It sold 429,000 copies in its first year of publication, but many local governments banned it. In Bakersfield, California, it was burned.12 The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)—which had been established by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938 and would take extravagant aim at Hollywood during the Red Scare—heard testimony that The Grapes of Wrath was Stalinist propaganda derived from Communist Party notes.
