McCarthyism
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50 free McCarthyism trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For a few years in the early 1950s, an accusation was often enough to end a career. McCarthyism, the peak of the Second Red Scare, reached from the State Department into film studios, universities, unions and newsrooms, and it left behind a word still used for reckless charges made without proof. This quiz covers the whole story: the senator who gave the era its name and the speech that launched him, the congressional committees and their hearings, the Hollywood blacklist and the writers who worked around it, the spy cases that fed the fear, the loyalty programs and laws, and the journalists, lawyers and fellow senators who finally pushed back. It is written for students revising Cold War America, for teachers who want a ready-made classroom review of communism and the Red Scare, and for anyone curious how much they remember. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Hollywood star told HUAC in 1953 that she had registered to vote as a Communist in 1936?
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball said she had done it only to please her socialist grandfather. Desi Arnaz then told an I Love Lucy studio audience the whole story before filming an episode.
Q 02Arthur Miller's play The Crucible attacked McCarthyism by retelling which historical hunt for hidden enemies?
The Salem witch trials
The Salem witch trials gave Miller his allegory for accusation without proof. In 1957 a judge found him guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to name other people.
Q 03Which state did Joseph McCarthy represent in the Senate when he accused the State Department of harboring Communists?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin voters first elected McCarthy in 1946, when he campaigned on an inflated war record. He held the seat until his death in 1957.
Q 04Which CBS journalist used a 1954 episode of See It Now to challenge Senator McCarthy's methods on national television?
Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow built the half-hour from excerpts of McCarthy's own speeches. The senator's televised reply weeks later only pushed his fading popularity lower.
Q 05Which silent-film legend had his US re-entry permit revoked in 1952 while sailing to a London premiere?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin, long accused of Communist sympathies, chose not to fight the order and settled in Switzerland. Hollywood gave him an honorary Oscar two decades later.
Q 06Which physicist who ran the wartime Los Alamos laboratory was stripped of his security clearance in 1954?
J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer lost it after a hearing into his past Communist associations. The US Energy Secretary formally vacated that decision in 2022, long after his death.
Q 07Which blacklisted screenwriter secretly won two Academy Awards in the 1950s behind a front and a fake name?
Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo wrote the stories for Roman Holiday and The Brave One, and both won Oscars he could not collect. The second went to Robert Rich, a name borrowed from the producers' nephew.
Q 08Which Washington Post cartoonist used the new word McCarthyism in a March 1950 drawing of the Republican elephant?
Herblock
Herblock lettered the new word on the top bucket of a teetering stack of tar buckets, which party leaders were pushing the elephant to climb.
Q 09Which Boston lawyer asked Senator McCarthy on live television in 1954 whether he had any sense of decency left?
Joseph Welch
Joseph Welch drew applause from the hearing-room gallery with the rebuke. Five years later he played a Michigan judge in the film Anatomy of a Murder.
Q 10Which Hollywood studio boss told HUAC in 1947 that Communist agitators were behind a 1941 strike at his studio?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney named former animators as the organizers of the five-week walkout, which had followed heavy salary cuts and his sometimes high-handed handling of staff.
Q 11Which lawyer was Senator McCarthy's chief counsel in 1954 and decades later a mentor to the young Donald Trump?
Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn had helped prosecute the Rosenbergs while still in his twenties. New York disbarred him for unethical conduct in 1986, five weeks before he died.
Q 12Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for conspiring to pass which secrets to the Soviet Union?
Atomic bomb designs
Atomic bomb designs were the heart of the case against the couple. They remain the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War.
Q 13Which formal punishment did the Senate impose on Joseph McCarthy by a 67–22 vote in December 1954?
Censure
Q 21Which future Democratic presidential candidate joined Senator McCarthy's subcommittee staff as an assistant counsel?
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy was hired at his father's urging, since McCarthy was a family friend. He resigned after about seven months but kept a fondness for the senator.
Q 22Senator McCarthy's staff was accused in 1954 of demanding special treatment for which drafted aide, a hotel-chain heir?
G. David Schine
G. David Schine had been drafted as a private the previous November. The row over favors for him filled 36 days of televised hearings watched by an estimated 80 million people.
Q 23Whittaker Chambers briefly hid microfilm evidence inside which hollowed-out object on his Maryland farm in 1948?
Censure passed with every Democrat present in favor and the Republicans split evenly. The press that had recorded his every statement then ignored him.
Q 14Which Maine senator denounced McCarthy's tactics in her 1950 Declaration of Conscience speech without ever naming him?
Margaret Chase Smith
Margaret Chase Smith was backed by six fellow Republican senators. McCarthy mocked them as Snow White and the Six Dwarfs and removed her from his investigations subcommittee.
Q 15Which former State Department official, accused of spying by Whittaker Chambers, was convicted of perjury in 1950?
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss could not be tried for espionage because the statute of limitations had expired. He fought the conviction until his death in 1996.
Q 16Which future president made his name on HUAC in 1948 by pressing the spy case against a State Department official?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon was a freshman congressman from California whose doubts kept the investigation alive. The fame carried him to the Senate two years later.
Q 17Which actor testified to HUAC in 1947 as president of the Screen Actors Guild, describing a clique in his union?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan said a small group was using Communist-like tactics to steer the union. He added that he could not say whether its members were Communists.
Q 18Which president signed the Loyalty Order, the executive order that began screening federal employees for Communist ties?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman signed it in March 1947, three years before McCarthy's rise. He hoped in part to quiet critics who called Democrats soft on communism.
Q 19In which West Virginia city did Senator McCarthy give his 1950 speech claiming a list of State Department Communists?
Wheeling
Wheeling hosted the Lincoln Day dinner of a Republican women's club. No audio recording survives, so historians still argue over whether he claimed 205 names or 57.
Q 20In which service branch did Joseph McCarthy serve in World War II, earning the campaign nickname Tail-Gunner Joe?
Marine Corps
Marine Corps duty for McCarthy meant briefing dive-bomber crews as an intelligence officer. He volunteered for twelve flights as a gunner-observer, and those missions were generally safe.
A pumpkin
A pumpkin held the rolls of film for a single night before he handed them to congressional investigators. The press named the whole cache the Pumpkin Papers.
Q 24Which 1960 Kirk Douglas epic helped end the Hollywood blacklist by openly crediting its blacklisted screenwriter?
Spartacus
Spartacus put its blacklisted writer's real name on screen. Anti-communist groups picketed cinemas, and the new president crossed a picket line to see the film.
Q 25What name is given to the purge of gay employees from the federal government during the McCarthy era?
The Lavender Scare
The Lavender Scare borrows a senator's jibe about lavender lads in the State Department. A 1953 executive order barring gay federal workers led to about 5,000 firings.
Q 26Which 1950 law, passed over a presidential veto, forced Communist organizations to register with the government?
The McCarran Act
The McCarran Act also set up a board to investigate suspected subversives. The president's veto message called it a long step toward totalitarianism.
Q 27The Hollywood Ten refused to answer HUAC's questions in 1947 by citing which part of the Bill of Rights?
The First Amendment
The First Amendment defense failed, and the ten began serving prison terms for contempt in 1950. Later witnesses fell back on the Fifth's shield against self-incrimination.
Q 28Which 1950 pamphlet named 151 actors, writers and broadcasters as supposed Communist influences in radio and television?
Red Channels
Red Channels came from a newsletter run by three former FBI agents. Within a year, those it listed were shut out of much of broadcasting and film unless they cleared their names.
Q 29Which actor directed and co-wrote the 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck about a CBS newsroom taking on McCarthy?
George Clooney
George Clooney used only archival footage for the senator. Some test audiences, unaware of that, complained the actor playing McCarthy was overdoing it.
Q 30Which Gary Cooper western, shot as HUAC summoned its screenwriter, is often read as an allegory of blacklisting?
High Noon
High Noon was first offered to John Wayne, who turned the lead down because he saw the story as an obvious attack on blacklisting, which he supported.