designed to humiliate witnesses and destroy careers. Its procedures, including requiring witnesses to name names, forcing individuals to inform on colleagues to avoid being blacklisted themselves, corrupt the civil service, entertainment industry, and academia.

The committee’s investigative powers, combined with contempt of Congress prosecutions for uncooperative witnesses, create a climate of fear that suppresses political dissent far beyond actual prosecutions. HUAC continues until 1975 when it is renamed the House Internal Security Committee, finally abolished in 1975. However, its legacy of using congressional investigative power for political persecution establishes precedents that outlive the committee itself.