Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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19541776 Club

Eisenhower's law takes effect: the Communist Party is now illegal in America

Membership itself becomes a crime punishable by five years in prison, unless members register with the Attorney General.

By the summer of 1954, eight years into the Second Red Scare, Congress had decided suspicion was no longer enough. On August 24, President Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act into law, stripping the Communist Party USA of its legal standing and branding it an "agency of a hostile foreign power." Belonging to the party, or even supporting it without registering with the Attorney General, now carried a fine of up to $10,000 and five years behind bars. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had warned the law would only push Communists further underground…

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More from August 24
1814

Smoke rises over Washington as British troops torch the Capitol and the President's Mansion

Madison flees to Maryland while Dolley Madison's staff carries out the silver as British soldiers sit down to the dinner meant for his guests.
1942

Saratoga's bombers catch the Ryūjō; the carrier goes down after dark

Three to five bombs and a torpedo cripple the Japanese flattop near Santa Isabel Island as the fleets close for battle.
1949

The North Atlantic Treaty takes effect; twelve nations are now bound to defend each other

Four months after the signing in Washington, Article 5's promise becomes binding law.
19441776 Club
Captain Raymond Dronne defies the plan to bypass the city and becomes the first French officer back inside its walls.
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More from Cold War America
1962

Khrushchev agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba

Thirteen days after U-2 photographs found the sites, the Soviet premier backs down and the world exhales.
1965

Crews set the last piece, and the Gateway Arch finally closes at 630 feet

A nine-ton triangle of steel bridges the gap between two legs that had been rising toward each other for two years.
1952

U.S. detonates Ivy Mike at Enewetak; Elugelab Island is gone

The 7:15 a.m. shot, fired just before a presidential election, yields 10.4 megatons from a device more than twenty feet tall.
1983

Reagan signs the King holiday bill, fifteen years after the first one was introduced

Congress passed it by wide margins, but the President had once dismissed the push behind it as "an image, not reality."
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