John Fabian Witt
H-index:
11
Come join us this evening @nyhistory.bsky.social for a lost history of the 1920s -- and the paths that got us through eerily similar democratic crisis a century ago. With the great David Blight, 6:30 pm at 77th & CPW. @simonandschuster.bsky.social
by John Fabian Witt — Reposted by Robert L. Tsai
Pub day character! Charles Garland: Handsome heir to Wall Street fortune, critic of inheritance, and founder of utopian farming communes. His money incubated social movements during liberalism's lean years, even as his own life spiraled out of control. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund
1 day to publication, it's Woodrow Wilson: Wartime president whose draconian speech repression campaign & simultaneous program of propaganda shaped the Garland Fund's approach to politics; his 1913 firing of James Weldon Johnson helped shape the course of the 1920s. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social
Talking with @leahlitman.bsky.social and @kateshaw.bsky.social on @strictscrutiny.bsky.social about #TheRadicalFund was fun. Like a fantasy novel, says Litman--but it's history, replies Shaw! Dear reader, you will have to decide for yourself. @simonandschuster.bsky.social crooked.com/podcast/will...
Will SCOTUS Allow Conversion Therapy for Minors? | Crooked Media
crooked.com
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
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
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
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...
www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
by John Fabian Witt — Reposted by Anna O. Law, Samuel Moyn, Michael A. Clemens , and 1 more Anna O. Law, Samuel Moyn, Michael A. Clemens, Manisha Sinha
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
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
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
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
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
Had the pleasure of hearing John talk about this forthcoming book today.
Really terrific — check it out!
Really terrific — check it out!
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?!
by John Fabian Witt — Reposted by John Fabian Witt
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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