Remembering McCarthy: A Visual Biography, 1908-1957

Poster for Joseph R. McCarthy - campaign for circuit judge (1939). From Remembering McCarthy: A Visual Biography, 1908-1957 at the Wisconsin Historical Society. "...May 2 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, who for four years in the early 1950s, held the nation in his grasp with his anti-Communist rhetoric. To his enemies, McCarthy was evil incarnate, but to his supporters, he was an ardent champion of freedom. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946, Joseph McCarthy created a sensation in 1950 when he announced during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, that communist members of the State Department were influencing American foreign policy. At the time, communist expansion in Eastern Europe and Korea fueled Americans' anxiety that their way of life was under attack. Proclaimed just as Americans were preparing to fight in Korea, McCarthy capitalized on people's fears of encroaching communism to launch a public campaign aimed at eliminating the supposed communist infiltration of government."