On this final day of LGBT-Q Pride Month, tonight's installment of our hidden history series isn't

about an individual, it's about an episode.

How the anti-communist paranoia that gripped Washington at the dawn of the Cold War led to an often overlooked chapter in LGBTQ history.

Fan by Senator Joseph McCarthy's headline-grabbing claims, fears of communist

aversion led to the hunt for communists in the government.

Department of Justice officials have promised further arrests as the crackdown

on suspected subversive gathers momentum.

McCarthy explicitly linked communism with LGBTQ people

and some even said they were the bigger threat.

The red scare had spawned the lavender scare,

the name taken from Senator Everett Dircson's reference to gay men as lavender lads.

A 1950 congressional investigation concluded that LGBTQ people were

unsuitable for federal employment and posed a security risk because fear of exposure made them susceptible to blackmail.

Thousands of workers across the government were investigated, interrogated, and forced from their jobs.

Over time, society's attitudes towards LGBTQ people changed but until

1975 there were still barred from the civil service and it wasn't until the

1990s that President Bill Clinton ended official discrimination

based on sexual orientation for all non-military government workers.

Mark Stein is a history professor at San Francisco State University.

Mark, for someone who's younger than a baby, but certainly at probably the age of your students,

may see all the celebrations that we've had during this pride month and wonder where the attitudes,

wonder about the attitudes that led to this in the 1950s and early 1960s.

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