Louis Bayless Bolt Jr. was born on September 23, 1909 and died in January of 1984. He graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law and practice for over 50 years, in both the Land Acquisition Department of the Tennessee Valley Authority as well as his own private practice, Bolt and Fancher. After Bolt was dismissed from TVA because of the Veteran's Preference Act, he began his private practice. One of his pastimes was gathering information on communism within TVA, and Bolt became one of the primary red hunters directed at the Authority.

Congress passed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act in 1933 as one innovative program of the New Deal designed to pull the American economy out of the Great Depression. TVA developed fertilizers, helped farmers improve crop yields, replanted forests, controlled flooding, and generated electricity for the inhabitants of the valley. In the 1940s and World War II, TVA shifted its focus to hydroelectric projects that created 28,000 jobs. By the 1950s, TVA could not keep up with the demand for electricity because of its dependence on government financing. In 1959, TVA was granted by Congress the right to be a self-financing program no longer dependent on and limited by government appropriations. TVA has long been a controversial entity, largely because of its government connection and its practices of acquiring farm lands in order to build dams that create electricity.

The Red Scare that began around 1948 and extended through the mid-1950s was caused by a variety of factors, some of which include the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg for espionage, the Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union's acquisition of an atomic bomb, and communist revolution in China. Widespread beliefs that communist spies and sympathizers were in America working towards her demise only added to the paranoia of the times. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman created the Federal Employees Loyalty Program which reviewed federal employees and fired them if any doubt was evident about the employee's loyalty. The House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC), as well as Joseph McCarthy's efforts, increased the search for communists in America.