Blacklisted: An American Story

Step into one of the most charged moments in American history. Blacklisted: An American Story explores the Hollywood blacklist and the federal government’s loyalty investigations that upended thousands of lives during the Red Scare. Through powerful personal stories, rare artifacts, and film clips, the exhibition reveals how fear, politics, and identity collided—and what was lost when dissent was silenced.

This timely exhibition explores the intersections of politics, antisemitism, freedom of speech, and national security during the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. With the rise of the Cold War and global communism, anxiety over Soviet infiltration fanned fears in the United States.

Numerous industries, including Hollywood and the federal government, purged those accused or suspected of being Communists—many of whom were Jews. In fact, “Jewish” often served as a stand-in for “Communist.”

From the late 1940s through the 1950s, all three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—sacrificed First Amendment rights in the name of security. Freedoms of speech, association, and assembly—all protected by the US Constitution—came under fire. Hundreds of people lost their jobs, thousands resigned under duress, and many more stood by quietly, afraid of repercussions for their real or imagined political participation.

Blacklisted: An American Story, on loan from Jewish Museum Milwaukee, incorporates film, personal narratives, objects, costume, and photography to examine the shifting definition of what it meant then—and what it means now—to be a patriotic American, and who gets to decide. The Capital Jewish Museum expands on the original presentation about the Hollywood Blacklist to include a look at the Red Scare’s impact on federal employees in the nation’s capital.

Members See it First: Sunday, March 1, 2026
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