Jane Fonda, hundreds of celebrities revive Committee for the First Amendment

Jane Fonda announced Wednesday that she had launched a 21st-century incarnation of the Committee for the First Amendment, originally formed in 1947 in response to congressional hearings probing screenwriters and directors — notably the so-called "Hollywood Ten" — and their alleged Communist ties. "The federal government is once again engaged in a coordinated campaign to silence critics in the government, the media, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment industry," the Committee for the First Amendment's mission statement reads, in part. Trumbo and others in the Hollywood Ten would be jailed for refusing to cooperate with Congress and found themselves among many to be blacklisted through the end of the 1950s and beyond.