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John Fabian Witt

@johnfabianwitt.bsky.social

2.5K followers 540 following 79 posts

Duffy Prof @YaleLawSch, legal history. Germantown born and bred. Fisherman, orchardist, baseball. Profile photo sitdowners park in Flint. The Radical Fund is out from Simon & Schuster 10/14.

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John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History, which won the 2013 Bancroft Prize in history of the Americas and, in 2020, American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19. .. more

Political science 44%

Law 25%

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 11d

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 3h

Countdown 3, Walter White: Executive secretary of the NAACP beginning in 1929, author, anti-lynching crusader, and co-architect of the NAACP-Garland Fund litigation plan. White's omission of W.E.B. Du Bois from the final grant helped push Du Bois out of the organization he founded. #TheRadicalFund

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 1d

Character countdown 4, Harold Ware: director of clandestine Soviet spy ring who took advantage of an ill Charles Garland to seize the dwindling Fund's resources for Party front groups. Lover of fast cars. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 2d

Character countdown 5, Robert Wagner: German immigrant and U.S. senator, sponsor of New Deal labor law that drew on a decade of Garland Fund-sponsored intellectual ferment to remake American capitalism. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 3d

Did the @latimes.com really call The Radical Fund a #HamiltontheMusical story for the 20th century? Thanks for reading, @thevalorieclark.bsky.social.
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 3d

Character countdown 6, Marie Tudor. Mother of Charles Garland, free spirit, patron of writers and artists like Georgia O'Keefe and Kahlil Gibran. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 4d

Character 7, Carlo Tresca: Italian anarchist editor, notorious gadfly and bon vivant, lover of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Tresca was the Garland Fund beneficiary who connected the Fund to Sacco & Vanzetti. Assassinated by unknown assailants on Fifth Avenue in 1943. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 5d

Character countdown 8, Norman Thomas: Presbyterian minister, Socialist Party presidential candidate, bitter anticommunist, and advocate of industrial democracy, Served as Garland Fund director from 1922 to 1941. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 6d

Wild stories of the Fund’s core organizations needing to expel subversive CP figures in the 20s and early 30s. And also stories of great grassroots communist contributions. Both at once.

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 6d

The G Fund was like a long popular front, from 1922 for nearly 2 decades. It is the target of anticommunist red hunters. Martin Dies and Elizabeth Dilling chief among them. It’s also the target of CPUSA efforts to bore from within and capture the Fund for the Party and for Soviet-sponsored projects.

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 6d

My new essay describes the CIO, the UAW, and the industrial union as building American democracy out of the ashes 100 yrs ago. Where are the parallels today? @uawarchivist.bsky.social @uaw.org @lizshuler.bsky.social @aflcio.org @seiu.org @lawcha.bsky.social @aft.org www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Opinion | How to Save the American Experiment

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Anna O. Law, Samuel Moyn, Michael A. Clemens , and 1 more Anna O. Law, Samuel Moyn, Michael A. Clemens, Manisha Sinha

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 6d

Political violence, post-pandemic one-party rule, vast economic inequality, and immigration backlash? The 2020s are the 1920s all over again--and that may show us a way out. Adapted from my book, to be published next week. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/o...

Opinion | How to Save the American Experiment

www.nytimes.com

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 7d

Character countdown 9, Ossian Sweet: Black physician, Detroit resident and race riot survivor, murder defendant and Clarence Darrow client; his story dramatized the Great Migration, and the Garland Fund quietly financed his defense. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 8d

Character countdown 10, Bester William Steele: Locomotive fireman in all-Black union of railroad workers whose case carried forward the first Garland Fund-connected attack on Jim Crow to reach SCOTUS--not against schools, but against all-white unions. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 9d

Character countdown 11, Upton Sinclair: Iconoclastic author of muckraking bestseller The Jungle about the horrors of labor in Chicago's slaughter yards; critic of concentrated control of the press and cofounder of the Garland Fund in 1922. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 10d

Character countdown 12, John Scopes: High school science teacher, football coach, and evolution case defendant, whose famous 1925 trial and spectacle in Dayton, Tennessee, was dreamed up by the ACLU and financed by the Garland Fund. @Simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Reposted by John Fabian Witt

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 10d

Had the pleasure of hearing John talk about this forthcoming book today.

Really terrific — check it out!

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 11d

Countdown 13, the Scottsboro 9: young Black men convicted of rape in farcical 1931 Alabama trials. The Garland Fund financed campaigns by both sides of the bitter NAACP-Communist Party rivalry, transforming the NAACP-Fund litigation campaign in the process. @simonandschuster.bsky.social

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 11d

Wow, did not know! This must have been through one of the late 1930s grants to the United Cannery, Ag, and Packing Workers of America. Big showdown with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. Which side was she on?!

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 11d

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 12d

Character countdown 14, Joseph Schlossberg: Cloakmaker, immigrant, and Yiddish-language editor of socialist and labor publications, longtime treasurer at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union. Member of Sidney Hillman's Garland Fund-connected world. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 13d

Countdown 15, David Saposs: Labor economist in Sidney Hillman’s braintrust at the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, chief economist at the NLRB, and technocrat of the modern industrial union. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 14d

Countdown 16, Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti: Italian immigrant anarchists made famous by trial on charges of murder at a Boston-area factory. Garland Fund support for an international defense campaign drew attention to the case until their 1927 executions. @SimonBooks

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 14d

Character countdown 17, John D. Rockefeller Jr.: Scion of Standard Oil & foil to the Garland Fund, Rockefeller's PR campaign after massacre of striking coal miners' families in Colorado inspired the Fund as an answer on behalf of working-class Americans. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 15d

Character 18, Walter Reuther and brothers, Roy & Victor: Early leaders @uaw.org, participants in the world of Brookwood Labor College, and enthusiasts for its industrial democracy projects; organizers of the great sit-down strikes in Flint and Detroit. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 16d

character 19, A. Philip Randolph from Jacksonville: young Harlem socialist who rescued the Fund's race efforts by proposing a grant to the fledgling Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, turning the Fund toward organizing Black workers for the mass production economy. @simonandschuster.bsky.social

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 17d

Character countdown 20, Walter Nelles: New York lawyer, counsel to the Garland Fund and co-designer of influential project on affirmative legal action for unions in labor disputes; later faculty member at YLS. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 18d

My latest via @newrepublic.com on when free speech was the antidote to political violence newrepublic.com/article/2008...

Free Speech Is the Antidote to Political Violence

The zealous safeguarding of individual expression is a recent innovation. What sparked it? The need to curb violent societal upheaval.

newrepublic.com

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 18d

Character countdown 21, Scott Nearing: Left-wing economist fired by Wharton, internal critic on the Garland Fund board, and counterculture homesteader, not to mention star in Warren Beatty's 1981 film REDS. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 19d

Character countdown 22, Pauli Murray: Lawyer, writer, and storied civil rights activist accomplished in the practice of "confrontation by typewriter”; student at the Garland Fund's Brookwood Labor College. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

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John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 20d

Character countdown 23, Frank Murphy: Detroit trial judge in Ossian Sweet case, Michigan governor for New Deal sit-down strikes, and associate justice on SCOTUS for Bester Steele's 1944 challenge to whites-only unions in Louisville & Nashville RR. @simonandschuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

John Fabian Witt @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social · 22d

Character no. 24, Clarina Michelson: a wealthy Communist and Garland Fund director, Michelson tried to derail the campaign against Jim Crow in favor of the doomed Stalinist campaign for a separate Black Belt nation in the American South. #TheRadicalFund