Communist Control Act of 1954 - Wikipedia

On August 24, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party in the United States. From the article:

"The Communist Control Act was originally proposed as an amendment to the Internal Security Act of 1950, which had sought to combat the spread of communism in labor unions.[2] Apart from its secondary focus which concentrated on the illegality of “communist front organizations” (i.e. labor unions),[4] the bill was drafted with the intention of tackling the root of the communist problem in the United States: the Communist Party. In its second section, the CCA of 1954 portrayed the American Communist Party as an “agency of a hostile foreign power.”[2] The Party was described as “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the government,” and as a “clear, present, and continuing danger to the security of the United States.”[2] The Act made membership to the Communist Party a criminal act and stipulated that all Party members would be sanctioned with up to a $10,000 fine or imprisonment for five years or both. Additionally, according to the third section, the Communist Party would be deprived of “the rights, privileges, and immunities of a legal body.”[4]

The Internal Security Act of 1950 had defined two types of “communist organizations.” Senator Butler later proposed a bill aimed at the removal of Communists from leadership positions in labor unions, adding a third class, that of “communist-infiltrated organizations.” Afterwards, Democratic Senator Humphrey put forward a substitute to that bill with the intention of directly tackling the “root of evil,” the Communist Party members.[5] Through an amendment by Senator Daniel, both the Butler and Humphrey bills were merged into one, winning unanimous approval in the Senate from both Democrats and Republicans."