The Blacklist Library: Power and Information in the Red Scare

Created by former-FBI agents in 1947, American Business Consultants is best known for its pamphlet Red Channels and its newsletter Counterattack which aided the Hollywood blacklists during the second red scare. This paper considers the American Business Consultants role as a compendium and reference library of leftist publications accessible to employers conducting background checks on job applicants in context with the larger history of state and state-sanctioned hoarding of information and its impact on individuals beginning with the bureaucratic turn of the early twentieth century