From November 2023-January 2025, an item from ECU’s Main Campus Library’s Hoover Collection on International Communism was part of a major museum exhibit dealing with the history of the Cold War. The 1950 book Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, was included as part of an exhibition titled The Berlin Wall. A World Divided.
Hosted in Madrid, Spain, The Berlin Wall exhibition saw over 160,000 visitors during its 14-month run. The exhibition was created by the Spanish-based company Musealia, in cooperation with the Berlin Wall Foundation. Academic Library Services thanks Musealia for allowing us to be part of such an enormously important and successful cultural program.
Often described as the “Bible of the Blacklist,” Red Channels was produced by a team of freelance countersubversives, and it alleged that 151 professional entertainers were involved in communist activity. Those listed in Red Channels were soon added to the blacklist, and thus found it virtually impossible to obtain work in radio or television. It is one of the major artifacts of America’s 1950s “Red Scare.”
For more information on Red Channels, please see our previous blog post featuring this volume: https://sites.ecu.edu/cwis/2017/12/huac-goes-to-hollywood-part-2-bible-of-the-blacklist/