The Hate Files

Two boxes of materials that hold the first literature collected on extremist views for the newly created Freedom Center collection.

The hate files comprise pamphlets, periodicals, reprints, and ephemera representing a range of extremist and reactionary political positions active in the United States from 1940 to 1968. Materials document far-right and anti-communist organizing, McCarthyism and its critics, segregationism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, and left-wing extremism, among other topics. The collection reflects the breadth of fringe political activity in mid-twentieth century America and serves as a resource for research into domestic extremism, civil liberties, and the political culture of the period.