Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent Since 1865 [1 ed.] 9780299302832, 9780299302849

Citation preview

protest on the page

t h e h i s t o ry o f p r i n t a n d d i g i ta l c u l ­t u r e Se­r ies Ed­i­t ors James P. Danky Chris­tine Paw­ley Adam R. Nel­son

PROTEST ON THE PAGE essays on print and the culture of dissent since 1865

Edited by

James L. Baughman Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen James P. Danky

the university of wisconsin press

Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part, through support from the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059 uwpress.wisc.edu 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden London WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom eurospanbookstore.com Copyright © 2015 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means—digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise— or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Protest on the page: essays on print and the culture of dissent since 1865 / edited by James L. Baughman, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, and James P. Danky. pages   cm — (The history of print and digital culture) “This collection includes papers originally presented at a September 2012 conference sponsored by the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, in Madison, Wisconsin”—Introduction. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-299-30284-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-299-30283-2 (e-book) 1.  Underground press publications—United States—History. 2.  Press and politics—United States—History. 3.  Protest literature, American. I.  Baughman, James L., 1952–, editor. II.  Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jennifer, editor. III.  Danky, James Philip, 1947–, editor. IV.  Series: The History of Print and Digital Culture. PN4888.U5P76   2015 071´.3—dc23 2014030784

contents preface: protest and print culture in america James P. Danky

“A Necessary Relation”: Protest and American Print Culture James L. Baughman

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Part 1:  Revolt and Reaction Writing Redemption: Racially Ambiguous Carpetbaggers and the Southern Print Culture Campaign against Reconstruction

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The Inky Protest of an Anarchist Printmaker: Carlo Abate’s Newspaper Illustrations and the Artist’s Hand in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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Spanish-Language Anarchist Periodicals in Early Twentieth-Century United States

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Pamphlets of Self-Determination: Dissident Literature, Productive Fiction

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Adam Thomas

Andrew D. Hoyt

Nicolás Kanellos

Trevor Joy Sangrey

Part 2:  Consensus Contested By the Pinch and the Pound: Less and More Protest in American Vegetarian Cookbooks from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

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Meeting the Modernistic Tide: The Book as Evangelical Battleground in the 1940s

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Laura J. Miller and Emilie Hardman

Daniel Vaca

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Contents

Children and the Comics: Young Readers Take On the Critics Carol L. Tilley

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Part 3: Dangerous Print Paper Soldiers: The Ally and the GI Underground Press during the Vietnam War

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The Clowning of Richard Nixon in the Underground Press

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Off / On Our Backs: The Feminist Press in the “Sex Wars” of the 1980s

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contributors index

241 245

Derek Seidman Micah Robbins

Joyce M. Latham

preface protest and print culture in america James P. Danky Over three glorious September days in Madison in 2012, the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture held its ninth biennial conference—the first under our new name. Previously, in 2010, the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America had modified its name, adding “Digital” and dropping “Modern America.” We did this (a) to reflect the profoundly changed landscape in the decades since the Internet arrived to transform the ways we produce and consume information and (b) to show our awareness of the everincreasing presence of digital media, despite the surprising and somehow heartening persistence of print culture. The Center’s work now includes both forms of publishing, as we continue to investigate the myriad ways that text, whether on the page or onscreen, is produced, disseminated, and consumed. September 2012 also marked the twentieth anniversary of the Center’s founding—enough years of accomplishment to take our measure, but also a nudge toward redoubling our efforts to provide a forum for scholars from diverse fields of digital and print studies to present their work. And did they ever! Seasoned scholars to graduate students were welcomed to Madison to share their research, arriving from small colleges and large research universities across the continent, and in some cases beyond. At the beginning of the conference, two individuals were honored. Christine Pawley, the first research coordinator for the Center (while still in graduate school), retired as director of the Center and of the School of Library and Information Studies after an outstanding career in which (according to the words of current director Greg Downey) she “ensured that the intertwined worlds of print, text, books, literacy, publishing, and reading remain a lively and important part of the University.” As one of the editors of Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America, the latest volume in our series, her legacy remains current.

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The second honoree was Paul S. Boyer, who unfortunately had died in March 2012. From the outset, Paul had been one of the Center’s greatest contributors and champions. He was a founding member of the advisory board and served as the second chair. When discussion turned to the possibility of organizing a book series, Paul volunteered to create a revised edition of his classic, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age, which became the first volume in the series. Then with Charles L. Cohen, Paul edited Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, which grew out of the Center’s 2004 conference. This volume, like the conference as a whole, is dedicated to Paul’s memory. During the event, the Center’s friends in and around the university once again provided crucial support. Grants from the Evjue Foundation, the General Library System, the Brittingham Fund, the Anonymous Fund, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the School of Library and Information Studies are gratefully acknowledged. The members of the advisory board and others who participated in selecting the papers for presentation are drawn from many disparate but interconnected departments on the Madison campus, including the English Department, Library and Information Studies, Religious Studies, Journalism and Mass Communication, the History Department, Educational Policy Studies, and the General Library System. In concert, they selected PROTEST as the theme for the conference and offered many ideas on what that meant—so many, in fact, that the working title of the conference became “Protest on the Page: Print Culture History in Opposition to Almost Anything* (*You Can Think Of ).” The Conference Committee consisted of James L. Baughman, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Jonathan Senchyne, James P. Danky, Christine Pawley, Stephen Vaughn, and Chris Wells. At each stage of our work, the steady hand and eye of Anna Palmer, the Center’s coordinator, guided the proceedings. Beyond catching the attention of scholars, our aim was to trumpet the Center’s commitment to as broad a series of topics and methods as possible. We tried to collectively understand protest using both print and digital media, examining how it is produced, how it is sent forth into the world, and the various meanings recipients assign to it. Our words, and those of the authors in the chapters that follow, would not be possible without the continuing support of our friends at the University of Wisconsin Press, especially Gwen Walker, Sheila Leary, and Adam Mehring. In addition, we thank Carolyn Bronstein and Paul Hass for their good counsel. The editors are also indebted to Chris Dodge for his thoughtful editorial suggestions as well as for the creation of the index. In more than sixty papers in twenty sessions, scholars brought attention to print produced by African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities; the work of Unitarian social activists; and the role of librarians

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and corporate-sponsored Internet chat rooms in promoting dissent. Some sense of the variety can be seen in presentations such as Emily Lupton-Metrish’s “The Revolution Will Be Thought About: The Writings of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, 1968–1975, and Beyond”; Erin Smith’s “Pulp Protest: Vera Caspary, Progressive Politics, and Trash Fiction”; and David Beard’s “The Complementary Strategies of Print and Material Cultures: The Case of Steampunk at the Start of the Twenty-First Century.” We also had some memorable presentations on protest beyond the United States that are not included, since our series with the University of Wisconsin Press focuses on this country. Archie Dick’s “Picturing Protest: African Americans and Dissidence in the South African Spectator, 1900–1902” and David Woken’s “Challenges in the Development of a Print Counterculture: La Protesta Goes Daily, Buenos Aires, 1903–1905” are representative of scholarship whose focus is international. Clearly there is space for others to take up that challenge and to investigate how print and digital protest around the world occurs, and with what results. To highlight our theme, the Center invited Victor Navasky to be our keynote speaker. Navasky is the publisher emeritus of the Nation and the chair of the Columbia Journalism Review. He joined the Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the country, a mere 113 years after its founding. Long associated with dissent and advocacy of many sorts, the Nation engaged in many extended, and often successful, campaigns during the years of Navasky’s editorship. As an active participant in the political and cultural issues since the 1950s when he founded his first publication, Monocle, while a law student at Yale, Navasky has also made time to author a number of books, including Kennedy Justice, Naming Names (which won a National Book Award), and A Matter of Opinion—and two with Christopher Cerf, including The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation and Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq. Since the conference Navasky has published The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power. Given the scope and power of his work, we considered him an ideal participant-observer of protest on the page. But Navasky would have none of our compliments. In fact he began his remarks by saying, “I want to make clear at the outset that I protest the decision to invite me to give the keynote address at this conference on protest. I am too white, too old, too former, too male, too East Coast, too elite, too print-oriented to be your keynote speaker.” For Navasky, protest is a posture or a tactic, rather than a program. But it is clearly one that each of us can take up. Navasky highlighted some exceptional protesters, each of whom had more than a passing familiarity with print and other media: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abbie Hoffman. Attempting to define what elements go into

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successful protests, Navasky identified persistence, energy, and commitment over the long haul. Whether as personal protest, or as part of a movement, the use of print, visual, and verbal elements are likely to be present. He further emphasized that protest need not be only serious but can be lighthearted and make you laugh. Satire, for example, is one of the most effective forms of protest. Over the last two centuries, political cartoons and comix have come to be “one of the most effective weapons in the malcontent’s armory,” whether from mainstream newspaper legends like Herblock, Bill Mauldin, and Walt Kelly or from thousands of nameless student journalists. In Monocle, Navasky used satire to protest the US system of presidential elections, especially the campaign of Barry Goldwater. When called to the Nation, Navasky continued his use of satire to “protest injustice on behalf of the dispossessed.” l The half millennium since Gutenberg first inked his press has produced a torrent of print that had its origins in protests of one sort or another. Printing originally developed to serve the State and the Church, but it soon thereafter became the medium of choice for those who opposed one or the other, or both. Fuelled by a growing literacy, protesters used print to create networks and to disseminate their views. Ink on paper added stature and heft to such protests, just as it allowed the protesters’ views to be shared beyond the local. Earlier efforts with quill or clay were quickly shoved to the side by the new technology. Speed mattered. Today the digital makes a mockery of any notion of speed in other media, whether used for protest or not; but print remains essential for many protests in the United States and globally. In both cases, when ideas are formalized on the page, they possess a power that the purely auditory does not (though speech is routinely converted to print). The chapters that follow offer a range of specific cases that illuminate protest on the page. Revolt and Reaction Protest is found in both revolt and reaction. Herein Adam Thomas challenges the underlying assumption of many about protest. As his analysis of the role of the Southern press in Reconstruction demonstrates, “the change [a dissident press] . . . achieves is not always progressive.” Specifically, he shows how the press can figure as a “counterrevolutionary rather than revolutionary movement.” For example, journalists and editors in the occupied South generated the tropes and arguments that depicted carpetbaggers as the worst of scoundrels, and that blossomed into the myth of the Lost Cause. The writers generated a large volume of newspaper stories, and soon novels, aimed at discrediting the authors of Reconstruction. Eventually many in the North who read the

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newspapers and novels appropriated their characterizations uncritically. The authors, editors, publishers, and readers of the oppositional press truly believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, for they were successful in resisting and later overthrowing Reconstruction. Protest, however, is most often associated with reform, from radical to mild. Print culture is most frequently thought of as words on paper, or on computer screens. But the visual world in which art is a component is also a crucial arena for social protest. Paintings, cartoons, street banners, graffiti, even the lowly bumper sticker, are all sources of visual protest. Andrew D. Hoyt’s analysis of the role of woodcuts in the anarchist press puts the visual front and center. “The development of wood engraving revolutionized nineteenth-century newspaper publishing,” Hoyt states, “by allowing large runs of highly detailed images to be printed easily and inexpensively alongside text.” That this development occurred at a time of great changes in printing technology allows for a detailed focus on the role of the artist in creating the often startling images in Cronica Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), created by Italian anarchist stone workers in Vermont. This periodical was one of the longest-running radical political serials in American history. In the pages of Cronica, the collaboration of Carlo Abate’s illustrations and the text of Luigi Galleani created a transnational print culture for anarchists at a time when this most revolutionary of ideologies held broad sway over segments of the working class. Hoyt argues that it is the handrendered visuals in the pages of Cronica that brought to life the political events of the time in a way that the paper’s readers could easily appreciate. (Think of Harper’s Weekly without its wood engravings!) Today this analysis serves to remind print culture scholars that print, here as protest, does more when the visual and the textual are combined. Traditional narratives of anarchism in America have a focus on the German American martyrs who were convicted after the bombing of Haymarket. However appropriate as a starting point, the Haymarket Affair often serves to lock this marginalized political movement into a particular chronological and ethnic frame. Yet Nicolás Kanellos brings to light the importance of anarchism and its unyielding commitment to equality, which seems out of fashion in today’s so-called “marketplace of ideas.” What is more, this is the anarchism of Spanish immigrants, and from the end of the nineteenth century through the Great Depression. In their more than one hundred titles—almost all of which were unknown until the work of Kanellos’s Recovering the US Hispanic Heritage Project at the University of Houston—we discover an active network of Spanish anarchists producing papers from Los Angeles to Tampa, from large cities like New York to smaller entities. In these four-plus decades, the editors, reporters, and publishers focused on workers and their struggles in mines, cigar factories, and shipyards from coast to coast. And not only local but also global issues of political and social import (such as the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and

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later the Spanish Civil War) engaged these men—and women. With their international outlook, these Spanish-language publications provided their readers with a transnational perspective to galvanize them in their ongoing struggles. One of the greatest shifts for American radicals occurred with the Russian Revolution, as many socialists and others developed more revolutionary political approaches. Communists in America were much influenced by events in Russia and actively sought to recreate the Soviet reality in the United States. In this process, American Communists focused on the most disenfranchised parts of the population—including African Americans. One of the tools the American Communists used to communicate their revolutionary ideas was pamphlets produced in the early 1930s and widely distributed for many years. In approaching the black population, located primarily in the South, these homegrown Communists were implementing a strategy developed in Moscow that saw African Americans as an unrecognized national group that should be given self-determination. The pamphlets produced by the Party aimed at African Americans brought class into the discussions of race. Trevor Joy Sangrey sees this as a productive fiction, which is an argument that can shift our understanding of how this pamphlet literature functions as protest for social movements. These Communist pamphlets linked racism and class oppression on the page, and indicted the US government as cause and culprit. Consensus Contested Protest can be about anything. Often seen in terms of epochal political and social movements, protest can also be found in domestic spaces and quotidian practices. At a superficial level, cookbooks serve “as manuals instructing readers in some of the [potentially] most mundane activities of everyday life: selecting, preparing, and eating food,” Laura J. Miller and Emilie Hardman observe. But cookbooks can be so much more. From the perspective of those living in the early twenty-first century, the ubiquity of vegetarians and their culinary desires seem obvious, but it was only a few decades ago that those who eschewed meat were seen as very much outside the mainstream. Whether for religious or other reasons, the choice to not eat the flesh of other creatures was conflated with all manner of ideas deemed socially deviant. (“Crackpot” was the vernacular term.) Thus the print culture of vegetarian cookbooks, which have been published since the nineteenth century, can provide insights about protest on the page. Our new world of food choices owes much to the creators of these humble and little-studied volumes. Today serious students of social and political events would assume a critical role for religious opinion. The current, often overheated rhetoric of conservative Christians and the more assertive atheists, among others, is part and parcel of nearly every news cycle. This is a contrast, or so some might think, from the

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public role of religion in the past, specifically in the development of religious print culture. However, Daniel Vaca gives us a theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis of evangelical book publishing in the 1940s as protest literature. The author’s topic is how, during the late 1940s, evangelical Protestants came to treat the production, circulation, and consumption of books as practices of protest. Here, books became objects of protest in opposition to the liberal book culture that developed during World War II. To undermine this liberal print consensus, evangelical entrepreneurs developed their own means of creating, publishing, and selling their own books. In an uncommon analysis of the ways in which commercial systems can become forms of protest, Vaca develops a compelling story of print culture. One of the great print culture controversies of the postwar period involves comic books. As the New York Times noted when discussing the work of Carol L. Tilley in 2013, “for all the colorful adversaries that comic books have yielded, perhaps no figure in the history of that industry is as vilified as Dr. Fredric Wertham.” Tilley’s groundbreaking work, based on the newly available Wertham papers at the Library of Congress, shows that the psychiatrist who created a national panic over the effect of comic books on young Americans both misrepresented his research and falsified his results. Given the gigantic audience for comics in the 1940s and 1950s, Wertham’s manipulation of the interviews he conducted with young readers can be said to have done more to injure the notions of a fair-and-open media than most. His Seduction of the Innocent (1954) stoked widespread anxieties about childhood and adolescence in postwar America by demonizing the most popular print form for youth. Wertham’s characterization of comic books as dangerous trash both underrated the narrative and artistic qualities of the medium while it overemphasized their transgressive nature. Meanwhile, Tilley’s chapter brings together both (a) television and print and (b) comics and their youthful readers in ways that scholars of culture will find revealing—not to mention entertaining. Dangerous Print The history of print is a history of how its production and consumption has threatened the freedom and even the lives of its authors, publishers, and readers. Often the print in question was aimed at segments of the population who were asserting or redefining their rights to free expression. That later periods saw virtue in this protest does not diminish the personal peril that could attend participants’ involvement. During the 1960s and early ’70s, all young men were eligible for the draft, a fact that would later produce today’s all-volunteer army. At age eighteen, young men would register with the Selective Service office near their home and, more often than not, begin basic training soon thereafter. That this would

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produce resistance seems obvious, especially during wartime, but during the US war in Vietnam, the protests became gigantic. For those most involved— the soldiers—the political dynamics of growing civilian dissent and the reality of fighting a war against a well-trained and committed guerrilla enemy caused American soldiers to question their military service. Derek Seidman’s study of one of the hundreds of antiwar papers produced by GIs themselves reveals the depth of their discontent. Reading the Ally gave individual soldiers (and airmen and sailors) the information to understand their plight and to know that they were far from alone. The Ally’s use of GI letters to shape the coverage shows what the historian Robert Darnton called the “circuit of communication”— the feedback loop between author, distributor, and reader, and then back to the author. In this regard, Seidman provides an important example of the dynamics that helped make GI papers such a crucial medium of the Vietnam protest. As Victor Navasky suggested, satire is a powerful weapon for protest. Laughing at someone in high places is likely to promote a powerful reaction. Of all US presidents, none has attracted the attention of satirists more than Richard Nixon. Micah Robbins shows us the ways Nixon’s public persona was made into that of a demonic clown by the countercultural press. In their use of print to protest Nixon, his policies, and his cronies, these editors and publishers used wildly obscene, libelous representations of the president to subvert the carefully managed public personae that helped him maintain a decades-long political career. Whether through representations in novels by authors like Robert Coover and Philip Roth or in the pages of underground newspapers and magazines such as the Realist and the Berkeley Barb, dissident satirists launched an aggressive, symbolically violent series of insults against Nixon’s reputation that proved to be an important part of the forces that brought him down. Joyce M. Latham’s feminist journalists created two of the most notable periodicals the women’s movement produced in the 1980s. off our backs was founded in 1970 to give voice to radical feminists, many of whom were integral to the antiwar and civil rights movements. As a periodical devoted to a political analysis of women, the issues it covered included women’s bodies, a concern for physical safety, and, as a result, the charged issue of women’s sexual health. The particular feminist ethos animating off our backs began to fray by the Reagan years, as seen by the creation of On Our Backs, a lesbian sex periodical, in 1984. Latham focuses on the “sex wars of the 1980s” that erupted as a result of these contradictory viewpoints. She presents the contrasting views of pornography that redefined acceptable sexual lifestyles and their representation in print and media. l

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The Center’s founding impulse was to break with traditional book history with its focus on aesthetics. Instead, reflecting on the beginnings of print culture scholarship, the Center took as its mandate to promote the study of any text for any reader in any period. This was both bold and, it turned out, beyond our capability; but the concern led us to the hundreds of scholars who have participated in the life of the Center through our conferences and colloquiums. Moreover, it seemed obvious that protest would be an appropriate topic for a conference, and for a book such as this. After all, authors, in any age, when they discover a truth, have sought to share it, and print has always been their medium. In demonstrating how social change works, scholars have then relied on the print these authors and publishers and distributors and readers made use of. Print was inherent and significant in the rise of democratic institutions, and over the last several centuries in the United States, print has been fundamental, if not always successful, in articulating the changes that were needed. This volume of essays then provides an overview, both expected and surprising, of the ways in which these protests on the page have occurred.

protest on the page

“A Necessary Relation” protest and american print culture James L. Baughman

Although America had a vibrant print culture in the last half of the eighteenth

century, it was bounded by self-interest. That is, printers might choose sides in political disputes, but only if they believed a substantial number of people shared the sentiment. For example, on the eve of the American Revolution, most printers concluded that a majority of Americans (or their patrons) opposed continued British rule. And their publications consisted mainly of criticisms of Great Britain, most famously Thomas Paine’s essay Common Sense (1776). Loyalists supporting the Crown had difficulty finding a publisher willing to print their opinions.1 A printer’s caution had its logic: a New York mob suppressed efforts to publish a rebuttal to Paine’s tract.2 Through the remainder of the century, protest in print could be intense, yet it remained limited to larger political factions.3 That condition remained true in the first decades of the nineteenth century, to the dismay of one famous visitor. The young nation had plenty of newspapers, observed the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, in the first part of Democracy in America, published in 1835. Indeed, the country had too many papers. Having so many voices, Tocqueville believed, effectively limited their influence: “The sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.”4 Then, too, in his consideration of American print culture, Tocqueville overattended to the differences between the United States and Europe.5 America, notwithstanding the horrendous exception of slavery, lacked the sharp class

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distinctions of France and other European countries. Nor by comparison were political divisions in the United States substantial. “In America,” he wrote, “political life is active, varied, even agitated, but it is rarely troubled by profound passions.” Comparing French and American newspapers proved his point. French papers were full of political discussions; American papers full of advertisements (he claimed three-quarters). “The rest is most often occupied by political news or simple anecdotes; only from time to time does one perceive in an overlooked corner one of the burning discussions that are the daily fodder of readers among [the French].”6 Here Tocqueville was not being unfair. Most newspapers in the early 1830s were closely tied to a major political party. And that connection deeply affected their voice. In America, electoral success on the national level required political parties to possess broad appeal. A party could not achieve power with the support of only one region. As a result, political leaders eschewed sharply divisive issues. Candidates and their editorial supporters labored, one historian of the press determined, “to avoid alienating any significant segment of the national constituency.”7 To Tocqueville, the close links between newspapers and political parties dampened the “burning discussions” he preferred. Although partisanship could be fierce, it focused largely on the “character” of candidates. “The spirit of the journalist in France is to discuss in a violent but elevated and often eloquent manner the great interests of the state,” he asserted. “The spirit of the journalist in America is to attack coarsely, without preparation and without art, the passions of those whom it addresses, to set aside principles in order to grab men.”8 Tocqueville made another, more disquieting claim. Protest on the margins could not flourish in America because the new nation did not, in fact, have freedom of thought. “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America,” he wrote.9 This was not the fault of government, but of society. Americans were a conforming people, and a “tyranny of the majority” more than inhibited freedom of expression; it denied it. Citing mob violence against a Baltimore newspaper opposed to the War of 1812, he asserted, “When one comes to examine what the exercise of thought is in the United States, the power of the majority surpasses all the powers that we know in Europe.”10 Democracy in America, one historian wrote, was a “classic analysis of egalitarian conformity.”11 In that regard, Tocqueville made two somewhat contradictory points. The first is that those holding minority views were too fearful of the majority to express them—or even think them. This was a variation of what one German social scientist later dubbed “the spiral of silence.”12 Majority rule, Tocqueville argued, was worse than the Spanish Inquisition. “The Inquisition could never prevent books contrary to the religion of the greatest number from circulating

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in Spain. The empire of the majority does better in the United States. It has taken away even the thought of publishing them.” Yet he then claimed there were religious dissenters in America, but they could not find publishing outlets. “One encounters nonbelievers in America,” he wrote, “but disbelief finds so to speak no organ.”13 Tocqueville went too far. Indeed, one recent biographer dismissed his “less independence of mind” charge as “preposterous.” 14 The dominance of the party press during this period obscured the slow and contested emergence of another print culture. It did not serve established political parties, but new causes or movements, like those seeking the immediate abolition of slavery, which could be hugely controversial. “News in print, for the first time in the United States,” wrote one historian, “was an invitation to citizens assigned no political role in the normal course of the Whig or Democratic campaigns.”15 Tocqueville initially either missed this new print culture—or chose to dismiss it. Perhaps, when he visited Boston, he spent too much time with a certain class of Bostonians, specifically the city’s conservative elite.16 He did not acknowledge a small Boston weekly, the Liberator, published by William Lloyd Garrison. Its very existence—and survival—suggested that the young Frenchman was overgeneralizing. The Liberator took what was then a decidedly radical view of slavery—that it should be abolished. Garrison continued to publish, despite advocating a position very few at the time found acceptable. And his persistence proved Tocqueville wrong about press freedom, at least in the north. Mobs, representing his much-feared majority, did attack abolitionist printers, including Garrison, in some Northern cities in the mid-1830s. Yet the abolitionist press, including an aggressive pamphlet campaign by the American Anti-Slavery Society, was not silenced. 17 Such publications marked the beginning of a print culture of protest, one that dared to raise issues outside of the accepted national conversation. In the second part of Democracy, published in 1840, Tocqueville retreated substantially from his earlier comments on the conformist tendencies of Americans. Tocqueville, two scholars concluded, had “learned to admire democracy, sincerely, if not wholeheartedly.”18 He was impressed by the presence of so many voluntary associations in America. They were, he averred, a consequence of equality in America, which made citizens independent but weak. They “fall into impotence if they do not learn to aid each other freely.” Voluntary associations empowered Americans. And he deemed print culture critical to the success of those groups. Not, as some might think, by necessarily converting individuals to a cause, but by connecting those already inclined to it. “Only a newspaper can come to deposit the same thought in a thousand minds at the same moment,” he wrote. “There exists, therefore, a necessary relation between associations and newspapers; newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers.”19

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This volume explores that “necessary relation” between voluntary associations and print culture. More specifically, we focus on “protest” print culture. This culture shares, James P. Danky has written, “certain attributes: distinctive, radical, and sometimes unruly ideas; publishers with limited resources; uncertain distribution; and a niche outside the mainstream.”20 Although readers of a certain ideological persuasion may assume “protest,” whether in 1890 or 1975, concerns those populating the far left of the political spectrum, that assumption has to be challenged. Tocqueville himself noted, with the bemusement befitting a Frenchman, the growth of the temperance movement as a voluntary association.21 Banning of alcoholic beverages was certainly (to many) radical social policy, but it was a socially and not economically radical reform. And several of the chapters in this volume trace print protest cultures that were conservative if not reactionary in matters of race and religion. Protest might not involve politics or foreign policy at all, but lifestyle, as in the case in those publishing vegetarian cookbooks. l This collection includes papers originally presented at a September 2012 conference sponsored by the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, in Madison, Wisconsin. Participants included scholars from multiple disciplines. The common focus was “protest,” efforts that writers, illustrators—and, in one essay, readers—launched to challenge the accepted cultural and economic order. Some questioned the fairness of American capitalism and its publicists, sometimes the veracity of mainstream journalism itself. Some defended alternative sexual identities. A few dared, in a nation that gave the world the Big Mac, to champion vegetarianism. Notes 1. Willard C. Frank Jr., “Error, Distortion, and Bias in the Virginia Gazettes, 1773–74,” Journalism Quarterly 49 (Winter 1972): 729–39. 2. Richard Buel Jr., “Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of Libertarianism, 1760–1820,” in The Press and the American Revolution, ed. Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1980), 80–81; and Leonard W. Levy, The Emergence of a Free Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 174–75. 3. See, e.g., Buel, “Freedom of the Press,” 95–97; Leonard W. Levy, Constitutional Opinions: Aspects of the Bill of Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 169–70; Dwight L. Teeter, “Press Freedom and the Public Printing, 1775–83,” Journalism Quarterly 45 (Autumn 1968): 451; and Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 199–201.

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4. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 176–77. 5. Tocqueville, one admirer wrote in 1840, “describes America, but he thinks of Europe.” Paul Janet quoted in Robert Nisbet, “Many Tocquevilles,” American Scholar (Winter 1976–77): 62. 6. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 175–76. 7. John Nerone, Violence against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere in U.S. History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 85. 8. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 177. An intriguing case study of the party press model at work just prior to Tocqueville’s visit is Norma Basch’s, “Marriage, Morals, and Politics in the Election of 1828,” Journal of American History 80 (December 1993): 890–918. 9. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 244. 10. Ibid., 241n, 242n, 243. See also Morton J. Horwitz, “Tocqueville and the Tyranny of the Majority,” Review of Politics 28 ( July 1966), 303–7; and James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), chap. 14. 11. Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 52. 12. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral of Silence: Our Social Skin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). 13. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 245; and Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 201n, 202n. Tocqueville’s earlier draft was even more forceful on this point. 14. Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 262. See also Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 268. 15. Thomas C. Leonard, News for All: America’s Coming-of-Age with the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 72. 16. Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville, 181–82. 17. Trish Loughran, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770–1870 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 306–10, 344–48; Leonard L. Richard, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Howard Alexander Morrison, “Gentlemen of Proper Understanding: A Closer Look at Utica’s Anti-Abolitionist Mob,” New York History 62 ( January 1981): 61–82; Leonard, News for All, 69–72; Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830–1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1963); and Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964). 18. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, introduction to Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), liii, lxxxv. 19. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 490, 492–94. In two long reviews of Democracy, John Stuart Mill highlighted and expanded on this point: likening newspapers to railroads in uniting like-minded Englishmen. See Mill, Essays on Politics and Culture, ed. Gertrude Himmelfarb (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 189, 243. See also Mansfield and Winthrop, introduction to Democracy in America, lxxiv; and David Paul Nord, “Tocqueville, Garrison and the Perfection of Journalism,” Journalism History 13 (Summer 1986), 57, 59, 62.

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20. James P. Danky, “The Oppositional Press,” in The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America, ed. David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, vol. 5 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 269. 21. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 492.

part 1

Revolt and Reaction

Writing Redemption racially ambiguous carpetbaggers and the southern print culture campaign against reconstruction Adam Thomas

In his partly autobiographical 1879 novel, A Fool’s Errand, Albion W. Tourgée described the approach taken by Southern newspapers to “carpetbaggers”— Northerners like him who took office in the region during Reconstruction: “More and more bitter, more and more loathsome, became the mass of Southern journalism. Defiant hostility, bitter animosity, [and] unrestricted libertinism in the assaults of private character, poured over the columns of the Southern press like froth upon the jaws of a rabid cur.”1 The present essay examines the froth, the cur, and those bitten by it. Scholars have long noted that carpetbaggers cut hated figures in Southern Democratic journalism after the Civil War, but few recognize in that hatred a deliberate purpose. Closer reading of the substance, effects, and efficacy of the anticarpetbagger print movement reveals the cur to be less rabid and more rational than Tourgée allowed; it was, in fact, sophisticated and brimming with intention. Southern “redeemers” employed a racialized imagery in print to cast doubt on the whiteness of carpetbaggers, thereby weakening radical Republican authority in the region and nation.2 Their employment of print culture was equally calculated; it offered a more effective means of resistance than physical intimidation, ultimately contributing more to the overthrow of Reconstruction.3 Taking the Southern press campaign against the carpetbagger seriously as a form of oppositional journalism and acknowledging its influence in stunting 11

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post-emancipation social change forces a reevaluation of theories concerning protest in print.4 The role of journalism in ensuring that America’s “massive experiment in interracial democracy” went unrealized divorces, in this case, the oppositional press from its usual association with defense of democratic ideals.5 There can be little doubt that at the beginning of Reconstruction, Southern Democratic newspapers fell outside the mainstream of racial politics. While the majority of Northerners had come to see a devastating war as proof of slavery’s evil, most on the losing side supported efforts to recreate their “peculiar institution” in new ways.6 However, the North’s swift adoption of the South’s view of carpetbaggers, its lack of support for radical policies in the South, and the premature end of Reconstruction that resulted, was intimately connected to diminishing support for racial equality. By the turn of the century, white supremacist Southern print culture, particularly its scapegoating of radical Northerners who entered its imagined community, had proven essential in limiting the expansion of citizenship. By Reconstruction’s end, the South’s newspaper women and men had altered the status quo to an extent appropriate for a deliberate insurgency. Theirs was, however, a counterrevolutionary rather than revolutionary movement, and thus differs markedly from the most frequently cited examples of dissident presses. This suggests that although the printed page can be a fruitful venue for social change, the change it achieves is not always progressive. In the case of Reconstruction, it drastically limited the scope of American citizenship, making it necessary to acknowledge that what a print culture sometimes opposes are the very democratic changes narratives of resistance tend to idealize. Liberal assumptions that the change sought is by nature forward-looking are often bound up in terms like “protest” and “dissent.” But if “resistance,” when reduced to its basic elements, is defined as an attempt to enforce a change to the current sociopolitical climate regardless of the direction in which the political winds blow, we must account for that direction in any focused analysis of a protest’s substance. The print campaign against the carpetbagger was a form of protest, to be sure, but it attempted a regression of the social hierarchy to an antebellum incarnation from which white supremacists benefited most and which they remembered with affection. Carpetbaggers, and reconstruction— or “ambiguation”—of their racial statuses, offered Southerners (and Northerners too) a way to imagine again a time before these interlopers had arrived, when racial divisions were supposedly demarcated with pristine clarity. It was a “revolution,” but in an earlier, more literal sense of repetition, or a return to the beginning.7 Martha Hodes suggests that, while the antebellum Southern “racial hierarchy had rested on the categories of ‘black’ and ‘white’ as well as on the categories of slavery and freedom,” with the end of a system of labor and law that clearly

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delineated racial difference, “now categories of color bore the entire burden of upholding the racial hierarchy.”8 The fragility of dividing lines was compounded by the fact that color had never proved entirely reliable as a means of identification. There were frequent moments during and after slavery when assumptions of racialized behavior came into conflict with assumptions of physical appearance. In these moments, a subject’s race became “a matter of reputation, personal conduct, and association.”9 In their descriptions of carpetbaggers, journalists appealed to the dominant Southern view—the legacy of two centuries of slaveholding—of how white and black behavior differed. Tourgée noted the connection; in his words, “the previous training which the press of the South had received in the art of vilification under the régime of slavery, became now of infinite service in this verbal crusade.”10 This vilification emphasized behaviors reminiscent of blackness in common nineteenth-century stereotypes, in contrast to the recognizably “white” physical appearance of most carpetbaggers. Unreconstructed rebels never defined these carpetbaggers as black, or oppressed them to the extent they did the formerly enslaved, instead assigning a more ambiguous identity. Nonetheless, its political currency was grounded in a supposedly discernible difference from the whiteness social custom conflated with authority. Even for their Southern opponents, carpetbagger ambiguity was more badge than brand; it existed only as long as it was necessary—while carpetbaggers and the policies they supposedly enforced retained influence over Dixie.11 But for that time, the obstacle it placed before radical Republicanism was frequently insurmountable. The most damaging charge journalists made against a carpetbagger’s whiteness was his supposed propensity toward “miscegenation.” Exhibiting willful amnesia concerning slavery’s sexual exploitation, and ignorance of its continuation, postbellum white supremacists defined sex between races as a singularly black objective. One Georgia journalist noted that “when [races] become blended and hopelessly mixed, . . . the lower grade may be improved, yet it is at the expense of the superior class.”12 In this view, only “less civilized” African Americans had something to gain. Despite efforts of black legislators to highlight publicly the white rape of black women, Southerners maintained the slavery-era fiction of white innocence.13 Therefore, if a white man were to sleep with a black woman, he was not truly white at all.14 Claims made of carpetbagger miscegenation at the same moment whites “methodically conjured up . . . the Myth of the Black Rapist,” drew clear parallels between the uncontrollable lust of former slaves and that of their Northern instigators.15 As soon as carpetbaggers appeared at the 1868 state constitutional conventions, an unsigned letter from Alabama to a Democratic paper in Indiana claimed that these Northerners were “a different class of whites—such as will make themselves on a level with negroes—in a word, live in the same house with them.” A Georgia paper described Northerners in New Orleans as

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“soaked in whiskey, living with negro women, and smelling of wet dogs as they elbow about the lobby openly selling their votes.”16 Engagement in practices that made carpetbaggers “the degraded instruments of barbarism” must be viewed in the late nineteenth-century social context in which “people sometimes spoke of civilization as if it were itself a racial trait, inherited by all AngloSaxons and other ‘advanced’ white races.”17 Miscegenation put carpetbaggers outside of an “advanced” racial designation. Damage to carpetbaggers’ reputations and racial purity was compounded by rumors of bigamy, which, by trading on fetishized stereotypes of irrepressible black sexuality, further distanced them from dominant Victorian ideologies of appropriate restraint. The copperhead Chicago Times, in an extension of its proSouthern wartime view, reported an unnamed carpetbagger congressman accused of bigamy, noting that “A Radical Congress will scarcely consider this a crime . . . for it is simply a matrimonial application of a political practice inaugurated by the Radicals. If a member may live in one State and go to Congress from another, why may he not have two states of matrimony?”18 The very nature of the carpetbagger denoted difference at once political, sexual, and racial. In all ways, they appeared alien to the Southern way of life and, increasingly, the American way too. At times, carpetbaggers were just a single step removed from the black rapist taboo that haunted white supremacist discourse. Not content with engaging in miscegenation themselves, they supposedly also conspired with black men to prey on white women. For instance, the Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC) attacked the New York–born governor of Virginia, Henry H. Wells, for his “remission of the sentence of death of a negro who held the mother of a young lady living near Norfolk, while a carpet-bagger named Perkins ravished her daughter in her presence.” The implications were extreme. “Read [this story] gentlemen,” the author commanded, “to your mothers, wives, and daughters, and ask them what they think of it and your reconstruction system.” Carpetbaggers, almost as much as black rapists, were the true menace to white feminine virtue.19 Such portrayals of dire threats to fragile Southern white womanhood constituted one end of a spectrum of carpetbagger gender.20 At the other, they were depicted as effeminate, distinctly lacking in manliness.21 But the tactic of harnessing carpetbaggers to black rapaciousness proved a more effective challenge to radical Republican authority, and was therefore more prevalent in print culture.22 From the many stories of unrestrained sexuality came perhaps the most elaborate work of fiction, an epic of character assassination published under the headline “Revelations of a Carpet-Bag” in the Natchez Courier, and reprinted in the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin. The narrator described his encounter with a black female acquaintance who had been living with an unnamed carpetbagger “as his wife for about a year.” After several suspicious absences and

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failures to pay rent, the Northerner told her to expect her money soon, “for I am a candidate in the Mississippi State Convention, and I will be elected, you bet, because I know how to fool the negroes.” When he left again and did not return, and although he had warned her not to examine his possessions on pain of death, the woman searched her husband’s carpetbag. She found within “a black mask of cambric, some old clothes, and a few false keys and burglar’s tools; also [a] diary,” all of which she showed to the tale’s narrator. From its pages he learned that the carpetbagger, “was an escaped convict from the penitentiary . . . and is now connected with a gang of thieves, and has a very extensive correspondence with Radicals, both white and colored. Not a few of the members of said Convention were engaged with him and his gang.” The author ends by threatening to publish the diary in full, thereby causing “a quaking of bones among the Radicals here, and at other points.”23 Unsurprisingly, the journal was never published, nor the gang of thieves exposed.24 However, charges of criminal conspiracy featured often enough to cast doubt on racial purity. The Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, AR) claimed a widespread “carpet-bag felonocracy” in 1875.25 Four years earlier, a Mississippi paper claimed that when carpetbaggers “destroyed the chief element of our wealth by a mere presidential proclamation,” it was the same as if they “stole and carried off everything that could be moved from the country, from a finger ring to a piano.”26 Letters to editors likewise asked, “Why do [the carpetbaggers] saddle the expense [of Reconstruction] on us southern people when they know that they have stolen all our niggers, and we have no niggers to make the money for us to pay for them with?”27 Thus, emancipation itself became a form of theft. By this time, the legalization of slavery as punishment of crime in the Thirteenth Amendment, and the re-enslavement of freed people as convict labor, had begun to equate illegality with blackness. This “invention of criminality,” Colin Dayan observes, connected the divestment of legal life in servitude with similar divestment as punishment for a crime; the notion of attainder became conflated with tainted, nonwhite, blood.28 The black mask in the carpetbag was more than a practical disguise; it symbolized a metaphorical change of race. Vagrancy, like theft, revealed ambiguity, particularly in a period that witnessed increasing criminalization of black mobility. In W. E. B. DuBois’s words, “Negroes were liable to slave trade under the guise of vagrancy [ laws]; to make the best labor contracts, Negroes must leave the old plantations and seek better terms; but if caught in search of work, and thus unemployed and without a home, this was vagrancy, and the victim could be whipped and sold into [legalized] slavery.” In this manner, Southerners reinstituted a “slavery in everything but name” that racially marked more than just African Americans.29 In a Southern culture that legitimized Black Codes and defined personal character in large part by property ownership, when the press consistently highlighted

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the carpetbagger’s nomadic nature, transiency evoked rootlessness and begged questions of his whiteness. Their association with black “criminals” was troubling enough, prompting claims that carpetbaggers were “backed by all the vagabond negroes in America.”30 But carpetbaggers swiftly became vagrants themselves; the National Intelligencer defined the former slaves states as “constituencies upon whom [carpetbaggers] have squatted.”31 One Nashville paper described the 1868 state constitutions as “product[s] of negro incubations, aided and addled by the warmth of Northern vagrants.”32 References to “carpet-bag vagabonds” were equally common.33 Such mobility also belied criminal inclinations. At the end of Reconstruction, one Georgia paper claimed that “many of the carpet-bag politicians, whose facilities for further stealing are at an end, are going back to the regions of their birth, where they have built fine houses out of their plunder.”34 Readers of newspapers and novels alike were repeatedly told that carpetbaggers journeyed to avoid detection, jail, or debt. They could and did up sticks at a moment’s notice with all possessions packed in a small case, prompting novelist Opie Read to introduce his carpetbagger characters as a “a horde of political gamblers,” among whom “few had held positions of trust at home [in the North].” Their shiftlessness was intimately connected to immoral economic gain; few contemporary journalists would have contested Read’s assertion that “it is not known that [their Southern offices] were not won by dice.”35 The very item for which these travelers were named primarily indicated shiftlessness. In one scholar’s definition, “a carpet-bag is sufficient to contain all his luggage, and his character is usually on a par with his property.” 36 Even Tourgée, who fiercely defended radical Reconstruction and Northerners who, like himself, he felt were honest, conceded to the carpetbag-vagrancy association, claiming the name originated from a group of unauthorized Wisconsin bankers who carried fraudulent notes in carpetbags to avoid detection. He hated to be considered a “carpetbagger,” but acknowledged that such a disreputable class existed, and could not but admire how appropriate the label was for them. It had “all the essentials of a denunciatory epithet in a superlative degree.”37 Political cartoons, therefore, usually emphasized the size of the bag by portraying it in outlandish disproportion to the body. As the image’s focus, the bag, with its criminal, nonwhite connotations, became almost a character in itself. For example, in a cartoon (figure 1) criticizing Wisconsinite Carl Schurz for taking office in Missouri, having himself criticized carpetbaggers, Thomas Nast’s caption reads, “The bag in front of him, filled with others’ faults, he always sees. The one behind him, filled with his own faults, he never sees.”38 The significantly larger bag denotes Schurz’s own vagrancy. The appearance of a cartoon in the New York publication Harper’s Weekly, one that uses “carpetbagger” as a form of insult, formed part of a gradual Northern retreat from support for radical Reconstruction.

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Figure 1.  Thomas Nast, “The Man with the (Carpet) Bags,” Harper’s Weekly, November 9, 1872. (courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society)

If the carpetbagger’s conduct in the South denoted a lack of whiteness, it is unsurprising that journalists advocated punishments typical of slavery. While physical attacks were relatively rare, the pages of Southern print culture overflowed with violent fantasies of carpetbagger suffering inflicted by righteous “redeemers.” The Charleston (SC) Courier, for instance, delighted when the proprietor of the Savannah News “called on [a] carpet-bag official and gave him a sound thrashing.”39 Similarly, a Mississippi paper suggested that “carpet bag thieves . . . deserved cropping and branding for their audacity.”40 During the 1871 congressional investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, one South Carolinian

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admitted a plan to “ ‘whip carpetbaggers and make them change their politics.’ ”41 When redeemers mooted or perpetrated such particularly symbolic forms of violence, when they employed the “extremity of power” defined as one of the constituent elements of a slave system that still structured Southern racial thought, they publicly marked the carpetbagger as external to the community. They pushed him toward a social death that was otherwise reserved for slaves and freed people.42 Whipping as a form of punishment had become fundamentally racialized by the nineteenth century. Kristen Fischer argues convincingly that in the colonial period, “as skin color and other phenotypic qualities failed to provide reliable markers of ‘race,’ whites inscribed difference directly onto the bodies of slaves” with violence. Slaveholders developed a cyclical racialized logic, in which “the visible marks that corporal coercion imprinted on the bodies of slaves came to connote to whites an underlying physical difference in victims— a nonwhiteness—that in turn served to justify violence perpetuated against them.”43 Connections between physical domination and whiteness, and in turn between subjection and blackness, continued beyond slavery. The blackness attendant on corporal abuse was more than sufficient to obfuscate the whiteness carpetbaggers claimed to embody. Every crack of the whip, real or imagined, made them more ambiguous. They became “white niggers,” in the words of one editor.44 The same paper stated that “there is no sympathy between the carpet-bag rulers and the white people.”45 One Mississippi journalist emphasized the distinction, describing carpetbagger “hostility against the white race.”46 “Carpetbagger” and “white” had become mutually exclusive and definitive racial categories. How effective was the Southern press in undoing Reconstruction? For one, it “[w]as the only institution in the South fully under the control of native whites and in a position to oppose Northern policy.” Ted Tunnell points out that scholars have frequently overlooked journalism in their attempts to understand Reconstruction’s undoing, and that, in the creation of the carpetbagger image, journalists found the best way to undermine Reconstruction’s “legitimacy in the North.” They “tied to emerging radical governments a figurative ball and chain from which they never escaped.” He argues that disparaging carpetbaggers became “integral to [the] identity of white Southerners” and “expressed the attitudes and values of the white South.”47 The carpetbagger’s race, I contend, was redefined in the process. David W. Blight and Edward J. Blum argue that the North and South reunited along racial lines, with African Americans excluded from the newly reformed white nation. Carpetbaggers were similarly marginalized to the same ends—only in temporary and less materially detrimental ways.48

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I define Southern “Redemption” of Reconstruction in Mark Grimsley’s terms as a concerted guerrilla insurgency rather than “an unfocused cloud of night-riding, armed intimidation, assassinations, riots, and massacres.” Grimsley shows that white supremacists employed a variety of calculated coercive practices against their enemies, from economic intimidation of freed people that was “well organized by state and local party agencies” to paramilitary violence and “the endless agitation/propaganda campaigns carried out by Democratic newspapers (both within and outside the South), which formally distanced themselves from the Klan but simultaneously broadcast and legitimized the rationale for Klan attacks.”49 In this light, Southern newspapers arguably become an “oppositional press” as defined by James P. Danky: a collection of “nonstandard, nonestablishment publications that advocate social change.”50 Southern editors cast themselves as more honest sources of information than mainstream Northern counterparts, decrying the “extent” to which “the misrepresentations of the South by Northern newspapers are injuring our section in its most vital parts.”51 Articles entitled “A Defense of the South” spoke for themselves.52 But nothing better exemplifies Southern defiance than the Meridian Mercury of Mississippi’s claim that journalists “should be the masters, not the bootlicks of politicians. Let newspapers boldly cry aloud and spare not, and turn the whore of Expediency out of doors. Let us have no fornicating with the Radical Party, under the idea of begetting a ‘new South,’ but let us nail our colors to the mast and stand by them like men. Nothing else will save us.”53 Southern journalists claimed to offer more than just truthful alternatives to libelous Yankees; they claimed an aggrieved status. Still imbued with a distinct national identity created in secession, they commonly viewed the region as the victim of an unjust occupation. Southerners were a colonized people struggling under the yoke of foreign oppressors. In an 1873 editorial for the Charleston (SC) News and Courier, Sarah Morgan claimed that to be governed by not only the worst of the blacks, but by the infinitely more degraded adventurer, is a slavery which far exceeds that from which the negroes were freed. . . . Federal authority upholds the tyrannous oppression. If the bayonet were withdrawn and the “carpetbagger” gone home, the intelligent whites would soon restore peace and fortune.54

In other pieces, Southern whites became “our people,” deserving of “home rule” or “citizen rule.”55 Carpetbaggers were “interlopers,” “invaders,” and “plunderers.”56 One piece expressed the sense of persecution with a warning of “an approaching revolution by which the white people of the South will soon be emancipated from carpet-bag and negro domination.” 57 These articles served a greater purpose than Grimsley notes. More than just legitimizing vigilante violence regionally, they undermined radical government nationally.

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Just as Blight has shown with marginalization of African Americans, what began as a generally Southern practice was eventually adopted in the North as reconciliationist sentiment grew. Wartime copperhead journals like the Vincennes Weekly Western Sun of Indiana and the Newark Advocate of Ohio were joined in persecution of carpetbaggers during Reconstruction by a broader group of Independent, Unionist, and even Republican papers. They reprinted Southern Democratic articles, and soon ran their own, taking carpetbagger racial ambiguity bipartisan and national. The New York Globe, St. Louis Globe, Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, the National Intelligencer, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, and Harper’s Weekly are just a few of the publications that joined the witch hunt in some form. Tourgée was, as ever, aware of this process, noting “the most amazing thing connected with this matter . . . was the fact that the press of the North, almost without exception, echoes the clamor and invective of the Southern journals.”58 The Nation similarly expressed “alarm” in 1878 at the “gradual coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the North” on the subject of carpetbag governments.59 This begs the question of what made the gradual Northern adoption of Southern views possible. In many ways, the North was predisposed toward acceptance. Any initial goodwill toward African Americans in the wake of the Civil War proved fleeting. Antiblack racism remained endemic across sectional lines, laying a foundation upon which hatred of ambiguous carpetbaggers could quickly build. It was compounded by an increasingly vocal nativism, a response to a dramatic rise in immigration. In Michael Rogin’s words, “the similarities between immigrants and Negros initiated the reunion between North and South” just as the North began to romanticize the antebellum South because “the massive influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe . . . created Northern sympathy for southern efforts to control an indispensable but racially inferior labor force,” the carpetbagger’s perceived support for freed people’s social progress—the antithesis of the ever more popular plantation myth— accorded him a negative status that prevailed beyond the former Confederacy.60 Northern journalists operated as crucial catalysts in their region’s abandonment of Reconstruction. As Mark Wahlgren Summers points out, an everincreasing emphasis on political corruption saturated Northern readers with a cynicism they carried over to their assessments of the South: “So deep did suspicion run, so convinced of the fell purposes of government officials was the press corps that it was ready and eager to assume the worst.” So too were the “American people,” who felt they had good reason to doubt “the wisdom of letting government exercise its powers or use funds freely.”61 The sensational tone of political coverage across regional and party lines made it near impossible for readers in either section to tell a forest of reform and egalitarianism from the trees of dishonesty.

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Corruption was a national issue that predetermined how most Northern correspondents covered the South; it “defined what newsmen looked for.” 62 Independent Northern depictions of the supposedly failing Reconstruction project bolstered Southern Democratic claims of carpetbagger illegality. The ambiguous carpetbagger, though racialized more distinctly than anyone implicated in coverage of Northern corruption, was thus familiar enough to make easy headway in Northern consciousness. Moreover, because correspondents rarely stayed in Dixie long enough to determine reliability of the sources quoted, and because they privileged witness testimony of dispossessed whites over views of radical officials and even dissident Republicans, not to mention African Americans, the perspective of Reconstruction and its carpetbaggers conveyed to the North in Independent papers soon resembled that of Democratic journals to the letter.63 Rather than an expansion of citizenship and reformulation of the Southern economy, it was primarily an abuse of innocent whites. Northern accounts were wrong on the basics of Reconstruction. Contrary to their picture, the South was not run by . . . carpetbaggers. . . . Whatever influence federal marshals used to protect black voters in North Carolina, their activities did not constitute “a reign of terror.” . . . The reporter who insisted that the Ku Klux Klan was simply a defense against “the diabolical teachings to the blacks . . . which lit up the skies . . . with midnight conflagrations, and made every Southern mother press her babe closer to her bosom” spoke pure fantasy. Yet these and many another canard appeared in Republican newspapers, unrefuted.64

The sexually deviant, criminally inclined, nonwhite carpetbagger was “another canard.” Not only was the North receptive to the anticarpetbagger message, but Dixie’s journalists had considerable freedom to convey it. As previously mentioned, the press was able to remain relatively autonomous at war’s end. While radical governments had largely suppressed Klan violence by the early 1870s, Southern editors continued to publish with little interruption. First Amendment protection could be more easily claimed by a physically nonviolent press than an organization directly connected to vigilantism, and anonymity minimized potential Northern suppression. Although the particular editor of a paper might be known to authorities, individual articles and letters to the editor frequently went unsigned—a practice that allowed the creation and distribution of anticarpetbagger claims without retribution.65 With each edition printed and read, a broader Southern—and later national—community could be imagined in opposition to carpetbag government. By contrast, the physical presence that a night raid required put Klansmen within reach of Federal forces. While the decision to remain unnamed or provide only a pseudonym probably resulted in large part from fear of military suppression, it could serve

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another equally strategic purpose. By removing their names from print arenas, journalists placed greater emphasis on the carpetbagger’s ambiguity. The only identity for the reader to consider was the carpetbagger’s deviant one, and while deviance suggests an alternative against which he was judged, this counterpoint was a literary construction alone; it remained confined in ink on paper. Southern readers could view real carpetbaggers and their actions in relation to print depictions, but it was harder to locate, analyze, and therefore doubt the opposite—a white identity free of criminal tendencies, shiftlessness, and sexual perversion—because real flesh-and-blood Southerners remained absent from the narrative frame. As such, carpetbaggers were less able to cast similar aspersions on their critics. Conversely, Northerners could imagine commonality with unnamed white Southerners more easily than carpetbaggers. Unreconstructed authors retained the anonymity of a Klan hood but with none of its most obvious inflammatory violent associations. Paramilitary violence was also confined to a small geographic area. In contrast, newspapers regularly reprinted from one another, guaranteeing broad and repeated distribution of ambiguous images. Carpetbaggers like George Pierce in Arkansas and Benjamin Butler in Louisiana occasionally censured papers, but the sheer number of local publications throughout the South made systematic region-wide suppression impossible.66 As such, the othered image could be reprinted constantly until desire for sectional reunion transformed it from familiar to palatable in the North. If resentment of the carpetbagger became integral to white Southern culture, as Tunnell claims, it was only slightly less so above the Mason-Dixon. The press could even become so powerful that suppressing it did not guarantee Reconstruction’s success. When governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden imprisoned Josiah Turner, editor of the Raleigh Sentinel, in 1870 as part of an attempt to subdue the Ku Klux Klan, the move significantly undermined what fragile support Holden held among Southern whites, even those opposed to vigilante violence. The Sentinel had tacitly supported the Klan with editorials imploring “WHITE MEN of North Carolina!” to “triumph over the plotters of your humiliation [and] the emissaries of your enemies abroad.” “Vindicat[e] your manhood,” it instructed, “and the honor of the race to which you, and your wife and children belong,” by overthrowing radical Reconstruction and “the infinite horrors of negro rule.”67 But his incarceration under martial law was widely interpreted as an unconstitutional violation of free speech that rallied supporters to the “King of the Ku Klux,” as Turner had become known.68 He even refused to allow his attorney to sue for a writ of habeas corpus, sensing the power of his position in jail.69 Upon his release and Holden’s successful impeachment in 1871, Turner’s printed work became seen by redeemers as “our great bulwark against attacks of radical hatred and oppression.” One sympathizer wrote that Turner was the true “champion” of the

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state, who “through the columns of the Sentinel, warned the people that North Carolina was being ruined by this thieving radical party [and that their] fundamental liberties were in danger.” He “assaulted the Radical army of thieves, carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and almost single handed and alone won the great battle of NC for our people.”70 Newspapers were not the sole form of redemptionist print consumed by Northern readers. A brief consideration of Southern fiction about Reconstruction reveals similar trends of ambiguity and Northern acceptance. The eponymous antihero of Opie Read’s The Carpetbagger (1899), Melville Crance, is a transient “political gambler,” open to bribery and constantly engaging in theft. So deeply do his actions affect his racial identity that he refers to himself at one point as “a white man who is black inside.”71 Thomas Dixon’s carpetbagger in The Clansman (1905), Austin Stoneman (a thin disguise for Thaddeus Stevens, transplanted to the South), is increasingly defined by crude stereotypes of blackness as the plot progresses. In particular, his miscegenational relationship with his “mulatto” housekeeper, described as “falling into the black abyss of animalism,” casts doubt on his very whiteness. Ambiguity manifests physically; utilizing turn-of-the-century Social Darwinist discourse that placed blacks low on the evolutionary ladder, Dixon constantly evokes images of the jungle. Stoneman’s clubfoot resembles “more closely an elephant’s hoof than the foot of a man” and he swings “an ape-like arm.”72 Thomas Nelson Page’s carpetbagger villain in Red Rock (1898), Jonadab Leech, attempts to evade the white Southern hero by climbing a chimney. The hero retrieves him, before informing his soot-covered antagonist: “You ought to be pleased with your looks, for you look just like one of your friends. You wouldn’t know yourself from a nigger.”73 These narratives found publishing houses, significant popularity, and critical praise in the North. Red Rock and The Clansman were published in New York; Read’s book in Chicago. Before being novelized, Read’s and Dixon’s works enjoyed successful Northern stage runs too. The New York Times review of Page’s work claimed that “no book has thrown greater light upon the evils of carpet-bag Governments which were thrust upon the unfortunate Southern people after the war. The personality of Jonadab Leech . . . is probably not at all overdrawn.”74 It bears out Tourgée’s dismay at a scenario “in which the conquering power has discredited its own agents, denounced those of its own blood and faith, espoused the prejudices of its conquered foes, and poured the vials of its wrath and contempt upon the only class in the conquered territory who defended its acts, supported its policy, promoted its aim.”75 The carpetbagger’s racial ambiguity had become a fully cross-sectional phenomenon. Tourgée’s own writings show that carpetbaggers resisted the ambiguity imposed on them in print culture. Tourgée himself was perhaps the most outspoken defender of the carpetbagger’s reputation. While never retreating from

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his commitment to “color-blind justice,” A Fool’s Errand nonetheless reads as an attempt to prove the author’s own whiteness.76 The carpetbagger protagonist, Comfort Servosse, whose resemblance to Tourgée is clear, is the paragon of white Victorian masculinity, a “man of fine qualities” and “self-possession.” He is distanced from blackness, proclaiming that “the African” carries “an inherent inferiority . . . and utter incapacity for the civilization to which the Caucasian has attained.” “Ebon skin” is shown to be a “terrible affliction,” but one the author does not share.77 And yet Tourgée’s defense of carpetbaggers, though popular when published in 1879, fell increasingly on deaf ears thereafter. By the 1890s, his popularity had waned, as Northern readers found the interpretations of Dixon, Read, Page, and others far more convincing.78 Yet the wider and more frequent distribution of newspapers made them the most forceful source of antagonism to carpetbaggers, and ultimately the principle tools of Redemption. It is impossible to know how effective or durable Reconstruction would have proved had greater effort been made to suppress the Southern press. The case of Josiah Turner’s Raleigh Sentinel suggests that widespread censorship might even have accelerated Reconstruction’s demise. What is certain, however, is that the retreat from radical policies was made considerably easier by the loss of faith in carpetbaggers, a phenomenon that hinged upon the press and ambiguation. The results—exclusion of carpetbaggers and the re-creation of slavery in new forms—were the nearest way that white supremacists could return to the antebellum social order that remained a source of considerable nostalgia. It was a revolution of sorts, but one markedly different from our common understanding of protest in print. Notes I am extremely grateful to James L. Baughman and Alice Fahs for their readings and instructive suggestions, and for helpful conversations with participants at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture 2012 conference, “Protest on the Page: Print Culture History in Opposition to Almost Anything* (*You Can Think Of ).” My thanks also to the Council on Library and Information Resources and the Social Science Research Council; their generosity made possible the archival research used herein. 1. Albion W. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand by One of the Fools (New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, 1880), 155. 2. Though it is the subject of this essay, the unreconstructed view of the era’s politics was not the only interpretation circulating in the South, or the nation at large. James P. Danky argues that the “African American press offered a powerful counternarrative to the dominant press, providing shelter from white interference and the burdens of racial representation and oversimplification.” Moreover, the rapidly increasing literacy among African Americans after the Civil War, alongside community reading practices, ensured an ever-growing readership for this alternative view. “Reading, Writing, and

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Resisting: African American Print Culture,” in Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880–1940, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, vol. 4 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 340, 342. The dominance of the unreconstructed view—in spite of African American dissent—from Reconstruction through much of the twentieth century, might be explained by the effects “of slavery, of Jim Crow, of segregation, of racism” on black publications, and on the formation of library collections. See James P. Danky, “The Black Press and White Institutions,” introduction to African American Newspapers and Periodicals: A National Bibliography, ed. Danky and Maureen E. Hady (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), xxxiii. On the white Republican press during Reconstruction, see Richard H. Abbott, For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South, ed. John W. Quist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004). 3. Several studies discuss the Southern press treatment of carpetbaggers: Hodding Carter, Their Words Were Bullets: The Southern Press in War, Reconstruction, and Peace (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1969); Carl Osthaus, Partisans of the Southern Press: Editorial Spokesmen of the Nineteenth Century (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994); Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); E. Culpepper Clark, Francis Warrington Dawson and the Politics of Restoration: South Carolina, 1874–1889 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980); and Richard Nelson Current, Those Terrible Carpetbaggers: A Reinterpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). All these studies, however, assume the carpetbaggers’ racial identity to have been white and stable. The best work on carpetbagger images in the press is Ted Tunnell’s article “Creating the ‘Propaganda of History’: Southern Editors and the Origins of Carpetbagger and Scalawag,” Journal of Southern History 72, no. 4 (November 2006): 789–822. Tunnell draws out key connections between anticarpetbagger sentiment and the end of Reconstruction, and hints at links between opposing carpetbaggers and construction of Southern white identity. The particular racialized nature of rhetoric surrounding the carpetbagger is my subject here. 4. I use the term “Southern” deliberately here. I agree with Nell Irvin Painter’s criticism of assumptions that “ ‘Southerner’ . . . mean[s] only ‘white Southerner,’ as though black southerners somehow were not part of the South,” and I do not wish to reinforce the trend she deconstructs so astutely. However, the “South” under discussion here is less a geographical location than what Glenda Gilmore terms “Dixie”—the “mythical isolated nation” that “existed only as an imagined community.” It was the “creation of white supremacists.” African Americans and others constantly contested this myth of a pure white nation. But my analysis is of the ways in which white supremacists imagined their community through exclusion of racially impure carpetbaggers whose perceived actions provided unreconstructed white Southerners “consoling security” in a “common historic grievance, the infallible mystique of unity.” Using the words “South,” “Southern,” and “Southerner” in this sense reflects Summers’s point that during Reconstruction, regardless of section or party, “blacks were always Africans or Negroes, never Southerners, to the newspapermen.” Nell Irvin Painter, Southern History across the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 3; Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 5; C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, 3rd ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 13; and Summers, The Press Gang, 198.

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5. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Perennial, 1989), xxiii. 6. Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 170; Adam I. P. Smith, The American Civil War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 95; and David B. Cheseborough, God Ordained This War: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis, 1830–1865 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 221. 7. Hannah Arendt argues that before the Enlightenment, the notion of “revolution” was defined as a change that “did not interrupt the course of what the modern age has called history, which, far from starting with a new beginning, was seen as falling back into a different stage of its cycle, prescribing a course which was pre-ordained by the very nature of human affairs and which therefore itself was unchangeable.” On Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2006 [1963]), 11. Southerners longed for a past that truly was unchangeable. Reconstruction confronted them, though only temporarily, with a very different reality. Attacks on the carpetbagger must be viewed as a reaction against that reality. 8. Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 147. 9. Teresa Zackodnik, “Fixing the Color Line: The Mulatto, Southern Courts, and Racial Identity,” American Quarterly 53, no. 3 (September 2001): 422; Ariela Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Peter Wallenstein, “Reconstruction, Segregation, and Miscegenation: Interracial Marriage and the Law in the Lower South, 1865–1900,” American Nineteenth Century History 6, no. 1 (March 2005): 57–76. 10. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, 155. The emphasis is Tourgée’s. 11. Foner, in Reconstruction, notes that many carpetbaggers were in fact ambivalent at best toward black social and political advancement, 317–18. 12. Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, GA), June 17, 1869. 13. Two excellent studies outline the construction of sexual consent by white men: Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 16–87; and Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 79–114. 14. On black politicians’ discussion of miscegenation and its limits, see Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation, Law, and the Making of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 31–33; and Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 87–175. 15. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Random House, 1981), 174. On the creation of and social reaction to the myth, see Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 176–208; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 166; Diane Miller Sommerville, Race and Rape in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 200–218; and Peter Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Family, Sex, and Law in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 176–213. Robyn Wiegman

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notes that lynching of accused rapists was an act of policing black masculinity and bolstering white masculinity in turn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 89–114. 16. Vincennes (IN) Weekly Western Sun, June 19, 1868; and Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, GA), April 25, 1871. 17. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), July 8, 1868; and Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 25. 18. Chicago Times, reprinted in the Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, GA), January 11, 1870. The reprint of a Northern story in a Southern journal, regardless of party lines, indicates the growing connection between regions on hatred of carpetbaggers. 19. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), October 20, 1868. 20. For perhaps the best example of the South embodied by a woman under carpetbagger domination, see James Albert Wales’s cartoon, “The ‘Strong’ Government, 1869–1877,” Puck, May 12, 1880. 21. The villain of Thomas Nelson Page’s novel Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), Jonadab Leech, is an excellent example. Leech is high strung, easily scared, and physically slight. Moreover, he abandons his first wife and fails miserably in his pursuit of another. In all ways, he is the antithesis of Victorian ideals of masculinity. The paradox of gendered images was mirrored in nineteenth-century black stereotypes. Just as there appeared no obvious contradiction between assertions that carpetbaggers were innately rapacious and effeminate, so too could black rapists and the dandyish “Zip Coon” or asexual “Sambo” of minstrel culture simultaneously define blackness. 22. Perhaps because of the power of the carpetbagger-rapist image, the term was almost always applied to men during the period. The nearest female equivalent was the “Yankee schoolmarm,” a distorted view of Northern women who educated freed people in the South. They too were often subjected to ridicule, threats, and sometimes physical violence. The Southern press also criticized them; in particular, like carpetbaggers, association with black social advancement led to accusations of miscegenation, which may have cast similar aspersions on their whiteness. For examples of press attacks, see Joe M. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986), 213–20. Overall, however, newspapers wrote less about them. This might be explained by beliefs that removing carpetbaggers would also make teachers’ positions untenable. Journalists may also have felt constrained by possible reactions from some Southern readers who still claimed to foster notions of chivalry toward white women. Such ideas became increasingly popular in the North after the war; see Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993). On schoolteachers, see Sandra E. Small, “The Yankee Schoolmarm in Freedmen’s Schools: An Analysis of Attitudes,” Journal of Southern History 45, no. 3 (1979): 381– 402; Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865– 1873 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Ronald E. Butchart, Schooling the Freedpeople: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861–1876 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

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23. New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, September 25, 1865. Conflating carpetbaggers with prisoners magnified their ambiguity. According to Kim Gilmore, “convict labor became increasingly racialized. . . . This mimicking of the slave system structure in the post-emancipation prison system, particularly in the South, suggested a belief that the performance of antebellum culture could bring the slave system back to life [as] racialized labor arrangements persisted in the form of convict labor.” “Slavery and Prison: Understanding the Connections,” Social Justice 27, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 198. On the racialized meanings of convict labor in the period, see also Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (New York: Verso, 1996); Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000); and David Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: The Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow America (New York: Free Press, 1996). 24. Likely calculating to escape libel suits or full-blown censorship, many journalists tended to avoid naming specific carpetbaggers when making their gravest accusations. These measures then suggest the very deliberate and self-conscious use of a mythical carpetbagger for political gain. 25. Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, AR), February 3, 1875. 26. Hinds County (MS) Gazette, March 22, 1871. 27. Morning Republican (Little Rock, AR), May 22, 1871. The letter’s title, “Letter from Pulaski,” may indicate a claim of authorship by the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded during the period in Pulaski County, Tennessee. 28. Colin Dayan, “Legal Slaves and Civil Bodies,” Nepantla: Views from the South 2, no. 1 (2001): 3–39. See also, Dayan, “Cruel and Unusual: Parsing the Meaning of Punishment,” Law/Text/Culture (2001): 7–42. On the Thirteenth Amendment as legalization of slavery, see Guyora Binder, “The Slavery of Emancipation,” Cardozo Law Review 16 (1996): 2063–102. 29. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1992 [1935]), 167. Though most commonly leveled against those who traveled, vagrancy became a catchall charge for any perceived offensive black behavior. It was, according to Foner, “a crime whose definition included the idle, disorderly, and those who ‘misspend what they earn.’ . . . [O]ther criminal offenses included ‘insulting’ gestures and language, ‘malicious mischief,’ and preaching the gospel without a license.” Reconstruction, 200. On criminalization of black mobility and its limits, see William Cohen, At Freedom’s Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861–1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). 30. Hinds County (MS) Gazette, April 28, 1875. 31. Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), October 2, 1868. 32. Nashville (TN) Weekly Union and American, August 27, 1868. 33. Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, AR), July 1, 1879. 34. Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, GA), October 30, 1877. 35. Opie Read, The Carpetbagger (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1899), 9. 36. B. J. Whiting, “ ‘Mossyback’ and ‘Carpetbagger,’ ” American Speech 20, no. 3 (October 1945): 236–37. 37. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, 177. 38. The caption refers to Aesop’s fable of The Two Bags: “It is said that every man is born into the world with two bags suspended from his neck: a small bag in front full of

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his neighbours’ faults, and a large bag behind filled with his own faults. Hence it is that men are quick to see the faults of others and yet are often blind to their own failings.” The Legendary Life and Fables of Aesop, edited by Mayvis Anthony (Toronto: Mayant Press, 2006), 88. 39. Charleston (SC) Tri-Weekly Courier, September 4, 1869. 40. Hinds County (MS) Gazette, December 30, 1874. Branding was no less a mark of black slavery than whipping. 41. Charles Foster, quoted in Lou Falkner Williams, The Great South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials, 1871–1872 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 78. 42. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 2. Vincent Brown qualifies Patterson’s model by pointing out that complete natal alienation, though a central aim of slaveholding, was never fully achievable: “the farther slaveholders moved toward the goal of complete mastery, the more they found that struggles with their human property would continue.” “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery,” American Historical Review 114, no. 5 (2009): 1241. For carpetbaggers, social death was even less realizable. They were ostracized and sometimes physically attacked, but they could own property, maintain familial relations, act as agents of the state, and theoretically seek protection from its authorities. And yet the suggestion of whipping and its symbolism of exclusion was nonetheless sufficient to create ambiguity around carpetbagger identity. In Patterson’s words, “there was no known slave society where the whip was not considered an indispensable instrument,” and slavery in the South was a distinct marker of racial inferiority (4). 43. Kristen Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 189, 160. Hannah Rosen has shown that sexual violence committed against black women during Reconstruction marked blacks as inferior and unworthy of citizenship, Terror in the Heart of Freedom. 44. Vincennes (IN) Weekly Western Sun, May 23, 1868. 45. Vincennes (IN) Weekly Western Sun, March 6, 1869. My emphasis. 46. Hinds County (MS) Gazette, November 26, 1879. 47. Tunnell, “Creating the ‘Propaganda of History,’” 790–92. 48. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); and Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005). 49. Mark Grimsley, “Wars for the American South: The First and Second Reconstructions Considered as Insurgencies,” Civil War History 58, no. 1 (March 2012): 9, 13. 50. James P. Danky, “The Oppositional Press,” in The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America, ed. David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, vol. 5 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 269. 51. Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, AR), March 13, 1880. 52. New Orleans (LA) Daily Picayune, June 10, 1893. The Picayune had been sympathetic to radical Republicans during Reconstruction, but had by the 1890s abandoned Republicanism’s Northern agents. 53. Meridian (MS) Mercury, quoted in Carter, Their Words Were Bullets, 43–44. 54. Sarah Morgan, “Whites and Blacks,” Charleston (SC) News and Courier, May 12, 1873, in The Correspondence of Sarah Morgan and Francis Warrington Dawson with Selected Editorials

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Written by Sarah Morgan for the Charleston News and Courier, ed. Giselle Roberts (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 201. The suggestion that carpetbaggers were “more degraded” than their black supporters suggests a deliberately racialized identity. 55. Hinds County (MS) Gazette, October 25, 1871; and Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, AR), December 28, 1871. 56. Vincennes (IN) Weekly Western Sun, January 16, 1869; and Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, GA), November 28, 1871. 57. Galveston (TX) Daily News, August 11, 1874. 58. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, 176. 59. The Nation, January 24, 1878. 60. Michael Rogin, “ ‘The Sword Became a Flashing Vision’: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation,” Representations 9 (Winter 1985): 153–54. On further connections between Northern anti-immigrant racism and Southern oppression of African Americans, see Blum, Reforging the White Republic, 198–203; Blight, Race and Reunion, 209, 276; and Silber, The Romance of Reunion, 159–62. Though beyond the purview of this analysis, future research might investigate how racialized discourse around immigrants influenced perceptions of the carpetbagger. Both were, after all, seen as alien, outside agitators in political arenas. The doctrine of Anglo-Saxonism that underlay exclusionary policies against immigrants and former slaves, in addition to US imperial projects, certainly appears to have influenced images of carpetbaggers too. In the case of the aforementioned Carl Schurz, originally an immigrant from Germany in 1848, his foreign origins likely magnified the rhetorical power of Nast’s cartoon. Another complementary avenue of analysis is the role religion played in the carpetbagger’s marginalization. On the plantation myth and its acceptance in the North, see Blight, Race and Reunion, 211–54, especially 222–27. 61. Summers, The Press Gang, 158–59. 62. Ibid., 201. 63. Ibid., 198. On the rare occasions that journalists did consult African Americans, the way the correspondents reported black views of the South was always tainted by racial prejudice. When African Americans refused to discuss politics with whites amid the explosive context of Southern racial violence, it was generally interpreted as ignorance (230). 64. Ibid., 160. 65. In his study of letter writers in eighteenth-century England, E. P. Thompson asserts that anonymity was the resort of those who “cannot articulate their grievances openly, who cannot form their own organizations or circulate their own pamphlets and press, whose voices break out anonymously with intemperate force.” “The Crime of Anonymity,” in Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime of and Society in EighteenthCentury England (London, UK: Allen Lane Press, 1975), 279. With the exception of the formulation of a press, the same could be said of redeemers. The organizations they did form were usually suppressed. 66. Margaret Ross, “Retaliation against Arkansas Newspaper Editors during Reconstruction,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 150–65. On the suppression of the Mississippi Vicksburg Times in 1867, see Carter, Their Words Were Bullets, 41–42. On Butler’s suppression of Democratic papers, see Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans under the Federals, 1862–1865 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,

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1965), 177–78; and John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), 131. Butler even suppressed Republican papers if they were not sympathetic to his allies. When called to Butler’s office in 1867 for allowing a negative report of Louisiana Governor Henry Clay Warmoth to be published, the editor of the New Orleans (LA) Daily Picayune was so intimidated that Butler afterward found “a small poole [sic] of water . . . on the floor, where the editor had stood.” Butler to Warmoth, 11 March 1867, Folder 10, Henry Clay Warmoth Papers (752), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 67. Raleigh (NC) Semi-Weekly Sentinel, April 8, 1868. 68. George W. Kirk to William Woods Holden, 11 August 1870, Box 1, Folder 4, William Woods Holden Papers, Rubenstein Library Special Collections, Duke University. 69. Josiah Turner to William Alexander Graham, 10 August 1870, Folder 252, William A. Graham Papers (285), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 70. R. Outlaw to Josiah Turner, 19 October 1872, Folder 5, Josiah Turner Papers (730), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. That Turner addressed letters he wrote in prison as from “Holden’s Bastiel [sic]” suggests a self-awareness of his role as an agent of revolution. See Josiah Turner to Sophie Devereux Turner, 8 July 1870, Folder 3, Josiah Turner Papers. 71. Read, The Carpetbagger, 20. 72. Thomas Dixon, The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1905), 371, 39, 133. 73. Page, Red Rock, 518. 74. New York Times, November 19, 1898. 75. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, 180. 76. Mark Elliott, Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 77. Tourgée, A Fool’s Errand, 402, 382, 61, 134, 337. 78. Elliott, Color-Blind Justice, 2–3.

The Inky Protest of an Anarchist Printmaker carlo abate’s newspaper illustrations and the artist’s hand in the age of mechanical reproduction Andrew D. Hoyt

The development of wood engraving revolutionized nineteenth-century news-

paper publishing by allowing large runs of highly detailed images to be printed easily and inexpensively alongside text. However, by the end of the century, the invention of photomechanically produced relief “line blocks” threatened to wipe out artisanal print culture and to alter, forever, discourses on the role of verisimilitude in art. Print historian William Ivins has characterized the resulting debate as pitting “factual reporting” against “the expression of values, of personality, and of attitude towards life, with which verisimilitude is always at war.”1 As can be seen in the work of Carlo Abate, wood engraver for the infamous Italian-language anarchist newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle), this “war” was negotiated directly by working-class printmakers in the ink-stained backroom of newspaper offices and its effects can be seen in the lines of the illustrations they produced. Edited by Luigi Galleani and published in the United States from 1903 to 1919, the Cronaca helped to link anarchists in Europe to those in both Americas.2 During Abate’s long collaboration with Galleani, the two men helped create a visually vibrant and politically radical newspaper that serves scholars today as a palimpsest, with layer after layer of meaning hidden in its conception, manufacture, presentation, and reception. I argue 32

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that Abate’s images protested the erasure of the artist’s hand in printmaking in a manner that would have resonated with the newspaper’s audience of immigrant anarchists. Rather than striving for representational verisimilitude, Abate responded to the mechanization of his craft by signing his engravings with a distinctive mark, maintaining a hand-drawn aesthetic, breaking the frame of images, and emphasizing emotional features in his portraits. It is unlikely any reader could have failed to sense the presence of the artist in Abate’s prints; while the average readers may not have participated directly in debates over verisimilitude, they would have understood the impact of mechanization on their own lives and could appreciate Abate’s assertion of his own creative humanity. Abate’s images thus add to both the expressive force of Galleani’s propaganda and the newspaper’s subsequent success at building an anarchist identity among members of its migrant audience. Wood engravings are created when an engraver uses a specialized carving tool called a burin to dig out the white lines of an image into the end-grain surface of a block of hardwood, such as boxwood.3 The close grain of these hardwood blocks allows for much greater detail than traditional woodcuts.4 By carefully removing unwanted portions of the block, the engraver creates images that can then be inked and printed alongside moveable type on a relief printing press. While intaglio processes such as black-line copper engraving were widely used to create fine-art prints since the sixteenth century, illustrations produced in this manner had the distinct disadvantage of having to be pressed separately and then glued or sewn into publications. With Thomas Bewick’s innovation of white-line engraving, and increased access to smoother paper in the eighteenth century, wood engraving began to provide a similar level of detail.5 However, it was not until the explosion of journalism and book publishing in the 1830s—tied to the spread of popular education, the development of electrotype plating of woodblocks, and the new steam-powered press— that wood engraving became a widespread and deeply influential component of newspaper print culture.6 Wood engraving offered a combination of detail, affordability, and largescale reproducibility that was uniquely suited to the needs of early twentiethcentury immigrant newspapers such as the Cronaca Sovversiva, which was printed in runs of four to five thousand pages by volunteer workers on a shoestring budget.7 However, prior to the use of photomechanical processes, wood engraving was also employed by large-scale mainstream newspaper publishers. By the 1860s wood engraving was an “important stimulus to newspaper sales . . . [and] employed, for example, to transform photographs of Civil War battlefields into newspaper illustrations.”8 Throughout the century, the number of publications containing wood-engraved images steadily increased until the field was forever changed by the development of photogravure techniques.9

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Within a decade of the introduction of photogravure, in the 1880s, wood engraving was in steep decline, and photoengravers and the highly detailed line-blocks they created were in increasingly high demand.10 Suited for relief printing alongside texts, line-blocks were created in a multistep process that involves coating a plate in light-sensitive material, exposing it to light through a photographic negative, and etching it repeatedly using a “four-way powdering” method in which a photoengraver turns the photographically transferred design into a relief block with “deep and clear lines.”11 This process could quickly produce apparently “unmediated” and highly accurate reproductions of images, a much sought after quality in prints of the era. The more advanced “halftone” line-blocks even allowed for a range of grays through the use of dots invisible to the average viewer’s eye. In the long run, wood engraving as a largescale and mainstream industrial craft could simply not handle this competition.12 Wood engraving rapidly disappeared as a major technical medium, and while highly skilled wood engraving continued, in the 1890s most mainstream artists made images for direct reproduction on a line-block.13 Thus, printmaking came to be dominated by photomechanical techniques that left little room for individual creative expression by the artisan.14 Historian David Brodherson has shown that the sudden proliferation of visual print culture in the late nineteenth century was dramatic enough to prompt arguments from critics that this growing obsession with images, or what they referred to as a “Picture Mania,” posed a threat to the public’s intellectual temperament.15 Yet, despite the emergence of an image-saturated society, the role of newspaper prints in the history of American print culture remains marginalized and dismissed as “humble” and of “little interest” to twenty-first-century scholarship.16 Matthew J. Shaw claims that newspaperbased visual culture has been ignored because it was perceived as too “removed from fine art or literature to have claimed the attention of scholars in these fields.”17 Because printed images are viewed as derivative, or in the words of Stephen Pigney as “part of a culture (and possibly commercial practice) of reiteration rather than originality,” art historians have traditionally held them in low esteem.18 Originality is rarely associated with newspaper prints, which have usually been valued for their content rather than style. For most of the nineteenth century, the motivating force driving the print industry was a search for ever greater “facsimile reproduction” combined with the ability to print in large numbers.19 Additionally, nineteenth-century audiences appeared less interested in artistic expression and more interested in accurate re-presentations of the image. This led photomechanical line blocks to dominate the print industry from the 1890s to the Second World War.20 Yet the presence of Carlo Abate’s wood engravings in Cronaca Sovversiva complicates this narrative in some interesting ways. In fact, while fine-art

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printing largely abandoned the use of woodblocks by the end of the 1890s, newspaper publishers were slower to change, and in 1900 there were still more than 145 listed wood-engraving companies in the United States.21 Still, the craft experienced dramatic transformations in order to compete with emerging print technologies. Most major nineteenth-century wood-engraving shops saw a systematic division of labor as newspaper engraving became an increasingly regimented and “deskilled” industry.22 The small size of the hardwood blocks required for end-grain engraving, which was at first a major drawback of the medium, led to innovations that facilitated the kind of rapid production of images required by the newspaper industry. To create large images, wood engravers had to employ composite blocks that could be taken apart and worked by a team of engravers. This encouraged commercial newspapers to form semiindustrial workshops with teams of wood engravers who were able “to rapidly translate a drawing or photograph into a network of lines on a block of wood” without engaging in any artistic decision-making concerning design and content.23 This process of change within print shops mirrored the kind of industrialization of production affecting the lives of millions involved in the proletarian mass migrations of the late nineteenth century. The Cronaca Sovversiva’s readership of working-class militants was well aware of the mechanization of work that accompanied industrialization, having migrated from areas of disappearing peasant and artisanal economies to work in the factories in New England, London, or Northern Europe.24 Abate’s primary employment as a sculptor in the granite mining town of Barre, Vermont, meant his daily labor involved the creation of plaster models, which were then translated into stone by skilled stone carvers. He would have been well acquainted with the practical and theoretical issues surrounding artistic reproduction, and his experiences made him deeply aware of how technological innovations caused changes in artisanal modes of production. He would also have seen the damage done by these technological innovations, as the introduction of pneumatic drills into the granite sheds led directly to a plague of lung disease among his stone-carving companions.25 The cause and nature of this illness was not fully understood at the time, often being confused with tuberculosis. In fact, a sanitarium was built in Barre where the mortally wounded stone carvers were isolated from their friends and families. Abate was not deterred by the supposed health risks and remained ceaseless in his efforts to improve local labor conditions in the granite sheds. Indeed, he is locally remembered for entering the homes of those ill with silicosis and for kind gestures such as buying groceries for the widows of men who died from the workplace disease.26 He also designed the entrance monuments to the large Hope Cemetery in Barre, where many Italian stone carvers were buried. His art thus provides an example of how marginalized artisanal producers of culture protested the destructive effect of industrialization on both their crafts and their communities.

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Abate’s prints reflected a mode of production under industrial assault. Many of his readers faced a similar crisis in their own workplaces.27 The persist­ ence of wood-engraved images in Cronaca Sovversiva was not an accident nor a simple sign of marginality, but represented an ideological position taken in a key site of working-class struggle. Abate belonged to a rare class of artistengravers (more often associated with William Morris and the Private Press Movement) who persisted in actively designing, drawing, and sculpting their own plates for self-publication. 28 The presence of his images in the Cronaca Sovversiva reveals that artisanal crafts survived, beyond the confines of the private presses, in the peripheral community of Italian granite carvers of Barre. To understand the complex discourses around Abate’s wood engravings, we need to understand not only how the artist created the images but in what context these images were received, especially within a broader left-wing class and a labor-conscious migrant culture that animated politics through art around the Atlantic. Industrialization in the United States built up momentum for half a century before developing into what some historians have labeled as Industrial Capitalism.29 Electrification and other technical developments caused what has been described as a second industrial revolution after the 1870s, allowing for the final major developments in the assembly line and mass production.30 This electrically powered, centralized, and highly capitalized industry encouraged the installation of power drills in the granite sheds of Barre, and it was on “modernized” assembly lines in places like Lynn, Massachusetts, that many of the Cronaca Sovversiva’s readers toiled. Additionally, during this second industrial revolution, the Atlantic world was also being profoundly shaped by mass migration from Southern and Eastern Europe.31 These migrants traveled circuitous routes, bouncing around the Mediterranean and Atlantic basins in a way that fostered diasporic communities scattered across at least three continents and half a dozen countries.32 Central to the creation of transnational communities was the widespread circulation of newspapers published in Italy, Argentina, the United States, France, and other sites where migrant laborers found work.33 Immigrant newspapers advocated a wide spectrum of political ideologies. One of the most active and yet least studied producers of this print culture was the Italian-speaking anarchists.34 There were around 500 anarchist newspapers published in the United States (and circulated transnationally) between 1870 and 1940, of which approximately 100 were published in Italian.35 These grassroots propaganda proj­ects fostered a sense of simultaneity across the Atlantic labor diaspora. They facilitated the movement of people, creation of identity, exchange of money, and spread of tactics, and made possible mass mobilization for collective action.36 By expanding our understanding of the tools used by revolutionary propagandists like Luigi Galleani and Carlo Abate, we can see how they attempted to

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ideologically inspire their audiences and help create what Kathy E. Ferguson has called an “anarchist counterpublic” capable of physically and imaginatively linking their migrant readership to a larger transnational revolutionary movement.37 Anarchists are often associated with bomb plots and class war, police investigations and mass deportations.38 Yet, this “lost world of Italian-American radicalism” was also a world of artists, journalists, philosophers, and poets who labored to produce a rich and vibrant print culture.39 Scholars still debate the chronological spread and the ideological content of anarchism.40 However, what is clear is that the anarchists rejected “centralism, advocated the free federation of autonomous groups, and argued that working class emancipation was to happen from the bottom up.”41 While anarchism has been long overlooked by institutional studies of the labor movement, US immigration historians now largely accept that anarchism was “the dominant radical ideological tendency among the Italians” who immigrated to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.42 Historian of Italian anarchism Nunzio Pernicone further emphasizes that “anarchism, not Marxism, was the ideological current that dominated and largely defined the Italian socialist movement during its first fifteen years of development.”43 Additionally, Jennifer Guglielmo has shown that one reason Italians were long thought to be uninvolved with labor organizing was that they gravitated toward the anarchist community.44 This invisibility is partially the result of the way highly mobile anarchists employed the radical press, and newspapers like the Cronaca Sovversiva, as a source of community cohesion. The realm of print culture rather than political parties or trade unions was the institutional base of the Italian immigrant left, connecting thousands of militants across the Atlantic world.45 The Cronaca Sovversiva is a particularly interesting example of one of these transnational periodicals. Dominated by the writing of noted anarchist intellectual Luigi Galleani (1860–1931), the Cronaca Sovversiva was an insurrectionary anarcho-communist weekly, printed in New England from 1903 to 1919. Galleani has been called one of the greatest radical orators of his time, and the Cronaca Sovversiva has been described by federal agents as “the most rabid, seditious and anarchistic sheet ever published in this country.”46 After Galleani’s deportation in 1919 for publishing an article that encouraged his readers to resist the draft, the paper was also briefly published in Turin, Italy (1920).47 Yet, while Galleani often shared podiums with the likes of Emma Goldman, today he is virtually unknown in the United States outside of a small circle of scholars.48 Galleani’s absence from the historical record is connected to his lack of connections to English-speaking radicals, whom he never cultivated ties with as Goldman did, and perhaps also to the fact that Galleani never learned English but instead remained embedded in the world of Italian-speaking migrant

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laborers.49 Indeed, the primary readership of the Cronaca Sovversiva were small Circolo Studi Sociali (social study circles) scattered across the industrial borderlands of the Atlantic world: they were cigar rollers in Ybor City, Florida, and coal miners in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; they were granite carvers in Barre, Vermont, and textile workers in Lynn, Massachusetts.50 The newspaper also connected its scattered readers to anarchist groups in South America and Europe through sections such as “Note Sovversive Dei Due Emisferi” (Subversive Notes from Two Hemispheres) and “Note Di Propaganda” (Notes of Propaganda) that contained regular correspondence and event announcements from groups in numerous countries. The newspaper’s list of subscribers, as well as this ongoing correspondence with propaganda groups abroad, suggests the Cronaca circulated not only across the United States but also transnationally.51 Abate’s personal style of engraving, with its emphasis on the artist’s hand and the labor involved in producing culture, shaped the aesthetic of the Cronaca Sovversiva for more than a decade. Like most other anarchist newspapers, the Cronaca was continually underfunded and often in debt. In the early years, the paper relied heavily on volunteer labor from the working-class members of the Barre Circolo Studi Sociali.52 Abate, an early member of the group, contributed approximately 72 percent of the total visual occurrences in the newspaper’s seventeen-year run, including at least seventy woodblocks that appeared more than 1,200 times.53 This means that if the newspaper was printed in runs of 1,000 each, which is far less than the circulation of four to five thousand copies mentioned in Galleani’s Immigration and Naturalization Services files, then more than one million Abate prints would have been put into circulation. 54 Abate’s enduring relationship with the Cronaca Sovversiva, itself a surprisingly steady and long-running publication among the anarchist presses, allowed his visual statements to become a widely disseminated component of working-class visual culture. Abate’s images provided much more than simple decoration. In his hands, they were tools for imaginatively connecting readers to an internationalist canon of inspiring historic figures, facilitating the formation of a historic narrative based on a subversive identity rather than on a religion, ethnic heritage, or national citizenship.55 For example, the 1907 masthead (figure 2) consists of a woodblock image depicting five portraits of the Haymarket Martyrs. 56 The Haymarket Martyrs were a group of mostly German immigrant workers executed by the state of Illinois on November 11, 1887, for having propagated anarchist ideas during the violent labor struggles of the 1880s.57 While the Cronaca contained other types of images, portraiture was Abate’s preferred genre; it represents fifty of his seventy unique contributions to the paper. His portraits, almost all drawn from the chest up, resemble religious icons or faces stamped onto national currency. Abate based the portraits embedded

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Figure 2.  Carlo Abate, Cronaca Sovversiva’s second masthead featuring portraits of the Haymarket Martyrs, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, November 14, 1908. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

in the Cronaca masthead on previous images but made them original compositions by arranging them in a distinct format that included the journal’s title within the engraving. Galleani used Abate’s emotive and expressive portraiture to focus his readers’ attention on individuals who had made what he considered to be great contributions to the cause of anarchism. In fact, Abate’s portraits contributed to a kind of anarchist “martyrology.” Images like the ones Abate created and printed in Cronaca Sovversiva could easily have been cut out of the newspaper and preserved by readers.58 Many images in the Cronaca accompanied biographical sketches of “propaganda of the deed” anarchists lionized by Galleani for their violent and supposedly selfless attentats (political assassinations).59 Indeed, five of the twelve most reprinted portraits were of attentaters (Reinsdorf, Czolgosz, Luccheni, Bresci, and Caserio); the other seven were of writers and popular orators (Bakunin, Reclus, Ferrer, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Louise Michel, and Cipriani).60 In Italian religious culture, visual representations such as portraits and devotional icons are often used to make the stories of saints and martyrs more vivid. Similarly, the reprinting of Abate’s images outside the pages of the Cronaca Sovversiva, in publications such as album murale (wall albums), suggests that these images served an important function in building a shared identity among Italian anarchists.61 Abate and Galleani employed the same tools of print culture used by their contemporaries to engender religious or nationalist sentiments; but instead Abate and Galleani strove to create a transnational (or, perhaps, more accurately antinational) social movement. Images, such as those produced by Carlo Abate, played a role in building a border crossing and multilingual version of what Benedict Anderson has famously called an imagined community.62

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Prints often seen as reproductive or reportorial can convey far more than the physical appearance of the subject matter.63 Contextualizing these images allows for a more nuanced or “close” reading of Abate’s visual rhetoric. In particular, aesthetic choices along with the “autographic” line, such as is employed by Abate, stress the presence of the artist in the creation of a print and diminish the mechanical aspects of the printing process.64 Helen Langa, a scholar of radical printmaking in the 1930s, also argues that prints be understood as historically situated material objects.65 To situate Abate’s images requires an understanding of both their material mode of production and the conditions of their reception by working-class readers.66 The Cronaca Sovversiva’s immigrant working-class readership was, for example, linguistically diverse. After decades of struggle by radical republicans such as Mazzini and Garibaldi, Italy finally became unified as a country in the 1860s.67 However, it was united not as a republic but as a monarchy under the crown of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Piedmont-Sardinia. 68 This new state introduced mandatory public education to overcome the peninsula’s deep linguistic divides, yet more than half of the Italians who immigrated to America were reported as illiterate upon entry into the United States. 69 Because of sharply differing regional dialects, migrants from Italy moved within locally based networks, following friends and neighbors to scattered destinations. Yet the migrants also lived surrounded by linguistic diversity. 70 The streets and factory floors of the early twentieth century reverberated with languages from around the north Atlantic.71 Anarchist migrants’ response included community-run Modern Schools and the use of universal languages like Esperanto.72 These migrants consumed print culture communally too: the highly politicized Spanish, Cuban, and Italian cigar rollers of Ybor City employed their own lectores to read newspapers and books as the workers rolled their cigars.73 As labor organizers and political propagandists, the anarchists (and other radicals) thus faced significant linguistic hurdles.74 Early twentieth-century militants for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) called cartoons and printed images “silent agitators” with the ability to convey an idea to a migrant worker without the need for translation.75 During this steam-driven globalization, everything from interethnic personal relationships to large-scale labor struggles required communicating across language lines.76 In such verbally complicated conditions, images played an increasingly important role in communication. Prints like the ones Abate created have often been viewed as democratic because they were produced as multiple originals and could therefore be sold more inexpensively and distributed more widely than paintings.77 Additionally, newspaper images and articles circulated promiscuously among anarchist propaganda groups much as had almost all American newspapers earlier in the nineteenth century.78 Any article that came across a printer’s desk could

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be reassembled, word for word, locked into a frame, swabbed with ink, and stamped onto the pages of that week’s newspaper. The advent of the Linotype machine at the end of the nineteenth century largely automated this process and enabled even very small staffs of volunteer workers to set type rapidly.79 However, while texts could be easily reproduced on a page, reprinting an image proved trickier, particularly for small newspapers like the Cronaca Sovversiva. A close reading of Abate’s art suggests how immigrant artisans responded to the mechanized and industrial world of early twentieth-century America. Printmakers drew upon generations of experience in copying photos and other artists’ images, but responded to photomechanical competition in two basic ways: some attempted to be more “photolike” and realistic than mechanically produced, low-resolution, halftone images created by photography-on-theblock, and others persisted in expressing themselves through engravings in order to assert their continued humanity.80 Abate asserted his subjectivity, his artist’s hand, in the very lines that composed his images.81 See, for example, two versions of a portrait of Augusto Masetti published in Cronaca Sovversiva— one a woodblock and the second a halftone photomechanical print (figure 3). Both images appeared during the same year, accompanying an essay opposed to the Italian invasion of Libya, entitled “A le Madri d’Italia!”82 Masetti was an anarchist conscripted into the Italian army who famously, and publicly, attacked an officer while calling on recruits in Bologna to resist deployment and end the war.83 Viewing these images side by side, one can see the appeal of the wood engraving. Abate’s portrait, while based on a photo, does not seek to reproduce the photographic image of Masetti’s pose and countenance. Abate portrays Masetti’s face clearly, as glancing to his left (while the photo shows his body directed to his right). Abate brought out his eyes, rendering his overall appearance less distant. The artist’s choices, from how to frame the picture to how to subtly suggest the presence of a cravat around his neck, all required original compositional effort. The portrait also carries Carlo Abate’s distinctive [CA] signature on Masetti’s lapel. The wood engraving is based on the photograph, but is also a unique interpretation. Through interpretation, Abate makes his stand as a wood engraver, refusing to compete for veracity with photomechanical processes. The placement of a signature in this work suggests that Abate wanted to draw attention to his own subjectivity and individuality, to the artist behind the image. Signing his images in a radical paper like the Cronaca meant risking social, economic, and even legal consequences. This led many other contributors to use pseudonyms. Signing a print also signaled the printmaker’s wish that readers see an image as his or her own particular artistic creation. Indeed, it was uncommon for engravers to sign images that were copied from photographs or

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Figure 3.  (Left ) Unknown Artist, portrait of Augusto Masetti, halftone print, in Cronaca Sovversiva, October 18, 1913. (Right ) Carlo Abate, portrait of Augusto Masetti, wood engraving, in Cronaca Sovversiva, October 4, 1913. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

the work of other artists.84 The choice to assert creative authorship and to demand recognition of his artistic vision is also confirmed through a close reading of Abate’s visual syntax. Abate’s assertion of authorship intervened in a fierce, late nineteenth-century debate over the mechanization of print production. Because the wood engraver “worked with a visual syntax that announced his own subjectivity, “ many nineteenth-century art critics demanded the reproduction of images with as little interpretation as possible as a “moral imperative.” They found a “fundamental ambiguity, both epistemological and moral, in the lines of the New School engraver. Should these lines be flaunted or suppressed? Should the engraver be an artist or a machine?”85 Abate’s artistic choices stake out a clear position in this debate. His images call attention to his hand and his lines—to the man behind the engraver’s burin as well as to the mind behind the visual composition. Abate’s artistic choices aligned him with more famous engravers such as William J. Linton, who believed the engraver’s line should be used in a way to

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produce meaning, rather than objectivity.86 Similarly, art critic John Ruskin rejected empirical objectivity in favor of a style in which “each line stands out from the others and declares its purpose” so that no one could mistake the image as “anything other than a wood engraving.”87 Ruskin argued that the practice of mimicry was “a threat to the individual laborer and to the moral value of the artist’s hand in society, hinting at a critique of the laborer’s alienation from her or his labor.”88 However, engravers such as Timothy Cole instead strove to “subordinate” their hand by working in microscopic detail to create nearly photorealistic engravings.89 Clearly, Abate rejected that approach. Advocates of the subjective or autographic line understood the threat posed by mechanization and mimicry through the lens of labor.90 Labor-conscious artists and critics like Abate attacked the photograph and the engravers who strove to imitate it on the grounds that doing so hid the process of human labor behind the reproduction. Similarly, anarchist orators like Galleani were notorious for their fiery speeches condemning the alienation of labor in the highly industrialized factories towns of New England.91 This refusal to hide human labor connected the political stands represented by Abate’s prints and the politics of his anarchist readers. He emphasized creative authorship and emotive expression in his prints by leaving his images rough so as to appear handsketched, by rupturing the image frame and thus breaking any sense of strict veracity, and by emphasizing dramatic and emotive aspects of his figures. Even if Abate first drew his images as quick, off-the-cuff ink sketches, the process of engraving a woodblock means that every line is individually considered by his focused concentration. For example, the portrait of famous anarchist novelist Leo Tolstoy (figure 4) was intentionally designed to appear sketchy or “hand drawn.” Abate could easily have cleaned up Tolstoy’s outline; after all, this image was created as a white-line engraving, meaning the black lines are the parts of the block he has not cut away and are thus easy to minimize or eliminate. It was the choice to leave the edges rough that asserts his humanity and conveys his solidarity with artisans and craftspeople. In his more narrative images, Abate breaks completely with objectivity by rupturing the frames of his prints, provoking the audience to recognize the human mediation involved in producing the image as well as emphasizing emotional interpretations. For example, his image of General Gaston de Gallifet (1830–1909), famous for repressing the Paris Commune, is composed with his face sunken and his eyes hollow, his thin neck disappearing into an overly embellished uniform (figure 5). It seems that Abate wanted readers to see the man both as a real person and as a manifestation of death. Abate includes a building in the background and a wall framing the general’s body, drawing attention to the context of this portrait, the scene of events in Paris so many decades earlier. To remind the viewer of the artist’s presence as human creator of the image, Abate also allows the bottom half of Gallifet’s body to dematerialize, the shading

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Figure 4.  Carlo Abate, portrait of Leo Tolstoy, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, July 25, 1908. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

ceasing even as the outline continues toward the bottom of the image, turning the general into a specter. Notably, Abate’s initials are incorporated into the image rather than neatly boxed as in most other portraits. Another image depicting the Paris Commune illustrates the events at Père Lachaise Cemetery where on the twenty-fourth of May, 147 Communards were executed (figure 6).92 Here the bottom corner of the image remains incomplete. The outline of what seems to be a body lies like a chalk drawing at a murder scene—and left sketched against an empty background. The incompleteness of Abate’s print clearly breaks with any attempt at photolike verisimilitude; the illustration is a decomposing memory, a worn and tattered image bearing the pressure of time and travel as it reaches the reader. This act of

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Figure 5.  Carlo Abate, portrait of General Gaston de Gallifet, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, March 14, 1908. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

rupture suggests an incomplete event for the readers, as recipient of the image, to complete with their own imaginations. Similarly, Abate’s print portrayal of the trial of Francesco Ferrer y Guardia (1859–1909) shows how Abate exaggerated elements to heighten narrative drama. Ferrer founded the progressive Escuela Moderna (Modern School) and was publisher of the influential anarchist periodical La Huelga General (The General Strike).93 Ferrer was executed by the Spanish state in 1909, in response to massive protests against the war in Morocco.94 The print depicts a courtroom scene in detail (figure 7). Abate employs large black swaths of ink, digging out tiny white flecks to create the crowd that packs the room. The uniformed police are only slightly more visible than the crowd, standing behind the seated

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Figure 6.  Carlo Abate, “24 Maggio 1871,” wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, March 14, 1908. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

figure of Ferrer. The jury in the foreground is the most visible. Ferrer himself takes up the center of the image and is delicately shaded, with his suit unruffled and his hands calmly folded in his lap. His unassuming body seems large, dwarfing those around him. Like a photograph, this image of Ferrer brings readers closer to the story, giving them a sense of the crowd, the Spanish police, and the metaphorically giant stature of a man they were about to kill.95 But again the edges of the image are unused, working with the dramatic lighting and oversized figure of Ferrer to heighten emotional impact and draw attention to the existence of an artist behind the ink. Abate’s desire to draw viewers’ attention to the human hand behind the production of the print and to invoke an emotional response is particularly clear in the different ways Abate renders facial features. For instance, the portraits of José Miguel Baró (?–1909), who was executed along with Ferrer on Montjunch, and Amilcare Cipriani (1894–1918), an anarchist revolutionary who refused to swear an oath of loyalty when elected to office in Italy, show the way Abate could stipple a beard to give it textual detail or use swaths of black ink to create more dramatic effects (figure 8).96 Abate’s artistic choices, such as the way a beard is carved, can evoke different emotional narratives for his

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Figure 7.  Carlo Abate, “Ferrer davanti agli inquisitori,” wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, October 15, 1910. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

subjects. For Baró’s facial hair, he used only a few relatively wide and imposing parallel vertical lines, leaving the rest of the face covered by large swaths of black ink so the beard appears to be a mask of shadows, above which Baró’s eyes stare back at the viewer with startling vitality and emotion. The choice to carry the thick lines of Baró’s vaguely sketched shoulders into contact with his similarly dark beard is intentional.97 This gave Baró the appearance of a “masked bandit” with his high forehead and heavy eyebrows locked into a concentrated glare emphasized by Abate’s artistry. The image suggests that Abate was more interested in expressing Baró’s fiery spirit than the exact details of Baró’s face. The portrait of Amilcare Cipriani is in profile, with Cipriani wearing his distinctive broad-brimmed hat and a long, thick, pointed beard that juts down over his coat and tie as he squints with wrinkled eyes into the distance (figure 9). Cipriani’s beard not only is carved out with great care for texture, but also is framed in the same heavy ink used in the image of Baró. The juxtaposition reveals the way Abate could have distinguished Baró’s beard and body if he had so wished and makes the intentionality of his stylistic choice all the more rhetorically significant. Cipriani’s eyes do not glare at the viewer, demanding attention in the manner of Baró’s, but they seem to stare off in the distance.

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Figure 8.  Carlo Abate, portrait of José Miguel Baró, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, October 15, 1910. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

In his portraits, Abate finds different ways to demonstrate his hand, always preferring to express human emotion and human labor rather than photographic similitude or strict visual veracity. The image of August Reinsdorf (1849–1885), who attempted to assassinate the kaiser using dynamite in 1883, also demonstrates Abate’s vocabulary, employing deep and regular shading details on the coat and in the hair as well as stippled round cutouts, which give Reinsdorf ’s beard its rough texture (figure 10).98 In comparison, the beard of Giovanni Passannante (1849–1910), the attempted assassin of

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Figure 9.  Carlo Abate, portrait of Amilcare Cipriani, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, April 30, 1910. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

King Umberto I, is left as negative white space silhouetted against large black dashes of ink (figure 11). Unlike Reinsdorf ’s, Passannante’s clothes are depicted using long lines separated by sizable white spaces. Additionally, by shading the background with extremely light hatching running diagonally behind the figure, Abate demonstrates his shading options and thus the intentionality behind each choice he makes. Readers would thus see Abate’s versatility, his mastery of craft, and the consistency of his style, stressing his individual voice.99

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Figure 10.  Carlo Abate, portrait of August Reinsdorf, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, July 10, 1930. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

The clothing of Pietro Acciarito (1871–1943), another attempted assassin of King Umberto I of Italy (figure 12), also maintains predominately white space but is framed by a series of long parallel lines rather than the broad, ink, brushlike strokes left raised in the Passannante image. As opposed to Passannante, on Acciarito the dark weight of ink has moved to the head, throwing the face into shadows, which gives Acciarito a much more sinister countenance than the lightly inked use to depict the aged visage of Passannante. Taken together, these portraits illustrate how Abate’s rendering of his subject sought to provoke an emotional response in his viewers and to inspire them to protest injustice in their lives as he visually protested the death of the artist’s hand in the age of mechanical reproduction.

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Figure 11.  Carlo Abate, portrait of Giovanni Passannante, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, April 16, 1910. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

Abate’s art is a noteworthy example of how working-class artists made forceful protests against the changes in their lives and their crafts brought about by industrialization. Protests that, because of their presence in a disposable medium such as newspapers, have been overlooked by both histories of art and histories of labor radicalism.100 Abate’s dashes of ink were meant to draw the viewers’ attention to the labor behind the production of the print as well as to invoke an emotional rather than an objective response in the audience. Like

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Figure 12.  Carlo Abate, portrait of Pietro Acciarito, wood engraving, Cronaca Sovversiva, July 30, 1910. (courtesy of IHRC Archives, Archives and Special Collections, University of Minnesota Libraries)

the other members of the Barre “Circolo Studi Sociali,” Abate’s participation in the Cronaca Sovversiva and his interventions in the debate surrounding verisimilitude in wood engraving must be read in the context of his experiences as a sculptor in the Barre stone industry and the historical reality of the impact of the second industrial revolution on skilled workers. For the immigrant laborers in the quarries and granite sheds of Vermont among whom Galleani and Abate lived, workplace struggles were a matter of life and death.101 The best stone carvers, who did detailed work like fine engraving and lettering, breathed in the most granite dust and suffered the worst from the fatal lung disease silicosis. These artisans were also the most likely to

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be anarchists and to read the Cronaca Sovversiva.102 Abate, who as a plaster sculptor worked hand in hand with these stone carvers, certainly perceived, as did art critics such as John Ruskin, “the discrepancy between labor power frequently sold as the worker’s potential or reputation, and the grueling hours he spent sketching, explaining, and describing.”103 Abate refused to disguise himself as a machine. He never worked with the kind of minute repetitive precision and systematic syntaxes of wood-engraved images that mimic reality. Instead, his art demanded that readers pay attention to each line left by the engraver’s burin, and thus to the labor involved in producing culture. Abate, while one of the most prolific artists linked to a single anarchist journal, was just one of many artists contributing to hundreds of anarchist publications that circulated throughout Italy’s many labor diasporas. While not all anarchist newspapers contained art, a larger survey of those employing print images would greatly expand our understandings of anarchist reprinting patterns, the transnational spread of subversive iconography, and the larger visual lexicon of the migrant labor movement in the Americas and beyond. As this study of Abate’s wood engravings shows, anarchist cultural production is a rich and complicated subject of study that deserves more critical attention from scholars interested in the history of protest on the page. Notes 1. William Ivins, How Prints Look: Photographs with Commentary, rev. and expanded ed. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), 179. 2. For information on anarchists in Italian diaspora, see Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli, Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). 3. David Sander, Wood Engraving: An Adventure in Printmaking (New York: Viking, 1978), 20. 4. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and Techniques (London: British Museum Publications, 1980), 22. 5. Ibid., 24. 6. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 24. 7. Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 50. 8. David Brodherson, “ ‘Picture Mania,’ Picture Collecting and Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of American Culture 33, no. 4 (December 2010): 330–32. 9. Thomas P. Bruhn, “Originality and Experimentation, 1790–1890,” in The American Print: Originality and Experimentation, 1790–1890 (Storrs: William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, 1993), 14. 10. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 25. 11. Ibid., 122.

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12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 25. 14. Bruhn, “Originality and Experimentation,” 6. 15. Brodherson, “ ‘Picture Mania.’ ” 16. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 21, 24. 17. Matthew J. Shaw, “Drawing on the Collections,” Journalism Studies 8, no. 5 (October 2007): 748. 18. Pigney looks at Malcolm Jones’s The Print in Early Modern England: An Historical Oversight; and at Michael Hunter’s edited volume Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation. Stephen Pigney, “Review Article: Visual Print Culture in Early Modern Britain,” The Seventeenth Century 27, no. 3 (September 2012): 358. 19. Bruhn, “Originality and Experimentation,” 15. 20. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 122. 21. Sander, Wood Engraving, 20. 22. Robert A. Gross, Comment, Session on “Moving Pictures: Politics and the Transnational Circulation of Images in Print” (127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New Orleans, LA, January 5, 2013). 23. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 24. 24. Jennifer Guglielmo, “Italian Women’s Proletarian Feminism in the New York City Garment Trades, 1890s–1940s,” in Women, Gender, and Transnational Lives: Italian Workers of the World, ed. Donna R. Gabaccia and Franca Iacovetta (Toronto, ON; Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 250–54. 25. David R. Seager, “Barre, Vermont, Granite Workers and the Struggle against Silicosis, 1890–1960,” Labor History 42, no. 1 (2001): 65. 26. Joelen Mulvaney, “For Life and for Ideals: Carlo Abate, His Life and His Work,” in Carlo Abate: A Life in Stone, ed. Barre Museum, Aldrich Public Library (n.p.: n.p., n.d.), 11–15. 27. Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 72–78. 28. Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 25. 29. Alan Dawley, Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 32. 30. For more information see David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 31. For information on Italian migration to the Americas, see Samuel L. Baily, Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). 32. Davide Turcato comments, “Argentina, France, England, and Italy were part of the same, large anarchist map.” See Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution, 1889–1900 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 47. For more information on Italian labor diasporas, see Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, Global Diasporas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000). 33. Nunzio Pernicone, Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 146.

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34. Marcella Bencivenni, Italian Immigrant Radical Culture: The Idealism of the Sovversivi in the United States, 1890–1940 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 2. 35. Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti, 54. 36. Jose C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 308–10. 37. Kathy E. Ferguson, “Anarchist Counterpublics,” New Political Science 32, no. 2 (2010): 193–214. 38. For an example of a work focused on this violent side of anarchism, see John M. Merriman, The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). 39. Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer, eds., The Lost World of Italian American Radicalism: Politics, Labor, and Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 13. 40. For example, Peter Marshall argues that anarchism is an intellectual current with deep roots in human history while Davide Turcato believes the birth of the movement “unquestionably dates from the St. Imier Congress of 15–16 September 1872, where the federalist branch of the First International laid out its constitutive principles, in open contrast with those of the Marxist branch.” Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London, UK: HarperCollins, 1992); and Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism, 14–16. 41. Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism, 20. 42. Cannistraro and Meyer, The Lost World, 17. 43. Pernicone, Italian Anarchism, 1864–1892, 3. 44. Guglielmo, Living the Revolution, 2–3. 45. Ibid., 146. 46. Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 207–9. 47. The paper effectively ended when Galleani was deported for advocating anarchism and openly opposing World War I. While in Turin, Italy, he did manage to publish the paper for several months before it was shut down by the Italian authorities. Galleani spent the remaining years of his life either under arrest or closely watched by the police. Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti, 208–9. 48. Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti, 48. 49. Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded, 207–9. 50. Not only was the newspaper read by the local community in which it was printed, first Barre and later Lynn, but the tipografia della Cronaca Sovversiva also had longrunning relationships with the East Boston Autonomous Group and anarchists from the mining town of Plainsville, Pennsylvania, with whom they published the pamphlet Madri d’Italia! For the Cronaca’s connection to the cigar rollers of Tampa, see Gary Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885–1985 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 149. 51. Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt write that the Cronaca Sovversiva was “distributed among Italian speakers worldwide, including Australia, Latin America and North Africa.” Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2007), 128. 52. The paper also contained a subsection “Cronaca Locale” that would announce events in the local community.

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53. Here I am distinguishing between total visual appearances and unique visual appearances because a number of images appear in the Cronaca repeatedly. Mastheads and section headers are obvious examples, but a number of portraits also make reappearances. 54. “A. W. Stockwell, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Department of Labor Immigration Service, Boston, to Commissioner-General of Immigration, Washington, DC,” July 3, 1918, 54235/032 to 54235/036; Box 2801; Subject and Policy Files, 1893–1957; Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85, National Archives, Washington, DC. 55. Gabaccia and Ottanelli, Italian Workers of the World, 3. 56. For information on Haymarket events, see the controversial work of Timothy Messer-Kruse, The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists: Terrorism and Justice in the Gilded Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 57. For information on the impact of the Haymarket bombing and subsequent anti-anarchist backlash, see Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 148–49. 58. Social historians such as J. G. Green have written about how the poor would cut images from magazines and that it was not uncommon to see an “array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace.” Linda M. Austin, The Practical Ruskin: Economics and Audience in the Late Work (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 5. 59. Kathy E. Ferguson, Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 33. 60. The Cronaca even took on the task of gathering funds to support the children of Gaetano Bresci, the successful assassin of Italy’s King Umberto I in 1909. Donators to this fund had their names listed in the newspaper. For more information on propaganda of the deed and readers of the Cronaca Sovversiva, see Robert Tanzilo, The Milwaukee Police Station Bomb of 1917 (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010). 61. Una Madre, I Precursori: Album Murale, Prima Edizione, n.d. 62. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 1983). 63. Bruhn, “Originality and Experimentation,” 5. 64. Ibid., 8. 65. Helen Langa, Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York (Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press with the Ahmanson Foundation, 2004), 9. 66. Ibid. 67. See Luigi Salvatorelli, The Risorgimento: Thought and Action, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). 68. See Denis Mack Smith, The Making of Italy, 1796–1866 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988). 69. Jerre Gerlando Mangione and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 101. 70. For example, Italian women were often coworkers with Jewish women from Eastern Europe. Cannistraro and Meyer, The Lost World, 144. 71. Guglielmo, Living the Revolution, 67. 72. Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005), 24.

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73. Mormino and Pozzetta, The Immigrant World, 11. 74. Ibid., 149. 75. Salvatore Salerno, Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the Industrial Workers of the World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 114. 76. Guglielmo, Living the Revolution, 98–102. 77. Langa, Radical Art, 1. 78. Meredith McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834–1853 (Philadelphia; Bristol: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 79. Joseph Moro told Paul Avrich that an Italian anarchist by the name of Giovanni Eramo purchased a Linotype machine and became the printer of the Cronaca Sovversiva when it moved to Lynn in 1912. Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 72. 80. Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 137. 81. Gross, Comment, Session on “Moving Pictures,” January 5, 2013. 82. Mentana, “A le Madri d’Italia!” Cronaca Sovversiva, October 4, 1913. 83. Mentana [ Ps. Luigi Galleani], Madri d’Italia! (Lynn, MA: Tipographia della Cronaca Sovversiva, 1913). 84. Sander, Wood Engraving, 23–24. 85. Gaudio argues that this was not really a “morality of accuracy,” but rather the discourses on printed images were dominated by a focus on “self-restraint,” of not “presuming to judge what viewers should be left to judge for themselves.” Gaudio, Engraving the Savage, 137. 86. Ibid., 138. 87. Ibid., 140. 88. Ibid., 143. 89. Ibid., 140. 90. Linda M. Austin, scholar of Ruskin, has argued that his analysis of the aesthetics of engraving suggest a labor theory of value. Austin, The Practical Ruskin, 7. 91. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 77. 92. Louis Patsouras, The Anarchism of Jean Grave: Editor, Journalist, and Militant (Montreal; New York: Black Rose Press, 2003), 16. 93. Benedict Anderson, Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (London, UK: Verso, 2007), 225–26. 94. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 524. 95. Historian of Spanish anarchism Chris Ealham asserts that rationalist schools such as Ferrer’s “were the fulcrum of the social and cultural fabric” of the working-class neighborhoods in Barcelona. Chris Ealham, Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter Revolution in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 46. 96. For more information on Cipriani, see James Joll, The Second International, 1889– 1914, rev. and extended ed. (London; Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), 72. Little textual information exists on Baró, who José Peirats mentions in passing along with Eugenio del Hoyo, calling them “obscure.” José Peirats, Los Anarquistas en la Crisis Política Española, 1869–1939 (Buenos Aires: Libros de Anarres, 2006), 6. 97. This is an example of the use of large black areas that is often associated with the chalk technique.

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98. August Reinsdorf, sometimes credited as the father of German anarchism, was executed in 1885 for his assassination attempt on the emperor of Germany. Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 172. 99. Both of these qualities were key aspects of the nineteenth-century’s romantic concept of the artist. Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Viking, 1984), 5–13. 100. Franklin Rosemont, “A Short Treatise on Wobbly Cartoons,” in Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology, ed. Joyce L. Kornbluh (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 425–42. 101. Seager, “Barre, Vermont, Granite Workers,” 63, 77; Randy Croce, If Stone Could Speak, directed by Randy Croce (n.p.: Labor Education Service, University of Minnesota, 2007), DVD. 102. Robin Hazard Ray, “No License to Serve: Prohibition, Anarchists, and the Italian-American Widows of Barre, Vermont, 1900–1920,” last modified Jan. 26, 2013, http://archive.today/G2TOk. 103. Austin, The Practical Ruskin, 8.

Spanish-Language Anarchist Periodicals in Early Twentieth-Century United States Nicolás Kanellos

Anarchism is one of the most widely misunderstood political movements in the history of the United States. The struggle began in the late nineteenth century and lasted through the Depression years, right up to World War II. Overt fear of anarchism and anarchists was the stock-in-trade of capitalists in all strata, and that fear was conveyed to the mass of Americans not only by businessmen and financiers but also by politicians and newspaper editors, the justice system in all its guises, and even religious leaders, middle-class intellectuals, and mainstream labor leaders. The crazed anarchist, bomb in hand, was portrayed in rhetoric and in cartoons as the evil, bloodthirsty Other. The suppression of anarchy—not only its practitioners but also its very ideas, and the means to convey those ideas—preoccupied the governments of the United States, at all levels, for at least two generations. Indeed, popular culture still associates anarchism with blind chaos. Yet anarchism is better understood as a political cause. Historically, anarchism was an anti-authoritarian political philosophy that promoted, among other things, absolute equality among all people; opposed the State as unnecessary and harmful; and preferred nonhierarchical associations, including trade unions, as a necessary (though temporary) step on the road to Utopia.1 Anarchists were unified in opposing all authoritarian organizations, including government and religious institutions. Many opposed the institution of marriage as well, and promoted “free love” as the natural human state. They led or joined in efforts to shorten the work day and work week, to eliminate child labor, and to treat 59

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women as equals both in the workplace and at home. Their doctrine opposed private ownership, especially of resources and the means of production, and considered workers to be slaves in a capitalist society. In their opposition to the state, the churches, and the classist society, they candidly posed a threat to the established order. And the more extreme among them advocated violence: massive strikes, assassinations, and, yes, bombs. Anarchists were, literally, enemies of the state—and were proud to stand up and proclaim it. When American scholars venture to address this complex topic, they tend to focus almost exclusively upon known American anarchists of various ethnicities, especially those involved in historical labor movements, and the sensational episodes in anarchist history, such as the Haymarket Affair and the trials involving Sacco and Vanzetti. What is more, they usually sift and winnow anarchist publications written in the commonplace languages of the day—English, Italian, German, Yiddish.2 Little is known about other ethnic-based activities expressed in the vernacular of other immigrant groups who came to the United States by way of Spain, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean. While historians of anarchism at one time considered Italian anarchists to be the most dangerous internal enemies of the United States, they mostly overlooked much of the extensive organizing and publishing by Spanish-speaking anarchists, even though many of these Hispanics and their organizations maintained intimate ties with their Italian brothers and sisters in the movement, as well as with mainstream anarchism the world over. (For example, Avrich, in his bibliography of anarchists newspapers, lists only five Spanish-language papers, when by my estimate more than a hundred were published in the United States between 1890 and 1940.)3 Though they followed many of the same political theorists and dicta as mainstream American anarchists—such as Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and others in translation—Hispanic anarchists were principally anarcho-syndicalists. As Bookchin asserts, Hispanics worked for the complete “elimination of capitalism, not merely the amelioration of . . . labor conditions.” They advocated “an economic organization of workers—a revolutionary union as distinguished from a political party—[that could] take over society by means of a general strike.”4 And much of the history of these Spanish-speaking anarchists in their periodicals and newspapers, which were created and survive to this day in surprising abundance, is yet to be discovered by the assiduous researcher. Many of the anarcho-syndicalist organizations, their study groups, political activities, and periodicals were clustered around the industries that mainly employed Spanish-speaking immigrants and natives. Nevertheless, a number of these groups subscribed to more militant and violent anarchist actions designed to bring down the state. These groups were often influenced by Luigi Galleani (1861–1931), whose followers in the United States conducted a series of assassinations and bombings that included Wall Street in 1920. Galleani’s essays were

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published in his newspaper La Questione Sociale in Paterson, New Jersey, and from there were translated and reprinted in the Spanish-language anarchist press as far away as Los Angeles and Tampa. He maintained close ties with the Catalonian Pedro Esteve (1865?–1925), who became the editor of La Questione Sociale in 1899. Galleani was deported by various governments and settled in 1902 in Barre, Vermont, where he wrote and mailed out his influential newsletter Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle) until it was terminated by the US government authorities under the Sedition Act of 1918, after which he was deported to Italy in 1919, not because of his newsletter but for his publication of a bomb-making manual.5 The Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston, which I direct, recently assembled some seventy Spanishlanguage anarchist periodicals published in the United States from the late nineteenth century up to World War II. (For a list of these serials, see the list at the end of this chapter.)6 Most of them have never before been studied by scholars.7 They run the gamut from papers published by anarcho-syndicalist organizations to periodicals by working-class intellectuals in exile from Spain or Latin American countries who furthered anarchist thought. The anarchist content in the periodicals seems to have undergone an evolution over time, from a more pure and militant anarchism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to a more practical outreach to forge solidarity with other Hispanic community groups during the Depression, especially those organizing against fascism during the Spanish Civil War; but while many anarchists tempered their radical stances in this outreach, others made the transition to communism during the Depression. The anarchist-oriented periodicals span the continent from New York—the most frequent place of publication—to California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas. They were published by and for mine workers in Arizona, agricultural workers in California, tobacco workers in Florida, steel workers in Illinois and Ohio, and factory workers in New York and New Jersey. Most of the periodicals survived only a few years, but others, such as Cultura Obrera (Worker Culture), edited by Pedro Esteve, lasted almost two decades. While Hispanic anarchists were active in most states of the union in the early twentieth century, according to places of publication and newspaper donor and subscriber lists published in these periodicals, the three principal areas of Hispanic anarchist activities were New York and New Jersey, Tampa and Ybor City in Florida, and the American Southwest. The groups operating in all three areas always maintained communications with each other, participated in each other’s activities, and reprinted essays and news from each other’s periodicals. Nevertheless, they differed in character and mission, especially in their relationship with labor unions, in their militancy, and in their subversion of government authority and the bourgeoisie. Almost all of them organized among Spanish-speaking immigrants hailing from distinct regions of the

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Hispanic world. While individual groups may have included Mexican, Spanish, Cuban, Puerto Rican, or other nationalities, they did not necessarily make ethnic, national, or racial distinctions. This was in keeping with their anarchist ideology. The workers and the leaders of various backgrounds often crossed ethnic and geographic lines. Moreover, they maintained ties with the leaders of other labor and anarchist movements in the United States, joined in their rallies, invited their leaders to their own Hispanic functions, and translated and published their speeches and essays in Spanish-language periodicals. For example, Hispanic leaders such as Pedro Esteve accompanied Emma Goldman in speaking tours as translators. New York/New Jersey The shipping and manufacturing industries of New York and New Jersey were heavy employers of Hispanic labor originating in the Caribbean and Spain. The workers not only were followers of the numerous Italian leaders who were active from Boston to Philadelphia but also were leaders of the Hispanic anarcho-syndicalists. Immigrants from Spain, in particular those from Catalonia, long a center of revolutionary and trade union activity on the Iberian Peninsula, gravitated to the leadership roles. Immigrants from Catalonia were especially experienced in labor politics. They had established the large, successful Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labor) in 1910 and were met with massive government repression, including the imposition of martial law in Barcelona. The confederation went underground, but nevertheless grew to have between six hundred thousand and one million members.8 The perennially suffering economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the brutal official repression against the organizing of workers were major causes of the immigration of workers to the United States, many of whom were anarchist activists. Generally they came to the United States and found work in communities with a noticeable Hispanic presence. Succeeding waves of Spanish political refugees continued to arrive when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. Categorized by the periodical Propaganda, on October 26, 1901, as “the most pronounced anarchist” in the United States, beginning in the 1890s Catalonian immigrant Pedro Esteve became one of the major figures to spread anarchosyndicalist ideology among Hispanic workers on the East Coast.9 The son of a working-class family, Esteve became a typesetter and in 1887 an editor with Barcelona’s major anarchist newspaper, El Productor (The Producer). When the authorities shut the paper down in 1893, Esteve fled to Cuba to proselytize. 10 During his three months’ stay, he published the weekly Archivo Social (Social Archive) and promptly became persona non grata. Esteve subsequently organized tobacco workers in Ybor City/Tampa, miners in Colorado, seamen in

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New York, and silk factory workers in Paterson, New Jersey.11 In Ybor City, he edited El Esclavo (The Slave) from 1894 to 1898 while working as a lector (i.e., reader) in a cigar factory.12 According to Avilés, he also founded and operated an anarchist school, Escuela Francisco Ferrer, and a cultural center titled Antorcha (Torch).13 Even while producing his newspapers in New York and New Jersey, Esteve maintained an active travel schedule, furthering the anarchist cause in places like Ybor City. From 1899 to 1906, he assumed the editorship of La Questione Sociale from Galleani in Paterson, where he also published the Spanish-language El Despertar (The Awakening) during the 1890s.14 In 1911, back in Ybor again, vigilantes broke up his print shop and he fled to New York, where he immediately opened up another print shop on West Street and started publishing his most important and long-lasting newspaper, Cultura Obrera, which lasted from 1911 to 1927.15 At one point, Esteve was arrested and threatened with deportation, but then was released with orders to cease publishing. He ignored the orders. Esteve also operated a small anarchist press, appropriately named La Políglota (The Polyglot).16 Paterson was a major silk-weaving center that attracted immigrant workers. In the early twentieth century, the city experienced major strikes promoting reforms of child-labor practices and an eight-hour work day. Esteve edited El Despertar, Periódico Anaquista (The Awakening, Anarchist Periodical) in Paterson until 1908. Like many other anarchist publications serving ethnic communities, its pages included translations of the major European anarchist theorists. The paper also advertised and sold the books of these theorists. Throughout the life of El Despertar, Esteve published his own editorials and essays and at least two of his own pamphlets: A los anarquistas de España y Cuba: Memoria de la Conferencia Anarquista Internacional celebrada en Chicago en septiembre de 1893 (1900, To the Anarchists of Spain and Cuba: Commemoration of the International Anarchist Conference Celebrated in Chicago in September of 1893) and Socialismo anaquista (1902, Anarchist Socialism).17 Esteve, who became one of the leading and most celebrated anarchism theorists among Hispanics, was reported to prefer publishing his ideas in newspapers over books because of newspapers’ accessibility to the working class.18 As he put it: “El libro sí, como el decía, es hermoso, es grande, pero ¿es posible su divulgación? ¿Podrá llegar a aquellos cerebros que después de una ruda tarea en el trabajo buscan descanso?”19 During the same period, beginning in 1905, Esteve published another periodical, Doctrina Anarquista-Socialista (SocialistAnarchist Doctrine), in Paterson. His lead essay in every issue explored a different theme of anarchist theory. Although most of the subscribers and donors were from New Jersey and New York, others lived as far away as California. It built a following by addressing issues with currency, with special attention to the cigar rollers in Tampa, where Esteve had maintained relationships.20

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One of the few in-depth stories about Esteve in the English-language press came not from the New York area but from the Dallas Morning News on June 7, 1903, after reporter Stephen Bonsal had interviewed him. Besides reproducing in English one of Esteve’s long speeches and making other observations in his four-column report, Bonsal stated that the “dago” printer was an expert polyglot of “wide education and culture” who seemingly devoted his entire work days of twenty hours to writing and single-handedly publishing his periodicals and pamphlets and his weekends to delivering fiery anarchist speeches. Esteve’s major contribution to anarchism appeared in New York’s Cultura Obrera. Following the anarcho-syndicalist practice of serving specific workers, Cultura Obrera had a direct relationship with dock workers and seamen, and became an official publication of the Marine Firemen, Oilers, and Watertenders Union of the Atlantic and the Gulf, a union founded by Esteve’s activist colleague and anarchist journalist Jaime Vidal.21 Esteve not only sold the newspaper aboard ships but also listed each ship’s donations and subscriptions collected in its pages. A bilingual paper in the beginning, Cultura Obrera printed translations of major anarchists, extensively covered union and strike activity by Latinos throughout the United States, covered the Mexican Revolution, and even collected donations for the defense fund of the Mexican Liberal Party and its exiled leader, Ricardo Flores Magón.22 In its heyday, Cultura Obrera had the distinction of reprinting more articles from Flores Magón’s Regeneración than from any other source. Similarly, Esteve’s essays and correspondence were among the most reprinted in Regeneración. Cultura Obrera also maintained a bookstore, which sold Esteve’s pamphlets, including Reformismo, dictadura y federalismo (Reformism, Dictatorship, and Federalism).23 Upon Esteve’s death in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1925, Cultura Obrera commemorated his leadership and contributions with testimonials from the leading anarchists of the day. The paper went under in 1927 and was succeeded in New York by Cultura Proletaria (Proletarian Culture), under the editorship of one of Esteve’s mentees, Marcelino García (1893–1977).24 The Spanish-born García had immigrated to the United States as a child and at fifteen worked in zinc mines in West Virginia. In New York, he did everything from working as a stevedore and a carpenter to operating an elevator. He also became a member of the Cultura Obrera group.25 During the Spanish Civil War, García went to Spain and sent in two articles a week to the New York paper, but he was arrested by the Fascists in Barcelona; only with the intervention of Emma Goldman was he freed and allowed to return to New York to edit the paper. In an interview, García estimated that 2,500 active Spanish anarchists and some 2,000 sympathizers (not to be confused with an unknown total of anarchists from Mexican, Cuban, and other Spanish-speaking groups) lived in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, and he also affirmed that Cultura Proletaria had four thousand subscribers at its peak during the 1930s.26

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García nevertheless regretted the intellectual focus of the paper—its staff was never really active in the trenches, at strikes and rallies—and he attributed this to the paper’s decline. Nevertheless, Cultura Proletaria maintained an esprit de corps with its followers and a core group of about twenty-five volunteers who helped in its composition, printing, and mailing and in organizing public lectures and events. José Hernández, one of its members, recalled, “When we had to mail out the paper each week, we all got together at the Center [Centro Internacional at 23rd Street]. There was a long table and we all wrapped and addressed the paper and we mailed it the same day. To raise money for the hall and the paper we also had a monthly supper at the Center.”27 The reach in numbers of both Cultura Obrera and Cultura Proletaria went beyond their staff ’s accounting, as both papers were read aloud in workers’ clubs and factories to many who never became subscribers or donors. Joachín Edo recounted that among the midwestern automobile and steel workers, from Gary and Detroit to Youngstown, thousands of Spanish-speaking followers/readers often came together for conferences and picnics.28 Adrián del Valle (1872–1945), who wrote under the pseudonym “Palmiro de Lidia,” became an associate of Esteve’s. He was a Catalonian anarchist who preceded Esteve on his route to New York and later became his collaborator. He, too, seems to have cut across all ethnic and geographic boundaries, and his writings, both political and literary, were featured in anarchist periodicals across the United States. Del Valle initially sought to establish a Spanish Republic, but was converted to anarchism after regularly attending meetings of La Luz (The Light), a freethinkers’ club in Barcelona in the 1880s.29 After writing alongside Esteve for Barcelona’s anarchist newspaper El Productor (The Producer), he moved to New York City in 1892 and joined up with Errico Malatesta, where he administered the newspaper El Despertar until Esteve took it over. 30 By 1898, he was writing for Brooklyn’s El Rebelde (The Rebel) in support of the Cuban war for independence—from which Esteve maintained his distance, not believing in nationalist movements. As coeditor of the paper, Del Valle published a weekly column entitled “Crónicas Subversivas” (Subversive Chronicles, possibly titled in honor of Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva) under his usual pseudonym of Palmiro de Lidia. At the same time, he made a living by teaching classes in arithmetic, bookkeeping, Spanish grammar, and basic English. He also published literary works, such as his short play “Revista Tabaqueril,” for which he employed the pseudonym “Lidón.”31 After the United States defeated Spain and occupied Cuba, Del Valle returned to the island in 1899 to support the anarchist cause by founding the newspaper El Nuevo Ideal (The New Ideal) and a magazine, El Audaz (The Audacious One). He made the island his base for sending out political and literary works that were published in the Hispanic world until his death in 1945, especially in the anarchist periodicals of the United States, such as New York’s Cultura Obrera (from 1911 on) and

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Inquietudes (Disquietude, 1927); Tampa’s Nueva Vida (New Life, 1924) and Internacional (1940); and Revista Unica (Unique Magazine, 1928) in Steubenville, Ohio. Spanish-language commercial and community newspapers that did not promote an anarchist agenda, such as San Antonio’s La Prensa, also published his work. Over the years, Del Valle toned down his anarchist rhetoric and he became more mainstream and popular in Cuba while still publishing in the United States. Del Valle’s and Esteve’s anarchist successors in New York during the Spanish Civil War took on the task of bringing together the many Hispanic mutual aid societies and community organizations in a unified effort to restore the Spanish Republic and expel fascism from Spain. The anarchists softened their rhetoric when they established the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (Confederation of Hispanic Societies) and published the confederation’s longlasting newspaper, España Libre (Free Spain), from 1939 until 1977.32 Departing somewhat from anarchist orthodoxy, the working-class editors and many of their writers sought to forge a broader identity for the Spanish nation in exile, and to that end they recruited a vast array of cultural workers from all of the Spanish-speaking ethnic groups in and around New York City. The individual community groups hosted fund-raising events, rallies, lectures, theatrical performances, picnics, and so forth. The newspaper, published as a weekly for most of its existence, was distributed in the New York area on newsstands and mailed to Hispanic communities throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Underground correspondents in Spain were responsible for distributing the paper on the peninsula and sent in reports of their work. According to Feu-Lopez, circulation peaked at five thousand copies. Unlike many of the previously noted anarchist papers, España Libre’s eight broadsheet pages limited reprints of anarchist theorists and devoted its space to news, Civil War coverage, political essays, personal narratives, opinion columns, community events, book reviews, and cartoons. One of the founders of the Confederation of Hispanic Societies, the Andalusian José Castilla Morales, served as España Libre’s director from 1939 to 1961. Castilla Morales had written for labor newspapers in Cuba before fleeing to New York from dictator Machado’s repression. In Manhattan, he worked as a staff writer for the Solidaridad (Solidarity) newspaper and later became the assistant editor of La Voz (The Voice). As the principal founder of the confederation, he also wrote for España Libre under various pseudonyms and emceed the confederation’s daily radio broadcast on WBBC (Brooklyn Broadcasting Corporation). Despite the number of anarchists who worked for the paper, under Castilla Morales España Libre continuously campaigned against the spread of communism and fascism, which presumably led to its clean bill of health after being investigated by the FBI.33 Jesús González Malo, who had served as an España Libre staff writer since the 1950s, succeeded Castilla Morales in 1961. González Malo had been an

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anarcho-syndicalist leader and militiaman in Santander, Spain, before going into exile in New York, where he first worked as a welder on the docks. His main concern was to support the Spanish resistance; that is, keep the issue in the forefront even after so many years of fascist rule and to maintain the openness, egalitarianism, and diversity of España Libre, in which all liberal ideologies were still welcome. Under González Malo’s directorship, numerous women were able to assume greater leadership in the confederation and the newspaper. Carmen Aldecoa was a case in point; she had run an orphanage for Spanish refugee children in Lyon, France. In the 1940s, Aldecoa worked with various women’s groups in the confederation and wrote articles for España Libre from women’s perspectives; but in the 1950s and 1960s she also advocated an alliance of the working and middle classes and became a member of leadership committees, such as the Confederation’s International Advisory Committee, and a leading organizer of protests in New York that sought to bring US pressure on Spain.34 After González Malo’s term ended in 1965, España Libre gradually waned until it shut down in 1977, when the Spanish Republic was finally restored. Tampa/Ybor City Ybor City/Tampa in Florida became another focal point for anarchist action and publications. More than one hundred cigar factories had relocated from Cuba from the 1880s to the turn of the century, in part as a means to avoid the labor unrest endemic to the industry in the Caribbean.35 From their inception, however, the Florida factories were plagued with anarchist and labor organizing and numerous strikes. Ultimately, the cigar workers formed the strongest unions of any Hispanic workers in the United States. One explanation for their success was that they were among the most literate and well-informed, especially because of the long-standing institution of the lector, a reader hired by the workers to read newspapers to them in the mornings and novels and labor/ anarchist literature in the afternoons during their repetitive, often boring, artisan tasks. La Aurora (The Dawn), the first workers’ newspaper founded in Cuba, in 1865, had benefited from lectores among tobacco workers. The Cuban, Spanish, Italian, and Puerto Rican tobacco workers continued this tradition in Florida and founded a series of newspapers affiliated with their unions. Among these were La Federación (The Federation, 1890–), Boletín Obrero (Worker Bulletin, 1903–), El Federal (The Federal, 1902–), El Internacional (The International, 1904–), El Obrero Industrial (an IWW paper issued during the 1910s), 36 El Tabacalero (published by the Tobacco Workers Association in the 1930s), and Vocero de la Unión de Tabaqueros (Voice of the Tobacco Workers’ Union, 1941–). All of these papers were highly influenced by anarchist teachings. However, the doctrinaire anarchist papers began even earlier, with El Esclavo (The Slave), in 1894, mentioned above as having been edited by Pedro Esteve.37 El Esclavo was similar to

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Esteve’s later papers in that it featured translations of the major anarchist ideologues; however, as the war for Cuban independence was still raging, El Esclavo supported the effort with essays and poems by major revolutionary writers, such as Francisco Sellén. It also featured several series of satirical columns by cronistas under various pseudonyms; most notable among them was the anarchist writer and poet Palmiro de Lidia (pseudonym of Adrián del Valle), whose “Crónicas Subversivas” were published in El Esclavo in 1897 and 1898. These columns revealed the paper’s support of unions with its regular accounts of the strike committee’s fund (Comisión de Huelga). As was common, many of these periodicals and their offices became centers for distribution of anarchist literature. The lists of publications that they distributed provide a sense of their reach. In one instance, El Esclavo listed nine pamphlets published by El Ideal in Brooklyn that were available for free in its offices.38 Esteve’s newspaper was followed by La Voz del Esclavo (The Voice of the Slave), published in Spanish and Italian in 1900; Liberación (Liberation) in 1912; and Nueva Vida (New Life), edited by Herminio González and R. Miqueli in 1924.39 The latter was one of the few anarchist newspapers to feature a weekly woman’s column, “Conciencia Femenina” (Feminine Conscience), written by the coeditor’s Cuban American wife, Violeta Miqueli de González, who also operated a girls’ school in Tampa. Overlapping the run of Nueva Vida was El Boletín del Torcedor (Cigar Rollers’ Bulletin), published in 1924 by the Cigar Rollers Association and printed at Mascuñana Printers in Tampa. It too featured numerous weekly series of satirical crónicas, most notably those of “Don Mateo” (pseudonym of Antonio Calado). The newspaper often featured reprints from Esteve’s Cultura Obrera and from Flores Magón’s Regeneración, thus embracing the Northeast, Southwest, and West in its network of sister publications and affinities. In its militancy, El Boletín often engaged in polemics with El Internacional. It also listed anarchist publications for sale at its offices, including pamphlets imported from the Editorial La Protesta in Peru. Some of these publications were issued at the Centro Obrero (Worker Center), which had a press and served as the center of anarchist reading and discussion groups, union strategizing, as well as theatrical performances. Here, the most notable Hispanic female anarchist, Luisa Capetillo (1879–1922), lectured and produced her plays; she also wrote numerous essays that were published in the labor and anarchist press, not only in Tampa but also in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and other cities on the continent and in the Caribbean. Her work as a labor organizer took her from her native Puerto Rico to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Tampa, and New York; and in each venue she left her mark in local publications.40 As an early feminist, Capetillo promoted absolute equality of the sexes and advocated free love; she also collected her essays and published them herself in four books during the first two decades of the twentieth century.41 These included Ensayos libertarios (Libertarian Essays,

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1909), detailing her anarchist ideology; La humanidad en el futuro (Humanity in the Future, 1910), published to raise funds for her magazine; Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes e la mujer (My Opinion on the Liberties, Rights and Duties of Women, 1911), developing her feminist ideology; and Influencia de las ideas modernas (The Influence of Modern Ideas, 1916), containing many of her literary works and theatrical pieces. Violeta Miqueli (1893?–1972), another female anarchist to come out of the cigar factories of Florida, was born to cigar-rolling parents in Ybor City but went on to attend the University of Havana and obtain a master’s degree in education from the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee. She was married to Herminio González, the coeditor of Nueva Vida, in which her weekly feminist column, “Consciencia Femenina,” ran in the 1920s. She also published articles in New York’s El Debate (The Debate) and Nueva Era (New Era). Miqueli continued to write in favor of women assuming more public roles in society while editing Alpha magazine in Tampa, and she published articles in Spanish in periodicals as far away as New York’s Cultura Proletaria and España Libre and Buenos Aires’ La Prensa (The Press).42 A practitioner as well as a theorist, Miqueli ran a girls’ school in Tampa for many years. Her most lasting and still referenced work, however, is her book Women in Myth and History (1962).43 As the Great Depression hit and cigar-rolling machines displaced workers, and as American smoking habits changed, many of the cigar workers in Ybor City/Tampa lost their jobs and union and anarchist activity waned. The Southwest The third area of widespread anarchist publishing activity took place throughout the American Southwest, and the most influential newspapers were founded or inspired by Ricardo Flores Magón and his Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party), which took on the task of deposing Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz and bringing on the 1910 Revolution in Mexico.44 By 1900, the anarcho-syndicalist Flores Magón had launched his renowned newspaper Regeneración (Regeneration) in Mexico City, and it was promptly repressed by the Díaz regime. Before going into exile in the United States, Flores Magón was jailed four times for his radical journalism.45 He began publishing Regenera­ ción in San Antonio, Texas, in 1904 and then in St. Louis in 1905, where the paper printed editions of twenty thousand copies.46 Flores Magón moved to Toronto, Canada, in 1906; in 1908 he revived Regeneración in Los Angeles. No matter the location of its offices, Regeneración registered wide distribution throughout the United States and in Mexico through various ingenious methods of smuggling. Flores Magón saw his group’s commitment to the revolution in Mexico as the vanguard of liberation for all workers, and many anarchist newspapers

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around the country echoed these sentiments, even to the extent of making donations to Regeneración, the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), and defense funds to free Flores Magón and his followers when they were jailed. As had occurred with Cultura Obrera in New York during World War I, the US government targeted Regeneración for breaking the Trading with the Enemy Act and the 1917 Espionage Act and denied it mailing privileges.47 At least twice, authorities ransacked the offices of Regeneración and smashed its press. Flores Magón was also jailed and indicted on a number of occasions, including his arrest on March 16, 1918, for publishing a manifesto to anarchists and laborers of the world. He was again arrested in 1918 for breaking the US neutrality laws and ultimately was sentenced to twenty years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died mysteriously in 1922. Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara (1870–1918) was one of the most active PLM members. He was a lawyer, journalist, and writer who served on the editorial board of Regeneración. In 1909 he was arrested with Flores Magón and other members of the PLM in Los Angeles for supposedly attempting to assassinate President Taft.48 Under threat of deportation, Gutiérrez de Lara swore to authorities that he was not an anarchist, just a socialist and pacifist.49 Contrary to his testimony in Los Angeles that resulted in his freedom, he fought as a soldier in the heat of battle and was very active in the famed Cananea miners’ strikes in Mexico, an experience that he recorded in his anarchist novel, Los bribones (The Scoundrels).50 He later lost his life in Cananea, Mexico, where he was captured and shot dead, and where his body was burned and thrown into a river. Gutiérrez de Lara had defected from the PLM and joined the Francisco Madero camp, for which Flores Magón labeled him a traitor. From that point on, he presented himself as a socialist. In 1914 Gutiérrez de Lara became one of the first writers to document the Mexican Revolution with his El pueblo mexicano y sus luchas por la libertad, which was published in New York that same year as The Mexican People: Their Struggle for Freedom.51 Another associate of both Flores Magón and Gutiérrez de Lara was Antonio de Araujo (1883–?), who had arrived in Cananea in 1905 and, with Gutiérrez de Lara and other associates of Flores Magón, attempted to organize the miners as part of the effort to initiate the revolution against the Díaz regime; they founded the Club Liberal de Cananea as an affiliate of the PLM. The famous Cananea miners’ strike broke out in 1906 and, pursued by agents hired by the mining companies, Araujo, Gutiérrez de Lara, and the others left and joined up with Flores Magón in Los Angeles. While Flores Magón was in jail or otherwise absent, Araujo edited Regeneración, but in 1908 he founded his own newspaper, taking as its title the motto of the PLM, Reforma-Libertad-Justicia (Reform, Liberty, and Justice), which he had to publish at various sites—including McAlister, Oklahoma, as well as El Paso, Austin, and Waco in Texas—because of continued persecution. All the while, Araujo was organizing armed invasions

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of Mexico on behalf of the PLM. He was detained by federal authorities in Waco in 1908, and like so many of his brethren was sentenced to three years in Leavenworth.52 After his release in 1911, Araujo once again joined the battle and in 1912 was arrested in Calexico for breaking US neutrality laws. Once freed, he picked up the duties of editor of Regeneración while Flores Magón was serving a sentence at McNeil Island in Washington State. It was during this time as editor of Regeneración that he initiated an international smear campaign against Juan Francisco Moncaleano and Rómulo Carmona for breaking with the Flores Magón group, as noted below. Like many anarchist newspapers, Regeneración advertised books and pamph­ lets, and sold so-called bibliotecas sociológicas (sociological libraries). Its affiliated anarchist bookstore, Librería Mexicana “La Aurora,” owned and operated by Rómulo Carmona, sold more than eighty titles published by Regeneración in the early 1900s. In addition to the Regeneración titles, Carmona bought books in Spain for the equivalent of 5 cents and sold them for 50 cents in the United States. His sources included the Francisco Sempere publishing house in Valencia and the “La Escuela Moderna” in Barcelona. Also among the four hundred titles he advertised in Regeneración were noted works from Spanish-language publishers in San Antonio, St. Louis, and elsewhere in the United States. Carmona’s relationship with Ricardo Flores Magón went back to his time as a bookseller in El Paso in 1906 and 1907, where he was also the founder of the Santiago de la Hoz liberal club and, incidentally, the father of Flores Magón’s lover, Paula Carmona.53 The Mexican Liberal Party and its newspapers—with Regeneración as its bible, so to speak—established chapters, such as the Riverside Grupo Regenera­ ción, and affiliated with newspapers throughout the Southwest. Its affiliates included El Paso’s La Bandera Roja (Red Flag), Humanidad (Humanity), Punto Rojo (Red Point), Reforma-Libertad-Justicia (Reform-Liberty-Justice), and Cerebro y Fuerza (Brains and Power); Albuquerque’s El Demócrata (The Democrat); El Liberal (The Liberal) of Del Rio, Texas; and Libertad y Trabajo (Liberty and Work), El Mosquito (The Mosquito), and La Reforma Social (Social Reform) of Los Angeles. As part of the anarchist movement, and PLM papers in particular, the role for women editors and writers had expanded, as had their role as revolutionaries. In fact, a leader of the PLM, Práxedis Guerrero, in a long front-page editorial in the October 18, 1913, issue of Cerebro y Fuerza, extolled the contributions of women revolutionaries.54 Women’s equality with men was to be part of the renovation of society that would take place with the triumph of the revolution. Notable among the women who assumed leading roles in PLM-affiliated newspapers was Laredo’s Sara Estela Ramírez, a Mexican-born schoolteacher who gave fiery speeches at workers’ meetings and published poetry and essays in the local Spanish-language press.55 In 1901 she began publishing her own newspaper, La Corregidora (named for the heroine of independence, Josefa Ortiz

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de Domínguez, known as the “Chief Magistrate”), and in 1910 she founded the magazine Aurora, appropriating a popular anarchist metaphor for the title. Before her sudden death in 1910, she had written for Juana Gutiérrez de Mendoza’s Vésper: Justicia y Libertad (Dawn: Justice and Liberty) and joined with her and other revolutionary women in founding Regeneración y Concordia (Regeneration and Concordia), an organization to advance the interests of women, Native Americans, and the proletariat.56 Other periodicals under the direction of women were Teresa Villarreal’s El Obrero (The Worker) in San Antonio, Isidra T. de Cárdenas’s La Voz de la Mujer (Woman’s Voice) in El Paso, Blanca de Moncaleano’s Pluma Roja (Red Pen) in Los Angeles, and Teresa and Andrea Villarreal’s La Mujer Moderna (Modern Woman) in San Antonio. All were affiliated with the PLM. Many of these newspapers repeated anarchist rhetoric and spoke for and to women in order to enlist them in the revolutionary cause. The editors of La Voz de la Mujer, for example, demonstrated their militancy in exhorting revolutionary action in their editorial of July 28, 1907: “Hoy el dilema es otro: tomar lo que se necesita, ¡libertad! ¡Hay que ser rebeldes! Primero morir, antes que consentir que nuestros hijos lleven el estigma de la esclavitud. A nosotras, madres y esposas, hermanas o hijas, nos toca encausar este dilema.”57 According to the literary critic Clara Lomas, Pluma Roja placed women’s emancipation at the forefront.58 The newspaper’s motto on its masthead was “Instruid a la mujer y el triunfo de la Anarquía será breve” (Educate women, and the triumph of Anarchy will be at hand). Printed on the same press as Regeneración, Pluma Roja was founded and edited by Colombian anarchist Blanca de Moncaleano, who with her husband, Juan Francisco Moncaleano (1883– 1916), had been expelled from Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico for their radical activities.59 In the same building where both papers were printed, she and Juan Francisco and Rómulo Carmona set up the Casa del Obrero Internacional (International Workers’ Home), modeled after the centers they had run in Bogotá and Mexico City.60 Despite raids on the presses from authorities and building condemnations from fire marshals, competition and sabotage from the IWW and attacks by the Los Angeles Times, Mexican workers were attracted to and benefited from the Casa del Obrero.61 In Pluma Roja, as well as in Regenera­ ción and other anarchist papers in which Blanca de Moncaleano published articles, she challenged patriarchal society, the state, and the church, and was severely critical of revolutionary men not conscious of their own suppression and enslavement of women.62 In her “Manifiesto a la Mujer” (Manifesto to Women), published in Boston’s monthly Fraternidad in September 1915, she exhorted women to break the chains of religion and the patriarchy: Poor woman, unconscious slave, lift your eyes up from the thousand-year-old altar; break those heavy religious chains and enter the sanctuary of rational

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science, where freedom will crown your forehead in reward for your powerful effort. . . . To destroy the tyrant, let us invade the palace where abides that jailer of freedom, let us unite to conquer by force the rights of life. By shattering that religious yoke that makes woman the most submissive slave and the worker a vile pariah. Yes, let’s bring down that den where the rich, the governor and the priest officiate bloated with proletarian blood; tear down each barrier that obstructs our triumphant march, cutting off the heads of the executioners to the rhythm of our libertarian songs.

So strong was Moncaleano’s writing that El Paso’s Cerebro y Fuerza (18 October 1913) newspaper called her “virile,” a term reserved for brave and bold exponents of revolutionary thought. Her writings, including her statement that appeared in Pluma Roja, lend credence to this view: “Engolfados los hombres en su supuesta superioridad, fatuos por su ignorancia, han creído que sin la ayuda de la mujer pueden llegar a la meta de la emancipación humana.”63 As might be expected, Moncaleano sought to break down the nationalist ideological linkage of woman to home and family and to procreating the nation. Other women in the PLM offered equally caustic critiques of patriarchal males. Unlike the male leaders of the PLM, such as Ricardo and his brother Enrique Flores Magón, among others, who believed that it was women’s “ ‘feminine duty’—to coddle men, nurture them, and dare them into becoming revolutionaries,” Moncaleano “by contrast, ordered women from their prescribed functions entirely.”64 Eventually the Moncaleanos, accompanied by Rómulo Carmona and León Cárdenas Martínez, split with the Flores Magón faction, principally because they were more engaged in an educational and cultural project and the Magonistas were more interested in armed revolution.65 Barrera Bassols, the leading historian of the PLM, asserts that the best period of Regenera­ ción came about when the Moncaleanos and Carmona were involved.66 After splitting with Flores Magón, Juan Francisco Moncaleano joined León Cárdenas Martínez in editing Cerebro y Fuerza in El Paso, which they used as a forum to attack the Magonistas.67 Juan Francisco Moncaleano died on January 1, 1916, at the age of 33. Remaining in Los Angeles, Blanca and their children, after seeing the fate of anarchists like Ricardo Flores Magón and enduring repression themselves, changed their name to Lawson and went underground. Her grandchildren live in southern California to this day.68 Of course, the Magonistas were not the only anarcho-syndicalists active in the American West and Southwest. At the same time that Flores Magón and Moncaleano were issuing their papers, Fuerza Consciente, Revista Ilustrada (Dedicada a la Propaganda Anarquista y Revolucionaria) [Conscious Strength Illustrated Magazine (Dedicated to Anarchist and Revolutionary Propaganda)] began publishing on March 15, 1913, in New York City, but by October had relocated to Los Angeles under the editorship of José Vilariño. As of March 7, 1914, Jaime

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Vidal had taken the helm of the magazine and changed its format to a broadsheet. Very little is known about Vilariño, except that in 1911 he was chairman of the Marine Firemen, Oilers, and Watertenders Union, affiliated with Cultura Obrera. By 1915 he was working on the anarchist paper Voluntad (Volition) in New York City. But Vidal was a well-known colleague of Pedro Esteve. He had worked on Cultura Obrera and served as secretary of the aforementioned union, and even did a stint at Regeneración. As a personal friend of Francisco Ferrer i Guardia, the martyred founder of the Modern School, Vidal also established organizations to continue Ferrer’s socialist legacy. But, according to Avilés, he also hatched plots to assassinate King Alphonse of Spain in revenge for Ferrer’s assassination.69 Vidal was also the founder of the Comité Pro-Revolución Española, which was affiliated with the Revolutionary Party headquartered in Paris.70 While working with the union, Vidal published articles in Spanish and English in Cultura Obrera, proposing among other things an international organization of workers to incorporate more than just anarchists: “Para abrir paso al progreso y dar oportunidad a las ideas sociales para desenvolverse entre los esclavos.”71 In the March 24, 1912, issue, he published an extensive, but practical, essay on “How to Strike.” Cultura Obrera featured numerous other writings by Vidal. In May 1912, Vidal and Esteve founded the magazine Brazo y Cerebro (Brawn and Brains) in New York. By 1913, the US Post Office had refused mailing privileges to the magazine, at which point Vidal published a plea in Regeneración (11 January 1913), and presumably in other periodicals, for volunteers throughout the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, and Spain to distribute Brazo y Cerebro for them. The format of Brazo y Cerebro would be emulated and its content simulated and reproduced by Vidal’s next venture: his assumption in March 1914 of the directorship of Fuerza Consciente, which he promptly moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The US government canceled its mailing privileges, and Vidal announced its pending closure in Regeneración on March 6, 1915. He issued the paper’s last number in May.72 While Fuerza Consciente lasted, it reprinted essays by the leading European and Hispanic anarchists, such as Ricardo Flores Magón and Práxedis G. Guerrero. Its January 15, 1915, issue was notable in its focus on free love, which featured an essay by Luisa Capetillo. Capetillo lived in Tampa but contributed a number of essays by mail to both Brazo y Cerebro and Fuerza Consciente under the header “Femeninas” (Feminine Themes). The paper’s list of subscribers included readers from all over the United States, from New York to Corpus Christi, and even Havana and Panama City. The newspaper ran its own bookstore, where it sold many anarchist titles, including pamphlets by Jaime Vidal. The Hispanic affiliates of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Tampa—and in the West, Southwest, and Midwest—produced numerous labor newspapers that promoted anarchism.73 While anarchists like Pedro Esteve had at times associated with the IWW, many became disillusioned and

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separated themselves from the organization and its publishing enterprises. Latinos in the West had a different experience from Esteve’s with the Wobblies. Early in its history the IWW had been active in northern Mexico and just north of the border, and by 1908 the IWW had built a hall in Holtville, on the California border. There it began publishing a Spanish-language newspaper, Libertad y Trabajo (Freedom and Labor), and gave strong support to Flores Magón and the PLM.74 IWW activity among Hispanics extended from New York to the Midwest and northern California, but it was Los Angeles where the Wobblies were more successful in working with Mexican laborers and in producing periodicals in Spanish. One of these newspapers was El Rebelde (The Rebel), published from 1915 to 1917 by the IWW Latin Propaganda League, under the supposed editorship of Doroteo Arango (Pancho Villa’s real name). Elsewhere, Spanish poet and essayist A. V. Azuara appeared as its editor as well as the author of pamphlets for sale through the newspaper. These included Una gran unión de trabajadores (A Great Workers’ Union) and Viaje a Alaska (Trip to Alaska), relating to his work in the canneries of Alaska. Azuara had also worked in fisheries in California and mines in Arizona, where he was arrested for his activism in the Clifton and Morenci strikes.75 Unlike the Spanish anarchists of the East Coast, Azuara had immigrated to Mexico and made his way to California, where his union organizing activities for the IWW produced a twenty-year sentence at Leavenworth.76 As mentioned above, activists also published IWW periodicals in Los Angeles, including Huelga General (General Strike), edited by José Corona, beginning in 1913, and El Obrero Industrial (The Industrial Worker, 1941–).77 In Chicago the Wobblies published Solidaridad, El Periódico de los Trabajadores (Solidarity, The Workers’ Newspaper, 1923–) and in Brooklyn Solidaridad, running for more than ten years, beginning in 1919. Communist newspapers, such as the mimeographed Claridad Proletaria (Proletariat Clarity), published by the Revolutionary Workers of the United States in the 1930s, also appeared in Chicago, Detroit, and New York. The most important of the communist-led Hispanic papers was Pueblos Hispanos (Hispanic Peoples), edited by Puerto Rican poet Juan Antonio Corretjer, who had gained his release from federal prison in Atlanta but was prohibited from returning to Puerto Rico to resume his radical activities. He moved to New York and immediately founded Pueblos Hispanos (1943–1944), a newspaper that covered liberation movements throughout the Americas and the world and included some of the most renowned Puerto Rican writers and intellectuals in New York. l This brief overview of the recently acquired anarchist, labor, and radical newspapers, many of which were previously unknown, does not include others of

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similar ideological stances that are in our Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage collection of some 1,500 Spanish-language newspapers published between 1880 and 1940. Aside from ideological differences, what set this anarchist group apart from the hundreds of commercial and community-based periodicals was their lack of, or indifference to, the nationality and/or ethnic makeup of readers. Nor would they change their identity or ideological stance. They were unified in opposing capitalism and the ruthless exploitation of working people, which they considered synonymous with “Americanism.” Holdings at Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project Periodicals associated with the PLM are marked with an asterisk (*) La Antorcha (Tampa), 1906 Aurora (New York), 1934 Boletín de Información (New York), 1937–1938 Boletín del Torcedor (Tampa), 1923–1928 Brazo y Cerebro (New York), 1912 * Cerebro y Fuerza (El Paso), 1913 Claridad Proletaria (New York), 1933–1934 Claridad Proletaria Obrera (Chicago), 1939 Claridad Proletaria Obrera (Detroit), 1938–1939 Claridad Proletaria Obrera (New York), 1936 Comité Pro-Víctimas de Tamaulipas (Oakland), 1927 Cultura Obrera (New York), 1911–1927 Cultura Proletaria (New York), 1927–1953 El Despertar (New York), 1896–1902 Doctrina Anarquista-Socialista (Paterson, NJ), 1905 El Esclavo (Tampa), 1894–1898 España Libre (New York), 1939–1977 La Federación (Tampa), 1899–1902 Fraternidad (Boston), 1815 Frente Hispano (New York), 1937 Frente Popular (New York), 1937–1939 Fuerza Cerebral (New York), 1916 Fuerza Consciente (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco), 1913–1914 Huelga General (Los Angeles), 1914 Inquietudes (New York), 1927 El Internacional (Tampa), 1904–1906 * Justicia Social (San Antonio), 1940 * El Labrador (Las Cruces, NM), 1896–1912 Liberación (Boston), 1923 Liberación (New York), 1946–1949 Liberación (Tampa), 1912 * El Liberal (Del Rio, TX), 1907

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La Luz (New York), 1921–1922 * El Mosquito (Los Angeles), 1906 Nueva Vida (Tampa), 1924 Obrero Industrial (Tampa), 1914 * El Pequeño Grande (El Rio, CA), 1915 * Pluma Roja (Los Angeles), 1913–1915 Pueblos Hispanos (New York), 1943–1944 * El Rebelde (Los Angeles), 1915–1916 * Reforma-Libertad-Justicia (Austin, TX), 1908 * Reforma Social (El Paso), 1906 * Regeneración (San Antonio, Los Angeles), 1904–1918 * Resurrección (San Antonio), 1907 Revista Popular (Key West, FL), 1989 Revista Unica (Steubenville, OH), 1928 * Revolución (Los Angeles), 1907–1908 Solidaridad (Chicago), 1923–1924 Solidaridad (New York), 1928–1930 Spanish Labor Bulletin (New York), 1938 Spanish Labor News (New York), 1938 El Tabacalero (Tampa), 1930 Via Libre (New York), 1939–1940 Voluntad (New York), 1915–1916 * La Voz de la Mujer (El Paso), 1907 La Voz del Esclavo (Tampa), 1900 Weekly Labor Herald (Corpus Christi, TX), 1941–1942

Notes 1. See Emma Goldman’s “Anarchism: What It Really Stands For,” in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910; Anarchist Library, 2009), chap. 1, http://theanarchistlibrary.org /library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays#toc3. 2. For a study of some of the representative “ethnic” newspapers, see Paul Avrich’s chapter “Ethnic Anarchists” in his Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 3. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 529–33, lists Aurora, Cultura Obrera, Cultura Proletaria, El Despertar, and Regeneración. While Kanellos and Martell do not index newspapers by such terms as “anarchist,” a review of their Geographic Index of extant and missing newspapers reveals numerous titles that typify anarchist publications. See Nicolás Kanellos and Helvetia Martell, Hispanic Periodicals in the United States: Origins to 1960 (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 2000), 278–308. 4. See Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years, 1868–1936 (San Francisco, CA: AK Press, 2001), 132–33. 5. See Nunzio Pernicoe’s chapter, “Luigi Galleani and Italian Anarchist Terrorism in the United States,” in David C. Rapoport, Terrorism: The First or Anarchist Wave, vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 189–210; and Sources Select Resources, s.v. “Luigi Galleani,” accessed July 3, 2014, http://www.sources.com/SSR/Docs/SSRW-Galleani_Luigi.htm.

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6. The list of newspapers is now part of the digitized “Arte Público Historical Hispanic Collection,” series I and II, available from http://www.ebscohost.com/archives. 7. One of the more recent bibliographies, Dirk Hoerder’s three-volume The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s–1970s: An Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1987), does not include the labor press of immigrants from the Americas but does cite a few of the periodicals operated by immigrants from Spain. 8. Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, 153. 9. The article went on to accuse Esteve of advocating assassination and of training men “in the business of assassination and from Paterson they go forth as propagandists of the gospel of hate.” 10. See George Richard Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868–1898 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 139. According to Marcelino García, Esteve had been touring Spain in 1891 with Errico Malatesta, the famed Italian anarchist leader, when authorities associated him with an anarchist uprising in Jerez and he had to flee to Portugal, then to England, and finally to the United States (Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 391). 11. There is a discrepancy in the record: Cultura Obrera, 19 September 1926, has him arriving in New York in 1890. 12. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 391. 13. Juan Avilés and Angél Herrerín, El nacimiento del terrorismo en Occidente: Anarquía, nihilismo y violencia revolucionaria (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2008), 176. Francisco Ferrer i Guardia (1859–1909) was a Catalonian martyr of the anarchist cause whose extensive writings on education and ideology were reprinted in most Spanish-language anarchist newspapers. As a freethinker, he developed a program for education that allowed children to progress at their own pace and follow their curiosity and thirst for knowledge, free of religious or political orientation and free of competition and coercion; in 1901, he founded his own Escuela Moderna (Modern School) in Barcelona to implement these ideas and wrote a book about it. Authorities claimed that he was involved in a plot to kill the king of Spain, and he was executed by firing squad. His two published and translated books were very influential, and Modern Schools were established in many European and US cities in the early twentieth century. In New York, one such school became a cultural center and gathering place for Spanish and other anarchists. For more information, see Enrique Martínez-Salanova Sánchez, “Francisco Ferrer i Guardia: Una Educación Libre, Solidaria, que Lucha contra la Injusticia,” http://www.uhu.es/cine.educacion/figuras pedagogia/0_ferrerguardia.htm (accessed September 5, 2014). Spanish-language anarchist organizations used various titles for the organizations and publications symbolizing the light of knowledge. Included among these favorite metaphors were antorcha (torchlight), aurora (dawn), nuevo día (new day), and of course luz (light). 14. According to Breve historia del movimiento anarquista, El Despertar was originally published and edited by the group El Despertar a la Vida [Awakening to Life], but Esteve took it over at some point. See http://www.kclibertaria.comyr.com/lpdf/l203, p. 31. 15. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 393. Avilés and Herrerín, El nacimiento del terrorismo en Occidente, 175, states that Esteve actually had written some inflammatory articles for the union paper El Internacional, which he was editing, during a violent strike in 1910, not in

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1911, and that was the cause for his arrest and abandoning Tampa. Avilés also states that authorities back in Spain had identified Esteve as a conspirator in a plot to assassinate the king of Spain and Francisco I. Madero in Mexico. 16. See Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 391–93. 17. Esteve was a delegate to the conference and spoke on “Apuntes sobre la Situa­ ción Española” [Notes on the Spanish Situation]. See Historias del poblenou, s.v. “Pedro Esteve Nuestro Anarquista Más Internacional,” last modified July 1, 2012, http://historias delpoblenou.blogspot.com/2012/07/pere-esteve-nuestro-anarquista-mas.html. 18. Like Socialismo anarquista, Pedro Esteve’s eighty-eight-page Reformismo, dictadura, federalismo (New York: Cultura Obrera, 1922?) was a compilation of some of the essays he published in newspapers. Socialismo anarquista had a second edition in 1927, after Esteve had died. 19. “Yes, books are beautiful, grand, but is their distribution possible? Can they reach those minds that after a rough day’s labor seek rest?” Cultura Obrera, 19 September 1926. Unless indicated otherwise, translations are by the author. 20. See Gary A. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, “Spanish Anarchists in Tampa, Florida, 1886–1931,” in “Struggle a Hard Battle”: Essays on Working-Class Immigrants, ed. Dirk Hoerder (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986). 21. Avilés and Herrerín, El nacimiento del terrorismo en Occidente, 176. 22. Barrera Bassols states that Pedro Esteve, Jaime Vidal, and José Pujal were the central figures linking Spanish anarchism to Ricardo Flores Magón and the PLM. In his footnote 23, he states Esteve organized the Grupo Pro-Revolución Mexicana de Tampa and collected money from the tobacco workers to support the PLM. See Jacinto Barrera Bassols, “La biblioteca Sociológica de Regeneración y la red internacional anarquista” (paper read at the symposium “Cultura y Práctica del Anarquismo: Desde sus Orígenes hasta la Primera Guerra Mundial,” Colegio de México, 23–24 March 2011, http://catedramex-esp.colmex.mx/images/actividades-realizadas/2011/textosencuentro/J-BARRERA-La-biblioteca-Sociologica-de-Regeneracion.pdf ). 23. Barrera Bassols (ibid., 8) lists other pamphlets Esteve published: A los anarquistas de España y Cuba (1893); Reflexiones sobre el movimiento obrero en México (1911); Socialismo anarquista, La ley, La violencia, El anarquismo, and La revolución social (1902). 24. There is some discrepancy among survivors and scholars as to whether García or the Argentine Roberto Muller took over the editorship during those last two years following Esteve’s death. See Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 173. 25. Ibid., 391. 26. Ibid., 174, 392. Alberico Pirani stated in an interview with Avrich that during the 1920s and 1930s the Spanish anarchist group that met at their Centro Internacional in New York was the largest anarchist group in the city, numbering around two hundred (148). This was reportedly a Ferrer Center. 27. Ibid., 394. 28. Ibid., 400. 29. See Del Valle’s description of the proselytizing that took place in Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology, 131. 30. It was actually Malatesta who convinced Del Valle to move to New York. See Breve Historia del movimiento anarquista, 31, http://www.kclibertaria.comyr.com/lpdf/l203 .pdf. See also Kirwin R. Shaffer, “Anarchism and Countercultural Politics in Early

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Twentieth-Century Cuba: Introduction,” in Cuba: Anarchist Histories and Comments, http://raforum.info/spip.php?article3675. 31. In Barcelona, Del Valle also employed the pseudonym “Forastero” (Stranger or Outlander), according to Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology, 130; and “Fructidor” (Bearer of Fruit) and “Hindus Fakir,” according to Diccionario de la literature cubana http://www .cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/diccionario-de-la-literatura-cubana—0/html/254v .htm. Also according to the Diccionario, the following were among his nonjournalistic publications in New York: Narraciones rápidas. Marta (Imp. de R. Requesens, 1894) and Fin de fiesta. Cuadro dramático (1898); see the Diccionario entry for “Valle, Adrián del” for a complete bibliography of his books published while he lived in Cuba. 32. For a list of the 110 participating organizations in the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas, see Montserrat Feu-Lopez, “Appendix 1. Organizations Affiliated to the Confederation of Hispanic Societies,” in “España Libre (1939–1977) and the Spanish Exile Community in New York” (PhD diss., University of Houston, 2011), 188–92. In November 1939, the confederation distanced itself from radical elements and converted the newspaper previously titled Frente Popular to España Libre. As Feu-Lopez cites their reasoning, “the working class was better served with moderate democratic parties than with communists” (114). 33. Ibid., 114, 43, 143, 122. 34. Ibid., 123, 117, 102–4. 35. According to Kanellos and Martell, Hispanic Periodicals in the United States, 61, the other major reasons included avoiding US tariffs, getting closer to its major market, and escaping the disruptions brought about by the Cuban wars of independence that were raging on the island. 36. Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 397–98, interviewed Marcelo Salinas, a native of Cuba, who helped organize an IWW chapter among cigar workers in Tampa but was deported by authorities. The level of militancy may be inferred from the fact that his roommate in Tampa, Manuel Pardinas, was the man who assassinated the Spanish prime minister, José Canalejas, in 1912. Salinas, himself, was deported twice from the United States and once from Spain; he was declared persona non grata by the United States after being accused of participating in a plot to assassinate President Woodrow Wilson. 37. In 1894, El Esclavo was using the term “slave” as synonymous with proletarian. Although in an interview of Pedro Esteve’s son by Avrich, the son mentions his father’s press being smashed by vigilantes, the 1894 issues of the newspaper mention that it was printed by the Tribune in Tampa. Whether this arrangement was a stopgap after losing his press, it is not known. 38. These were La ley y la autoridad, Entre campesinos, El tiempo de elecciones, La política parlamentaria, El crimen de Chicago, El mensaje del gobernador de Chicago, Consideraciones sobre el hecho y la muerte de Pallás, La anarquía, and Diálogo entre un burgués y su hijo. 39. There was a Roy Miqueli, described as a Puerto Rican actor and director active in Tampa and New York during the period. Given the family-oriented nature of this periodical, R. Miqueli may have been Violeta Miqueli’s brother, but that would make him Cuban American. See España Libre, 3 May 1940, and Traducción Prensa [TranslationPress], 27 September 1945; in both cases there seems to be a relationship with anarchists, as with the España Libre group and the Centro Obrero in Ybor City. Ecos, 11 April 1954, also has him performing at New York’s Teatro Hispano.

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40. For a more detailed, brief biography, see my entry in Nicolás Kanellos, ed., The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Latino Literature, 3 vols. (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 2008). 41. The 15 January 1915 issue of San Francisco’s Fuerza Consciente published Capetillo’s address in Tampa for those wishing to purchase her books directly from her. In that issue, the paper had excerpted one of her essays on free love. Capetillo’s essays were published in many periodicals and seem to have been well-known, even to the extent that there was opposition to her thought, as evidenced by an attack published in the Los Angeles IWW newspaper Huelga General on 7 March 1914. 42. See, for example, her “Distintas clases de anifascaistas” in España Libre, 15 March 1940. 43. I am indebted to my student Rosario Casillas for much of the information in this paragraph. 44. From US soil, the PLM administered forty-four guerrilla groups and liberal clubs throughout Mexico and coordinated their political activities in bringing about the revolution of 1910. See John M. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), 92. But Hart states that most PLM members (in Mexico) were not anarchists: “Some were socialists, but a majority simply wanted democracy in Mexico. The majority abandoned the anarchist-dominated PLM Junta and supported Francisco I. Madero once the revolution against Díaz began” (88). 45. See Kanellos and Martell, Hispanic Periodicals in the United States, 20–27, for a more detailed account of his and his followers’ activities. 46. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 89. 47. See Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and Its Control (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1922), 412–27, for a discussion of government censorship and repression of the foreign-language press, including both papers mentioned in my text. 48. See the 26 April 1940 New York Times. It seems that Gutiérrez de Lara had repeated confrontations with authorities. Revolución newspaper reported on 7 December 1907 that he was incarcerated in Los Angeles because his writings attacked President Porfirio Díaz of Mexico. This was followed by a long, front-page story on his incarceration on 18 January 1908. On 19 October 1909, the Dallas Morning News documented his arrest in Los Angeles for “disturbing the peace,” charges levied as a precautionary measure to safeguard President Taft on his arrival in the city. The arresting officer was quoted as stating, “He is accused of uttering words against the United States—against all Governments, in fact. He is accused of being undesirable. He has not been in this country three years and he may be deported if found guilty.” He was also arrested in El Paso in 1911 for trying to organize a parade of Mexican revolutionaries and again arrested by Mexican authorities in Matamoros and incarcerated in a Monterrey penitentiary in 1912, according to San Antonio’s El Regidor [ The Register], 9 August 1912, for insulting the federal army. This periodical and others document his socialist organizing and speech-making on the border and the San Antonio area for months. 49. The Herald quoted Gutiérrez de Lara as saying, “I am not an anarchist, never have been one and never will be one. I am not in sympathy with anything that savors of disorder. I am a Socialist who believes in the brotherhood of man. My arrest is the result of persecution by the Mexican government, and it is largely due to the information I furnished John K. Turner for his series of articles in the American Magazine entitled ‘Barbarous Mexico.’ If I am deported I believe firmly that I will no sooner be on Mexican

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soil than I will be done away with. I may be placed in some prison or I may be shot.” See Los Angeles Herald, 9 October 1909: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn /sn85042462/1909-10-19/ed-1/seq-3.pdf. 50. The entire novel is available online at http://cdigital.dgb.uanl.mx/la /1020028262/1020028262.PDF. 51. El pueblo mexicano y sus luchas por la libertad was published in 1914 by F. H. Arizméndez on the presses of Los Angeles’s El Mosquito newspaper. 52. See Ricardo Flores Magón, Land and Liberty! Anarchist Influences in the Mexican Revolution, ed. Dave Poole (Sanday, UK: Cienfuegos Press, 1977), 132. 53. Barrera Bassols, “La biblioteca Sociológica de Regeneración,” 11, 14–15. 54. Práxedis Guerrero (1882–1910) was an anarchist journalist in Mexico, and after immigrating to the United States and working as a miner in Arizona he edited Alba Roja [ Red Dawn] in San Francisco and contributed to other anarchist periodicals, such as Los Angeles’s Regeneración and Revolución, as well as Evolución Social [Social Evolution] in Bridgeport, Texas. In El Paso, he founded and directed Punto Rojo [ Red Point]. In fact, when Flores Magón and his group were jailed in Los Angeles in 1907, Guerrero took the helm of Revolución, in which his writing became more well-known and celebrated. Guerrero’s militancy was not limited to writing; he raised an army in El Paso and led it into battle in northern Mexico, where he lost his life. Flores Magón, in Regeneración on 30 December 1911, baptized him as the first anarchist to spill his blood in battle in Mexico and effectively proclaimed him a martyr to the cause, an idea which numerous historians have repeated. See Ward Albro, To Die on Your Feet: The Life, Times and Writing of Praxedis Guerrero (Dallas: Texas Christian University Press, 1996), and Jesús Vargas Valdez, “La Fragua de los Tiempos,” http://sirio.uacj.mx/UEHS/Paginas/LaFraguadelosTiempos .aspx. 55. Emilio Zamora, in “Chicano Socialist Labor Activity in Texas, 1900–1920,” Aztlán: Chicano Journal of the Social Sciences and the Arts 6, no. 2 (Summer 1975, Special Issue on Labor History): 221–38, was the first scholar to discover and study Ramírez, and he continued to research her writings and those of other female anarchists in subsequent articles and in his book El movimiento obrero mexicano en el sur de Texas, 1900–1920 (México, D. F.: Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1986). 56. Inés Hernández Tovar, “Sara Estela Ramírez: The Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Poet” (PhD diss., University of Houston, 1984), 13. 57. “We face another challenge today, to take what we need, Liberty! We must become rebels. It is better to die than to allow our children to be made slaves. We, the mothers and wives, sisters or daughters, are responsible for meeting this challenge.” Cited in Clara Lomas, “The Articulation of Gender in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900– 1915,” in Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, ed. Ramón Gutiérrez and Genaro Padilla (Houston, TX: Arte Público Press, 1993), 302. 58. See ibid., 300. 59. Published in Mexico City, Mexican Herald, 13 September 1912, provided seemingly erroneous biographical information about the Colombia-born Moncaleano, stating he was born in the Canary Islands and was a pupil of Ferrer’s: “Authorities Deport Subject of Spain. A Pupil of Ferrer Sent from Country on Account of Rabid Doctrines. . . . He is accused of propagating pernicious doctrines and of attempting to found a school of anarchy in this country.” For an extensive article on Juan Francisco

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Moncaleano’s activities in Mexico City, see Antonio Rojas, “Un Hombre de Carácter,” Regeneración, 28 September 1912, and “La Expulsión de Moncaleano,” Regeneración, 5 October 1912. 60. According to Regeneración, 8 February 1913, Moncaleano and Carmona signed a lease for $100 per month with an option to buy the building situated in the “Italian quarter” of Los Angeles for $50,000; if they could not purchase the building by 1 March 1914, then the rent would increase to $150. When the rift between the Flores Magón group—represented by editor Araujo while Flores Magón was in prison—occurred, the loss of the house soon ensued as well as the plans to set up a Modern School, following the Ferrer model, and to serve as well as a meeting hall for unions and a refuge for immigrant families. See Regeneración, 22 February 1913, for detailed plans for the building. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 114–15, provides a detailed account of the structure, operation, and anarchist classes taught at the Casa del Obrero Mundial and Escuela Racionalista they founded in Mexico City. Juan Francisco and A. Ferrés had edited a newspaper in Mexico City that corresponded with Regeneración before Moncaleano arrived in Los Angeles, and on a number of occasions Flores Magón praised the paper’s content. See Regeneración, 31 August 1912. 61. Barrera Bassols, “La biblioteca Sociológica de Regeneración,” 20. 62. Lomas, “The Articulation of Gender in the Mexican Borderlands,” 306. The publication and distribution of her articles were extensive enough to reach Fraternidad newspaper in Boston, where her essays “Amancipémonos” [ Emancipate Ourselves] and “Manifiesto a la mujer” [ Manifesto to Women] were published. 63. “Lost in the supposition of their superiority, stupefied by their ignorance, men have believed that, without the assistance of women, they can reach the goal of human emancipation.” Pluma Roja, 27 June 1915. 64. Emma Pérez, The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 69. 65. Antonio de Araujo published his version of the acrimonious split of Juan Francisco Moncaleano, Rómulo S. Carmona, and L. Cárdenas Martínez from the Regeneración group in that paper on 10 May 1913. In subsequent issues of Regeneración, de Araujo published notices and articles attacking Moncaleano, Carmona, and Martínez, especially warning readers in Texas, where the three had relocated, to ostracize them. See especially the 21 June 1913 issue. The campaign was so effective against the trio— de Araujo was claiming that the trio wanted to take over Regeneración—that the newspaper printed letters in solidarity from anarchists as far away as New York, Cuba, and Argentina. 66. Barrera Bassols, “La biblioteca Sociológica de Regeneración,” 20. 67. Ibid. Juan Francisco Moncaleano was also a pamphleteer, issuing such works as Alma en rebellion [ Rebellious Soul], published in Los Angeles by La Biblioteca Roja [The Red Library], probably one of the imprints of Carmona. León Cárdenas Martínez was involved in a plot to repatriate Mexican workers, occupy land in northern Mexico, and work together as communists, according to Ricardo Flores Magón in Regeneración, 15 January 1916. 68. Lina de Vito, one of my students, discovered and organized a trove of Moncaleano/Lawson papers in California; they are now part of the archives of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston.

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69. Avilés and Herrerín, El nacimiento del terrorismo en Occidente, 176–77. Constant Leroy, in Los misterios del anarquismo: El asesinato de Ferrer, www.kclibertaria.comyr.com /lpdf/l251.pdf, 6–7, also provides evidence that Vidal and Esteve were involved in a plot to assassinate authority figures in Spain. In fact, Leroy records testimony that Vidal boasted that what the revolutionaries in Europe could not accomplish, those in the United States would do. 70. Avilés and Herrerín, El nacimiento del terrorismo en Occidente, 176. 71. “To open a path and create the opportunity for the social ideas to develop among the slaves.” Cultura Obrera, 30 December 1911. 72. On September 15, Vidal’s essay “Trinchera Anarquista” [Anarchist Trenches] appeared in Boston’s Fraternidad, but this was not necessarily an indication that he had moved to Boston. 73. It seems that IWW newspapers in Tampa, such as El Obrero Industrial [ The Industrial Worker], and IWW organizing did not fare well among Hispanics, given the competition from so many already well-established unions among the tobacco workers. 74. Kenyon Zimmer, “ ‘The Whole World Is Our Country’: Immigration and Anarchism in the United States, 1885–1940” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010), 238. 75. Regeneración, 16 September 1916. George Harrison, The IWW Trial (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 146. 76. See I.W.W. Prisoners Now in Leavenworth Prison, http://www.iww.org/en/projects /gdc/leavenworth/sentences.html. 77. In addition to some of the friction already noted between the IWW and the anarchists, the IWW or its periodicals may not have been as welcoming to women, if one judges by the article published in Huelga General by M. Sastre belittling the writing of Luisa Capetillo (7 March 1914).

Pamphlets of Self-Determination dissident literature, productive fiction Trevor Joy Sangrey

On July 11, 1932, Angelo Herndon, a nineteen-year-old black activist, was

arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, as he was checking his mail at the post office. A key organizer in the unemployed workers movement, and a leader of a recent protest march, Herndon was not shy about his Communist membership. After his arrest, police searched his hotel room and found Communist Party publications. Subsequently, Herndon was charged with inciting insurrection, a preemancipation Georgian statute developed to restrict slave uprisings, citing his possession of Communist literature he had received in the mail including Trinidadian-born, Communist, and later Pan-Africanist George Padmore’s pamphlet The Life and Struggle of Negro Toilers (1931) and copies of the periodical the Southern Worker.1 The pamphlets found in Herndon’s apartment were some of the many publications produced by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) around the Resolution on the Negro Question. Adopted in 1928 at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International, the worldwide Communist organization, and developed with input from American organizers, including African Americans, the Resolution on the Negro Question declared that black people in the Black Belt of the United States were an unrecognized national group and deserved rights to self-determination. This idea was later called the Black Nation Thesis. In the United States, the CPUSA used this resolution to foment organizational activity around issues facing black communities such as segregation, unemployment, lynching, chain gangs, and civil rights, and helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights and Black Power movements.2 As a part of this process, the 85

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CPUSA produced a large number of pamphlets, newspaper articles, and leaflets discussing the tenets of the Black Nation Thesis and the struggles of African Americans, particularly in the southern United States. Herndon’s own story quickly became fodder for pamphlets, as pamphleteers such as Elizabeth Lawson and Sasha Small produced tracts discussing the trial, its relationship to the more widely known Scottsboro Nine hearings of 1931–37, and Herndon’s sentence to a chain gang.3 Herndon was defended by two young black attorneys, Ben Davis Jr. and John Geer, working for the International Labor Defense, the Communist Party’s legal organization. An all-white jury found Herndon guilty, however, and the judge sentenced him to 18–20 years in prison on a “mercy” ruling by the jury.4 He served two years of his sentence before he was released on bond awaiting appeal. The Supreme Court of Georgia denied the appeal, and Herndon was sent back to prison. In 1935 the case went to the US Supreme Court in which high-ranking and well-lettered attorneys, including Whitney North Seymour, who would later serve as head of the American Bar Association, and young Columbia law professors Walter Gellhorn and Herbert Wechsler, offered Herndon’s defense.5 Despite such accredited lawyers, the Supreme Court dismissed the case. In October 1935, with the support of the NAACP, the American Bar Association, the ACLU, and other prominent groups, the case went back to Atlanta. In Atlanta, Judge Hugh Dorsey ruled in Herndon’s favor, freeing Herndon for a short while. The Georgia Supreme Court overturned this ruling; however, the case was again appealed to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court heard the case this time and overturned the lower court’s ruling, finally freeing Herndon in 1937. Throughout the long years of the trial, while in and out of jail, Herndon tirelessly campaigned for his, and the Scottsboro Nine’s, freedom and gave speeches on issues facing black Americans. He wrote several pamphlets while ensnared in the legal system, using the pamphlet medium to both challenge the legal ruling and raise awareness about the widespread racial and economic oppression black southerners faced in the United States. His pamphlets, such as You Cannot Kill the Working Class (1937), suggested the importance of thinking about racial and economic oppression together, but also offered hope for aspiring activists and organizers that other ways of living were possible.6 Social movement small press literature and ephemera, such as Communist Party pamphlets of the 1930s, demonstrate how radical visions and dreams grow and spread. Indeed, as James P. Danky notes, in African American communities across the United States, luminaries such as W. E. B. DuBois, E. Franklin Frazier, and Langston Hughes “used print to enlighten and lead African Americans toward a new and better world.”7 This chapter examines how pamphlet literature was part of this enlightenment, paying attention to the particular forms of protest and education enabled by the material and

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substantive characteristics of the pamphlet form. Pamphlets offer political and social context, a deep analysis of issues, and, often, a space for activists to develop their own visions and imagine radical change. Specifically, the formal aspects of pamphlets enable readers to grapple with difficult and systematic ideas, providing context as well as analysis of current topics of interest. Furthermore, the CPUSA pamphlets engaged in protest by educating members and supporters about the interlocking forces of race and class, and—through some of the work of black women organizers—race, class, and gender. The pamphlets also offered protest through inspiration. By enabling visionary work around race and class in the United States, pamphlets are speculative pieces that support the development of the radical imagination. This essay investigates the Communist Party USA’s Black Nation Thesis pamphlets as dissident print culture, using a communist model to suggest that other, less oppressive, worlds are possible. The CPUSA had started as two separate organizations in 1919, with potentially one black member at one of its founding conferences.8 In its early period, the Communist Party had few black members, but worked, sometimes antagonistically, with liberal, progressive, and radical organizations focusing on and working more explicitly with black people, especially in Harlem.9 One organization the Party worked with more effectively was the African Blood Brotherhood, a radical black organization founded in 1919 by Cyril Briggs, which published a journal, the Crusader, and eventually fed many radical black activists into the CPUSA.10 By the middle of the 1920s, the CPUSA counted among its members a small group of black activists who were active in the Party apparatus, many traveling to the USSR to attend the training schools for organizers and influencing larger Party direction at the Comintern conventions. Several of these prominent black activists from the United States were part of the conversation at the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928, which finally passed the Resolution on the Negro Question.11 This resolution, though vaguely worded and not taken up immediately in any national Party subsidiary groups, eventually became the call for Self-Determination for Black People in the Black Belt, or, simply, the Black Nation Thesis. The specifics of the Resolution were nebulous. Generally, the argument was that black people were an oppressed national minority group and, using Stalin’s definition of a nation, were therefore entitled to “self-determination.”12 Self-determination, in this instance, was understood as the right to more or less secede from the United States, with the area of the South called the Black Belt becoming the national space of these black people.13 In the United States, the activism spurred by the Resolution on the Negro Question was varied in both its goals and its success. Glenda Gilmore, Robin D. G. Kelley, Mark Solomon, Eric McDuffie, and Mark Naison have carefully noted the impact of Communist Party organizers and organizing on

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sharecropping in the South, the Scottsboro Nine trials, and lynching, unemployment, and segregated unions.14 Though all of these authors agree that the Black Nation Thesis has led to important activism, they offer many important critiques of the Black Nation Thesis itself. Indeed, as Robin D. G. Kelley has argued, though black organizers worked with the CPUSA on many campaigns, the Black Nation Thesis itself was not overly popular, especially among the black southern communities it was supposed to be addressing.15 Furthermore, the Resolution imposed a particular framework on organizing in black communities, limiting the kinds of projects the CPUSA would support and the possibilities for collaboration with other important black organizations. Despite these significant limitations, the Black Nation Thesis was inspirational in many respects, developing an idea that continues to inspire radical activists. 16 The impact of the Black Nation Thesis this chapter is tracing is rhetorical, looking at the pamphlet literature produced around the Resolution on the Negro Question for both its dissident and inspirational form and content linking race, class, and gender. In the 1930s the Communist Party USA enjoyed a varied and dynamic print culture. Since its complicated beginnings, US Communist groups had produced a number of daily and weekly newspapers; weekly, monthly, and quarterly journals; and countless leaflets, pamphlets, and fliers. The Daily Worker was the Party’s largest newspaper, started in 1924 and published daily in English, while foreign language groups and local Party sections also published regular newspapers. The Southern Worker was the Party’s only publication in the South; the paper was designed in Chattanooga, Tennessee; printed in Georgia; and bore a postage address of Birmingham, Alabama, where the Party’s southern headquarters were located.17 James S. Allen published the Southern Worker with his wife Isabelle starting in 1930. The paper had a weekly distribution and sold for two cents a copy. Yearly subscriptions were a dollar. Since the paper operated underground, there was no advertising, and funding the paper and its distribution, according to Allen, was often difficult.18 James S. and Isabelle Allen published the Southern Worker until September 1931 when it was taken over by Harry Wicks. Wicks was not successful with the paper, and eventually Elizabeth Lawson, a regular contributor to the paper, took over editorship. The paper folded in 1932, but was reestablished by Lawson, under the pseudonym Jim Mallory, in 1933. Moving offices completely to Birmingham, the paper came out somewhat irregularly until 1936.19 In addition to newspapers, in the 1920s and 1930s the CPUSA published between five and seven national journals and magazines as well as many books and pamphlets. Journals, such as a theoretical tract called The Communist, the predecessor of Political Affairs, or the Labor Defender, the organ of the International Labor Defense, were published on a monthly or quarterly basis. The

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Party also produced a number of books under the International Publishers imprint, opened in 1924. Books included new fictional and nonfiction works, as well as reprints of important Communist works by Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Other active publishers in the 1930s included the Workers’ Library Publishers, started in 1927, and a number of small presses run by various Party subsections, such as the Harlem section, and by organizations of the Party or affiliated with the Party (e.g., the International Trade Union Committee of the Negro Workers of the RILU [ Red International of Labor Unions, a.k.a. Profintern], the National Council of Jewish Communists, the International Labor Defense, and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, just to name a few). International Publishers also produced the bulk of the Party’s main pamphlet series, International Pamphlets, which began in 1930. Based on the number of pamphlets, indicating that they enjoyed second printings, and the fact that the publishers began to issue bound copies of ten pamphlets each, the International Pamphlets series probably had the widest distribution.20 This numbered series touched on many topics, such as Work or Wages (1930, no. 4), Youth in Industry (1931, no. 12), Women Who Work (1932, no. 27), and The Eyes of the Movie (1934, no. 38). The series also included many repeat authors, such as Grace Hutchins, a prolific writer on domestic and international issues; Earl Browder, the chairman of the CPUSA; William Z. Foster, veteran labor leader and Party leader; and Alexander Trachtenberg, who was also the original editor at International Publishers and for the series of pamphlets. Both women and men published in the International Pamphlet series, with women writing on a variety of topics (e.g., Anna Louise Strong’s work on Modern Farming—Soviet Style, from 1930, or Anna Rochester’s Profits and Wages, from 1932), as well as wrote booklets on women’s issues. Pamphlets are small, unbound, paper booklets with stitched, glued, or stapled spines, usually with one signature and consisting of sheets of paper folded in half. Popular from the fifteenth through the twentieth century, pamphlets have long been effective and inexpensive ways to distribute printed material.21 As Carl R. Burgchardt notes in his limited study of American Communist pamphlets in the 1930s, “By the twentieth century the pamphlet has long since lost its role as a principal means of dispersing information and opinion to large groups of people.”22 Indeed, by the 1930s, both radio and cinema would have been a better choice to galvanize people toward social change. Lacking capital to invest in new media forms, and organizing in communities that did not often have the ability to consume them, the Communist Party printed many pamphlets in the 1930s.23 The CPUSA also used pamphlets because they were cheap to produce and distribute. This was particularly important in the South, where, as James S. Allen notes, referencing the Southern Worker, few had money for expensive subscriptions, surveillance was high so papers and pamphlets had to be sent in

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plain first-class envelopes, and publicity budgets were often overtaxed with distribution, let alone production.24 The Southern Worker appears to be the only publication that was produced in the South; most CPUSA pamphlets and journals were printed in New York City and then distributed throughout the country. Though no records remain of the number of printed pamphlets, collections of Communist Party USA pamphlets from the 1920s and 1930s housed at archives in the United States number well over 2,500.25 There is almost no academic work addressing Communist Party USA pamph­ let literature in either its form or its function. A study by Carl R. Burg­chardt published in 1980 and a few articles by Herbert Pimlott address Communist Party pamphlets in the United States, Canada, and the UK. A few documentary histories, notably the collections produced by Philip S. Foner and James S. Allen, American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919–1929 (1987), and Philip S. Foner and Herbert Shapiro’s American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1930–1934 (1991), collect some pamphlets and offer introductory material and limited analysis. Of these limited sources, only the Burgchardt article offers a sustained analysis of CPUSA pamphlet literature, and his work is limited to forty-three pamphlets and does not address any CPUSA pieces predominantly discussing race or racial discrimination. With this sample, he argues that Communist Party pamphlets were limited by their need to adhere to the dictates of the Comintern and were unable to maintain a readership because of the starkly contrasting arguments presented across texts. The CPUSA Black Nation Thesis pamphlets challenge Burgchardt’s analysis and are an untapped wealth of primary source documentation of early twentieth-century radical protest around race and economic oppression. Pamphlets were often used as organizing tools for the CPUSA. Party records indicate that pamphlets were regularly distributed as educational tools through the Education and Agit-Prop (Agitation and Propaganda) department. Indeed, archived materials suggest that particular pamphlets were circulated to help lead discussions on race, such as James S. Allen’s pamphlet The American Negro (1932) or Harry Haywood and Milton Howard’s Lynching (1932). Though not as regularly printed as the CPUSA daily newspaper, the Daily Worker, or even the less frequent publication of the Southern Worker, pamphlets often enjoyed second and third printings and were often kept and archived. Pamphlets, perhaps, also begin to fill the gap in interesting proletarian literature identified by Eric Schocket. He argues that between the wars there was a dearth of cheap literature or political information available to the interested leftist public, and in particular a lack of such material in the Midwest and South.26 Schocket traces the publication of the socialist Little Blue Books to fill these literature gaps. But CPUSA pamphlets, targeting Party members as well as allies and potential sympathizers, would have also been useful fodder for leftists.

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Herbert Pimlott argues that ephemera, fliers, leaflets, and pamphlets, or what he calls disposable literature, are an enduring and important form of communication. He offers two definitions of pamphlets, the second of which foregrounds the political nature of the small, unbound booklets, which were “used more extensively by trade unions, political parties and think-tanks to circulate ideas and make public interventions.”27 Citing James Jupp’s work, Pimlott argues that in using pamphlets, the Communist Party of Great Britain in the 1930s and 1940s “was effective in reaching out beyond the Party and influencing the broader Left, including that of the Labour Party, on a number of issues.”28 The distribution of pamphlets was often wider than the distribution of the Daily Worker, as wholesale distributors for the first half of the twentieth century boycotted the newspaper. Indeed, Pimlott concludes his study stating, “Disposable literature’s continued relevance as one of the most cost-effective vehicles for political-ideological and commercial communication is integral to recognizing and understanding its influence in local advertising strategies, political campaigns and social movements.”29 One of the benefits of pamphlets, Pimlott suggests, is that they are “one of the most suitable forms of disposable literature for presenting and sustaining in-depth arguments, histories and narratives, which is a unique advantage provided by print; the pamphlet has the space to develop the arguments that can really only be touched upon in leaflets and fliers.”30 The pamphlet’s longer form was particularly useful for Party activists concerned with issues of racial justice, as it enabled authors to present more information and context about any given situation. Similarly, pamphlets could reach people of varying literacy levels, telling stories through pictures to engage illiterate or semiliterate audiences. Robin D. G. Kelley in his book Hammer and Hoe (1990) shares anecdotes of sharecroppers reading pamphlets and newspapers aloud to community meetings and describes black southern communities reading pamphlets to begin discussions about important local topics.31 Furthermore, since pamphlets could offer more information and context to a situation, activists could and did use them to do more than just present new ideas, also using them to incite discussion and open up spaces to imagine new and radical futures. Pamphlets were key to the CPUSA’s work on the Black Nation Thesis, offering a space in which authors and activists could ruminate on issues of race and class, protest against oppression and unfair treatment, and speculate on new radical futures. Pamphlets were not monolithic, however. There are many examples of different kinds of CPUSA pamphlets, addressing various audiences and goals. In addition, pamphleteers used the form in different ways to pursue a conversation about race and class. Broad and powerful, the pamphlets chronicling various trials, but specifically the Scottsboro Nine trials in 1931–1937, were designed for a wide audience, and with the goals of simultaneously educating the public

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about the trials and the lives of the young men hanging in the balance and increasing Party membership and awareness of Party campaigns. Pamphlets with similar stakes were those exposing the violence on southern chain gangs or discussing the system of lynching in the South. These latter pamphlets do not address a specific campaign, but draw attention to the practices of southern “lynch justice.” They anticipated a wide audience, but one already familiar with the CPUSA, which is evidenced by the use of Party jargon and ideological interventions. Yet other pamphlets were direct reprints of Party speeches, often for elections or use at Party conventions. These pamphlets, such as the 1932 election campaign material, tended to also have a wide audience, but focus more on Party members and allies. Finally, early theoretical pamphlets, such as James S. Allen’s The American Negro, aimed toward a more limited Party audience and offered a nuanced, if vague, analysis. The Scottsboro Nine trials were a huge turning point for the CPUSA’s work with black communities around the United States but especially with black communities in the South and in Harlem. In March 1931, nine young black men, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, and Andy and Roy Wright, ages 13–20, were pulled from a train and arrested for fighting with white men. Two young white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, dressed in overalls, were also taken from the train and, either at the behest of the police or on their own volition, accused the young black men pulled from the train of gang rape. Facing the southern justice system for a crime against white women’s purity, these young men, made famous around the world as the Scottsboro Nine, were rushed to trial on April 6, 1931, in the small town of Scottsboro in Jackson County, Alabama. By April 9, through trials lasting only a few hours, Judge E. A. Hawkins sentenced eight of the nine to death in the electric chair. Thirteenyear-old Roy Wright’s case ended in a mistrial, as the jury could not agree upon death or life imprisonment. Aspects of the case were brought before the US Supreme Court twice: first, because of the poor representation the defend­ ants were given at the first trial and second, because black people were systematically excluded from the jury selection. Trial theatrics included Ruby Bates’s dramatic reversal of her testimony and her appearance in court on behalf of the defense and Judge Horton’s decision to throw out Haywood Patterson’s third guilty verdict because it did not reflect the testimonies given. In Harlem and across the South, the CPUSA held huge rallies in support of the Nine, agitating for their freedom and broadening the Party’s membership base. The CPUSA used the Scottsboro case, especially the trials themselves, to wage a huge public campaign to raise awareness, especially in the North, of black issues in the South. The campaign publicized the Party’s newly minted Black Nation Thesis, directly challenged the US legal system, and was a major

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Figure 13.  Cover image, They Shall Not Die!

turning point in the CPUSA’s work with black people.32 Walter Howard, in his book on black Communists’ work on the Scottsboro case, notes that black membership in the CPUSA “mushroomed from two hundred members in 1930, less than 3 percent of the total, to seven thousand in 1938, over 9 percent.”33 One of the reasons for the Party’s growth, perhaps, was the wide distribution of material about the Scottsboro trials. The beautifully illustrated They Shall Not Die! Stop the Legal Lynching! The Story of Scottsboro in Pictures is a perfect example of the more broadly positioned Scottsboro booklets designed to enliven readers to protest on the young defendants’ behalf (figure 13). This pamphlet, enjoying many print runs in 1932, tells the

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story of the Scottsboro Nine, with an engaging story by Elizabeth Lawson and poignant drawings by A. (Anton) Refregier.34 Less a policy debate or a clarification of Party principles, the pamphlet is meant to publicize the case and win support for the International Labor Defense, the legal arm of the CPUSA. The “Story in Pictures” illustrates the broader range of literacies addressed by this and other trial pamphlets. Published in New York City, this pamphlet uses simple speech and allegorical drawings on almost every page to communicate with the reader. Refregier’s cover illustration of two workers cutting down a lynching tree in Scottsboro illustrates the tagline. The image—the courthouse in the background, the ropes dangling ominously from the unseen branches, the wood chips flying from the axes—demonstrates without any text the pamphlet’s main claims that the United States is going to “legally lynch” young men in Scottsboro. Images throughout the text support this story. The bosses and the courts are on trial, shown by the sinister images of policemen and the looming judge who hovers between the young men and the electric chair, visually eliminating the need for a jury or trial.35 Other Scottsboro pamphlets follow this model of evocative images and simple persuasive text, free of many direct references to Party politics. The protest these pamphlets are engaged in is twofold: first, to raise the awareness of readers and encourage them to join the many direct-action movements held on behalf of the Scottsboro Nine, and second, to challenge the legal system, ideas of race and sexuality, and the very fabric of US society. Indeed, many pamphlets end with an energetic call to support the campaign efforts, attend rallies, and send money to the International Labor Defense. As much as the onthe-ground protests kept the trials in the media spotlight and probably saved the lives of the young men, the campaign was effective, in part, because the pamphlets could challenge systems of legal lynching and offer different ways to think about race and justice in the South. As the CPUSA pamphlets about lynching drew on a long history of antilynching organizing, especially in black communities, they also drew on work that challenged how the penal system treated black people. Though not always referenced in the pamphlet literature as directly applicable to the Scottsboro Nine trials, the CPUSA was also engaged in a national conversation about the horrors of other aspects of the southern justice system’s treatment of black people. Such treatment included politically motivated indictments, debt slavery, chain gangs, and groups of prisoners made to do forced labor, often building roads or rails while generally tied together by chains around the ankles. John L. Spivak’s pamphlet On the Chain Gang (1932, no. 32 in the International Pamphlet series) uses a simple journalistic style to discuss the wretched treatment of black men on chain gangs (figure 14).36 Chain gangs have a long history in the United States, but took on new meaning in the post–Civil War South where black men and, less often, black women and white men and

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Figure 14.  Cover image, On the Chain Gang.

women were arrested and forced to work. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution made slavery illegal except as punishment for a crime. What this translated to in the South was a series of Black Codes, and other legal or semilegal means to convict black people for crimes and force them to work for the state or, more often than not, for the white planters and former slave owners.37 The “crimes” black people were often charged with were vagrancy, idleness, unemployment, and drunkenness, though sometimes “talking back” and insolence were also considered cause for conviction. 38 As the preface of Spivak’s pamphlet states: By the use of vagrancy laws “unattached” or unemployed workers are picked up by the police, thrust into chains and forced to work either for the county or

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for the planters. There is no distinct line between the two in the Black Belt. In the large plantation areas of the South the sheriff acts as the planter’s foreman recruiting and driving labor for him wherever it is required.39

Framing the problem of chain gangs alongside the ideas of lynch law that drives the southern (and also northern) legal system in regard to black people, Spivak is able to draw connections between the topic of his pamphlet and the Scottsboro trials, deepening the Party’s critique of the legal system. This critique is vividly displayed in the dire depictions of the US justice system. Spivak carefully outlines the cruel and pointed way in which the legal system targets black people, citing torture techniques such as “stretching” and “trussing” whereby prisoners, mostly black men, are tied up or pulled to inflict bodily pain. Developing these ideas, he documents the myriad ways that the treatment of black prisoners by the police and jailers breaks US laws against torture. The pamphlet also demonstrates the various audiences CPUSA pamphlets attempted to engage. The CPUSA published this nonfiction account the same year as Spivak’s fictionalized book on the same topic was being widely distributed and receiving positive attention from the New York Times, drawing on the book’s popularity.40 Furthermore, the pamphlet echoes other popular books focusing on chain gangs while giving a much harsher, and probably more accurate, portrayal of the penal systems of the South. As a protest, this pamphlet calls on readers to reconsider what torture is used in the name of law and the injustice of racialized penal codes. Other CPUSA pamphlets, as mentioned, were reprints from campaign or conference speeches. In 1932, the CPUSA ran William Z. Foster—a veteran labor leader and former general secretary of the Party—for president and James W. Ford—a prominent black organizer, leader in the Harlem Party, and prolific pamphleteer—for vice president.41 Their campaign materials are some of the clearest statements of the Black Nation Thesis produced by the CPUSA in the 1930s. The bound collection of elections materials, Where Do the Communists Stand? (1932), contains many of the CPUSA election pamphlets, which made issues facing black communities a key plank in its platform. Foster and Ford for Food and Freedom (1932) is a clear example of the prominence of the Black Nation Thesis. The pamphlet contains the acceptance speeches made in Chicago at the Communist National Nominating Convention on May 28–29, 1932, and lays out the six immediate demands that compose the platform of the Communist Party, two of which are “4. Equal rights for Negroes and self-determination for the Black Belt. . . . 6. Against imperialist war; for the defense of the Chinese people and of the Soviet Union.”42 Foregrounding the Black Nation Thesis, the Foster/Ford campaign pamphlets showcase how pamphlets were successful in communicating to a wide audience.

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Other pamphlets highlight how the CPUSA used these materials to also suggest new ideas about race, class, and gender. Working Women and the Elections (1932) emphasizes the larger fight for “full social and political equality for the Negro masses!” but also details the oppression specifically faced by black women.43 This pamphlet, targeted specifically to women in the Party and often calling out to women in the pages, asks readers to think of their experience as black and white women to understand the need for organizing women for the election. Black women’s “special oppression” is not mentioned explicitly, though the pamphlet does discuss the double burden faced by black women by being targeted for both their race and their gender. The pamphlet contends that “Negro women proved to be the best fighters, and above all the best organizers” in recent campaigns for the unemployed, farmers, and tenants.44 The pamph­ let continues to discuss both black and white women in their roles as farmers, members of the working class, mothers, and political actors. Finally, some pamphlets anticipated a more selective Party audience and used the dissident form to offer sustained critiques and theoretical analyses around issues of race, class, and self-determination. The American Negro by James S. Allen published in 1932 lays the groundwork for the analysis of race while not elaborating on the ideas of self-determination. Number eighteen in the International Pamphlet series, The American Negro was the first CPUSA pamphlet fully devoted to looking at the situation of black people in the United States. Party education materials regularly referred Allen’s pamphlet, and its later revision, as part of the theoretical backbone of the CPUSA work with black people. Allen’s pamphlet consists primarily of a careful compilation of statistical and 1930s census data to note the widespread economic exploitation of black workers and to make a “map showing a continuous stretch of dense Negro population in the South—the Black Belt.”45 The Black Belt was useful as the location of struggle for the black nation; other pamphlets highlight the concrete importance of the land and black workers’ claims to the land based on generations of tilling the soil.46 The pamphlet’s most important work is showing how race and class work together in the South to oppress black people. His analysis of tenant farming, migration, and industrial labor and labor unions shows how black people are at the nexus of racial and class oppression. However, the actual analysis of race and nationality is quite limited. Though providing interesting statistical data and a vivid accounting of the material oppression of black people in the South, the pamphlet does not suggest concrete means for addressing these issues outside of a limp call for self-determination. Allen does begin to link the struggles of black people in the United States to anti-imperialist and anticolonialist campaigns around the world, a claim that later pamphlets, such as the CPUSA’s Negro Commission tract Is Japan the Champion of the Colored Races (1938), more

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fully develop. Overall, Allen’s pamphlet begins to offer the building blocks of an internal party dialogue about race, nation, and class. A more thorough reckoning of ideas of nationalism and self-determination is developed in his later revision Negro Liberation (1938). To summarize, many CPUSA pamphlets have addressed the challenges posed by the Black Nation Thesis. As objects, the pamphlets were impressive, with strong visual elements on the covers and sometimes throughout the text, and were often well designed and produced, with clear and readable text and sturdy paper covers. Pamphlets fell short of books, however, by being much smaller. Yet that aspect made them easy to tuck into a jacket pocket. Bridging the gap between books and newspapers, pamphlets offered a more thorough discussion of complex issues and ideas but in an accessible format. For example, the Scottsboro pamphlets, as well as others addressing large issues of legal justice, such as lynching and chain gangs, develop ideas from the Black Nation Thesis, but do not offer much in the way of concrete examples of the Thesis’s principles. These pamphlets are often geared toward a broader audience, one perhaps sympathetic with some of the Party’s goals (e.g., critiquing the legal system), but not familiar with the Party per se. Party election platforms and other convention speeches do use the rhetoric of the Black Nation Thesis specifically, talking about self-determination and the Black Belt, but are still often vague, using the Black Nation Thesis as one of many ideas. Finally, theoretical texts focus concretely on the Black Nation Thesis, developing the Comintern’s resolution into a concept that addresses US realities and histories. These pamph­ lets have the smallest intended audience, having been developed for Party supporters who are interested in thinking about the sophisticated relationships between race and class. All of these pamphlets are objects geared toward protest and enable a collective struggle against oppression on many levels. The ideas presented in these pamphlets are not substantially different from newsprint sources. Indeed, newspapers, such as the Daily Worker and the Southern Worker and political and theoretical journals such as The Communist, published many articles on the Scottsboro Nine and on issues facing African Americans in both the North and the South. However, the conversations developed in the pamphlets offer more depth and context, enabling the pamphlets to be unique vehicles for developing a more thorough and meaningful protest. Both the form and the content of Black Nation Thesis pamphlets make them key tools in the CPUSA’s dissent against the system of US capitalism and Jim Crow in the 1930s. Simultaneously, however, these pamphlets are not just literature of dissent, but also of hope, offering inspirational ideas and new ways of thinking about race, class, and gender. These are important speculative ideas about the future, a productive fiction in which race and class are no longer vectors of oppression. Building from Robin D. G. Kelley’s works on the

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“Black Radical Imagination,” particularly those about the importance of imagining radically different ways of being around race, the term “productive fiction” signals both the dreams that compel social movements as well as the working out of ideological issues and concerns.47 The Black Nation Thesis was a “productive fiction,” used by the Party to work through various political and policy issues and to galvanize membership and invigorate antiracist struggle. As a piece of fiction, an idea, an excitement, or an incitement, the Black Nation Thesis did a lot of productive work in the United States, especially by foregrounding the intersections of race and class. As a piece of fiction, the Black Nation Thesis was an effective and meaningful protest, staged primarily in pamphlets because that medium allowed for a thorough analysis of the dominant racist and sexist capitalist system. The term “productive fiction” then both signals the important, innovative, and imaginative aspects of the Thesis and also recognizes that perhaps many of the activists and organizers in the Party did not think a “Negro Nation” would actually come to exist. The Thesis built on an idea of a nation as expressed in seminal documents by Lenin and Stalin from the 1920s, in which they discussed nationalism in Eastern Europe.48 The translation from an Eastern European experience of nationality as offered by the Comintern in the Black Nation Thesis to a US experience of race was sloppy at best. The CPUSA, however, was subject to the Comintern, and an explicit critique of the Thesis was not possible.49 Thus, the CPUSA fictionalized and interpreted the Black Nation Thesis as it could and used these ideas to make important interventions and suggest radical futures.50 To make the Resolution on the Negro Question work as an effective form of protest in the United States, some significant changes had to be made in its rhetoric. By pitching the Resolution as speculative, as a work of the radical imagination, the important aspects of the Resolution on the Negro Question could be preserved while also working within the US context. Much of the work that was needed to fit the Resolution on the Negro Question into the US context was to reconcile the Soviet experience with the realities of the United States and US racial relations. One of the ways the Party did this was by holding up the Soviet Union as an example of what racial relationships could look like in a noncapitalist society. This was a multiform process, since ethnic differences were most often discussed as nationalities in the USSR. Rather than try to sort out some of these nuances, the CPUSA highlighted the presumed equality of all people in the USSR. Indeed, many pamphlets end with an explosive, if somewhat unbelievable, section claiming that all of the problems addressed in the previous pages have been solved in the USSR. Looking at these documents as productive fictions is not to suggest that the very real horrors documented in many of these pamphlets were fiction, nor were the descriptions of economic and social oppression of black people and

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poor people in the South false. Indeed, the CPUSA material arguably offered some of the most honest and forthright portrayals of lynching and chain gangs produced at the time and catalogued the economic exploitation of sharecropping, tenant farming, and many forms of industrial labor. Rather, the idea of a separate state or nation for black people in the Black Belt of the United States was a fiction, but an important one, and to think about the possibilities opened up by the Black Nation Thesis and the impact this might have on ideas of race and class. An excellent example of the promise of such speculation is James W. Ford and James S. Allen’s collaborative work The Negroes in a Soviet America, published in 1935 by the Workers Library Publishers (figure 15). The pamphlet’s promise is obviously Soviet, suggesting the prosperity and pleasure offered by the revolution. The cover illustrates this message with a young black man looking happily out toward a productive future, flanked by quaint images of a busy factory and a tranquil farm. The image of a smiling youth starkly contrasts the wretched workers struggling under capitalism featured on so many other pamphlets. As the images suggest, this pamphlet is an enticement, offering the Black Nation Thesis as a way to imagine different racial and class relations in the South, fictionalized through the “Soviet America.” As common to many of the pamphlets discussed above, this booklet carefully details the economic, social, and legal oppression black communities in the United States faced in the 1930s. Drawing on statistical data, sensationalist stories, and an analysis of capitalism tied to racism, the pamphlet outlines the problems with the United States and suggests that the USSR has solid solutions through the repeated refrain of what could be possible in a “Soviet America.” In subsections entitled, the “Soviet United States” and the “Soviet Negro Republic,” dreams of a new world include redresses to current problems. The claims are as simple as “any act of discrimination or of prejudice against a Negro will become a crime under the revolutionary law.”51 Or the claims are as grandiose as proposing that “to the first generation of new Soviet Americans race prejudice and discrimination will appear like a horrible disease of a past age.”52 Ford and Allen imagine a Soviet state for the “New Negro Republic” but importantly suggest that this new government will echo the period of Reconstruction. “We have somewhat of a similar situation in our own history. In the years 1867–1877, a revolutionary dictatorship ruled the South. The purpose of this dictatorship was to prevent the former slaveowners from returning to power.”53 By specifically drawing upon the US history of Reconstruction and showing (a) the promise of the decade, (b) the collapse of that promise at the hands of greedy business owners, and thus (c) the unequal development of the North and the South, Allen and Ford use the “Soviet America” to illustrate the long history of southern exploitation and to offer a return to what is

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Figure 15.  Cover image, The Negroes in a Soviet America.

imagined as a utopian moment of US history. Finally, they grandly suggest: “President Roosevelt’s present estate in Georgia and the other resorts of the millionaires can be turned into sanatoria, hospitals, clubs, etc. Palm Beach can become the haven of tired workers and toiling farmers.”54 The fantastical promise of a “Soviet America” was only “a mere peep into the vistas of a glorious future for the masses” as pictured on the cover of the pamphlet.55 However, this was an important glimpse presented through pamphlets to inspired organizers encouraging them to pay attention to race issues across the United States but particularly in the South. l

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In the 1930s, ideas about race were unstable with white supremacist and fascist organizations, liberals and progressives, and radical organizing groups all articulating a different rhetoric about race. Many depictions of race highlighted sexual anxieties, as was so apparent in the Scottsboro Nine case, and used sexuality to fan racist fears.56 The pamphlets discussed here sharply contrast this representation of race, linking an analysis of race to one of class and looking at economic and legal violence across the South.57 Though these pamphlets are not the only place in which race and class were being knitted together,58 the CPUSA pamphlets brought this discussion to the public through an organized and influential social movement. Pamphlets’ function and form enabled Party activists to both spread the word about CPUSA activities and values and also to discuss and disseminate material that suggested a different kind of future. As pieces outlining different kinds of futures, these pamphlets opened up many important conversations, such as about challenges to legal systems and penal codes that worked to systematize black oppression within the legal framework. For example, the CPUSA’s challenge to both the Scottsboro Nine case and southern chain gangs was productive fiction, depicting a world in which justice for African Americans was a possibility.59 Through pamphlet literature, the Party and its allies tried to imagine a world in which equal justice prevailed for people of all colors and classes in the South—a radical and brave dream in 1930s America. Furthermore, the idea that black people had earned the right to land by virtue of their work of tilling the soil over the last century, as put forward in The American Negro, was likewise an act of the radical imagination. Finally, as detailed above, the pamphlet The Negroes in a Soviet America imagines race as linked to class and offers new ways to conceptualize race in the United States. Tracing a different history of protest in the pamphlet literature of the CPUSA, this chapter has looked at a specific moment of dissident print culture, in which the dissidence was spectacular, imaginative, and importantly pedagogical, offering new ways to think about race, class, and gender. The CPUSA’s Black Nation Thesis changed the popular discourse on race in the United States by linking race to class, through the formulation of self-determination. Earlier popular organizing, such as that of the NAACP, worked on racial issues but did not address class differences as clearly, and other activist groups, such as the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association), suggested Black nationalist critiques but also did not directly address class. The CPUSA, building on the formulations of race and racism offered by other groups such as the NAACP and the UNIA, yoked this analysis to that of capitalism and popularized its formulation through pamphlets. As a form of protest, these pamphlets targeted systems of oppression through highlighting instances of injustice in the United States (e.g., the Scottsboro and Herndon trials) and offering inspiration for change for Communist organizers and allies.

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The term “productive fiction” signals how rhetorical framings are useful for social movements in their desire to develop strategies and practices aimed at achieving broad-based social change. As such, the idea of productive fiction works to shift our understanding of how pamphlet literature functions as protest for social movements. Looking at the Black Nation Thesis as a productive fiction enables a rhetorical analysis of the impact of the ideas presented, while also scrutinizing the various ways that CPUSA authors worked through complicated ideas such as the intersection of race and class through the trope of the Black Nation in the Black Belt. Black Nation Thesis pamphlets offer important protest in both content and form. Using the expanded pamphlet form, the CPUSA was able to critique the systematic subjugation of African Americans at the hands of the US government, link racism and class oppression, and offer inspiration for social change. Notes 1. Glenda Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), 16. 2. For an expanded analysis, see Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); and Gilmore, Defying Dixie. 3. Elizabeth Lawson, Twenty Years on the Chain Gang (New York: International Labor Defense, 1935); and Sasha Small, Hell in Georgia (New York: International Labor Defense, 1935). 4. The jury found Herndon guilty but recommended “mercy”; the judge sentenced him to 18–20 years. Charles H. Martin, “Communists and Blacks: The ILD and the Angelo Herndon Case,” The Journal of Negro History 64, no. 2 (1979): 132. 5. Martin, “Communists and Blacks,” 135. 6. For example, see Angelo Herndon, You Cannot Kill the Working Class (New York: International Labor Defense and League of Struggle for Negro Rights, 1937); and Angelo Herndon, The Scottsboro Boys: Four Free! Five to Go! (New York: Workers Library, 1937). 7. James P. Danky, “Reading, Writing, and Resisting: African American Print Culture,” in Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880– 1940, ed. Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway, vol. 4 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 8. Glenda Gilmore argues that Lovett Fort Whiteman claims he was at the founding conference of the Communist Party of America, but there is some evidence that he was actually in the South. See Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 36. 9. Specifically the CPUSA had somewhat tense relationships with the Urban League, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, and the NAACP, as well as many smaller local organizations. See Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005). 10. For more on the African Blood Brotherhood, see Naison, Communists in Harlem; and Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998).

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For more on the Crusader, see Robert A. Hill’s introduction to the three-volume reprint entitled The Crusader (New York: Garland, 1987). 11. The Comintern, also written as COMINTERN, was the acronym for the Third International or the Communist International of 1919. For more on black people from the United States working with the Comintern, please see Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978); Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Kelley, Hammer; Naison, Communists in Harlem; and Solomon, The Cry Was Unity. 12. Stalin had defined a nation as “a historically evolved, historical community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture.” For more on Stalin and the National Question, see Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism and the Making of the Black Radical Tradition (London, UK: Zed Books, 1983), 63. 13. James R. Forman carefully outlines the importance of the CPUSA’s formulation on self-determination. See James R. Forman, Self-Determination and the African-American People (Seattle, WA: Open Hand, 1981). 14. See Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Naison, Communists in Harlem; Kelley, Hammer; Eric McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); and Solomon, The Cry Was Unity. 15. Kelley, Hammer, 14. 16. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is a current organization using many of the tenets of the Black Nation Thesis in current organizing rhetoric and publications. 17. James S. Allen, Organizing in the Depression South (Minneapolis, MN: MEP, 2001), 19. 18. Ibid., 33–36, 41–42. 19. Ibid., Organizing, 128. 20. Though there is not any specific pamphlet publication information available, the International Pamphlets series is the most widely archived and collected in bound editions. International Pamphlets and International Publishers both published the flagship pamphlets and put out a series of important works by Marxist scholars such as the Little Lenin Library. 21. Randy Silverman, “Small, Not Insignificant: A Specification for a Conservation Pamphlet Binding Structure,” Cool Conservation OnLine, accessed May 16, 2012, http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/annual/v06/bp06-13.html. 22. Carl R. Burgchardt, “Two Faces of American Communism,” in Charles E. Morris and Stephen H. Browne, Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest (State College, PA: Strata, 2001), 240. 23. Citing census data from 1930, Robin D. G. Kelley also notes that only 3 percent of Birmingham’s black community owned a radio, thereby making pamphlets a much more effective source for spreading news. Kelley, Hammer, 94. 24. Allen, Organizing, 43–44 and 52–53. 25. This estimation is based on my research in the archives at the Walter Goldwater Radial Pamphlet Collection at UC Davis, the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Museum on African American History. The Tamiment Library also has microfilmed copies of the Labadie Collection, University of Michigan, with 1,245 pamphlets. The HUAC Collection housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the

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Library of Congress includes 3,504 pamphlets, not all of which are Communist Party related. The Tamiment Collection holds the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, including the pamphlet collection from the former Communist Party Library with more than 10,000 pamphlets, not all of which are from the United States. 26. Eric Schocket, “Proletarian Paperbacks: The Little Blue Books and Working Class Culture,” in College Literature 29 (2002): 68. 27. Herbert Pimlott, “ ‘Eternal Ephemera’ or the Durability of ‘Disposable Literature’: The Power and Persistence of Print in an Electronic World,” in Media, Culture, and Society 33 (2011): 516–17. 28. Pimlott, “ ‘Eternal Ephemera,’ ” 517–19. Citing James Jupp, The Radical Left in Britain, 1931–1941 (New York: Routledge, 1982). 29. Pimlott, “ ‘Eternal Ephemera,’ ” 528. 30. Ibid., 520. 31. Kelley, Hammer, 94. Kelley also notes that few households had radios, suggesting the importance of text and image-based media. 32. For a thorough discussion of the CPUSA’s role in black radical organizing, see Allen, Organizing; Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Walter Howard, Black Communists (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2008); and Kelley, Hammer. 33. Howard, Black Communists, 9. 34. B. D. Amis, introduction to They Shall Not Die! by Elizabeth Lawson (New York: International Labor Defense [ILD], 1932). Lawson, identified by B. D. Amis, a prominent black Party member, in his introduction to the pamphlet, was the managing editor of The Liberator, the journal published by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and Refregier was an “artist-worker” and member of the John Reed Club. Refregier, a Russian immigrant, would go on to make a name for himself as a prominent muralist, working up from the Works Progress Administration roles to paint the famous Rincon Post Office mural in San Francisco. 35. Lawson, Scottsboro, 10. 36. The editors of the pamphlet claim in their brief preface that Spivak is a “wellknown New York newspaper reporter,” though, in reality, he worked in a variety of media and with a host of papers. He does, however, employ a journalistic style and tone for this pamphlet, which starkly contrasts with the more propaganda style of other pieces of the time. Spivak, On the Chain Gang (New York: International, 1932), 1. Also see, Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name (New York: Anchor, 2009), 371. 37. Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), 562–63. 38. For more on this history of chain gangs, slavery, and forced labor in the South, please see Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name; Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete (New York: Seven Stories, 2003); and Walter Wilson, Forced Labor in the United States (New York: International, 1933). 39. Spivak, On the Chain Gang, 1. 40. Alex Lichtenstein, “Georgia History in Fiction: Chain Gangs, Communism, and the ‘Negro Question’: John L. Spivak’s Georgia Nigger,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 79, no. 3 (1995): 633–58. 41. For an interesting recent publication that put the campaign of Foster/Ford in the context of African Americans and the US presidency, see Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz, eds., African Americans and the Presidency: The Road to the White House (New

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York: Routledge, 2010). Specifically, see the David Cullen and Kyle G. Wilkison’s chapter, “The Communist Party of the United States and African American Political Candidates,” which outlines the Party’s long history of running black organizers as vice presidential candidates alongside white Party leaders as president. The article begins to discuss the unfortunate racial dynamics of this decades-long pattern begun with the 1932 Ford campaign. 42. William Z. Foster and James W. Ford, Foster and Ford for Food and Freedom (New York: Workers Library, 1932), inside cover. 43. National Elections Committee of the Communist Party, Working Women and the Elections (New York: Workers Library, 1932), 6. 44. Ibid., 7. 45. James S. Allen, The American Negro (New York: International, 1932), 5. 46. For examples of this argument, see League of Struggle for Negro Rights, Equality, Land, and Freedom (New York: League of Struggle for Negro Rights, 1933). 47. Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2002). 48. See Joseph Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” Prosveshcheniye (March–May 1913): 3–5; and Vladimir Lenin, “On the National Question,” Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress, 1977), 243–51. 49. The relationship between member Parties and the Comintern was complicated and often mostly one-way; an individual Party subsidiary could not flout the dictates of the Comintern, though everyone was invited to participate in drafting and passing resolutions. For example, the Resolution on the Negro Question was developed with serious input from US comrades, but once in place, it was not possible to suggest that the Resolution was incorrect and maintain Party membership. Though small disagreements were often encouraged as important contributions, a serious flouting of the Party line could end in the removal of Communist Party membership, such as with Richard B. Moore’s or Jay Lovestone’s. 50. For one discussion of this, see Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism and the Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 220– 28. Also Solomon, The Cry Was Unity. 51. James W. Ford and James S. Allen, Negroes in a Soviet America (New York: Workers Library, 1935), 38. 52. Ibid. 53. Ford and Allen, Negroes, 41. 54. Ibid., 47. 55. Ibid. 56. See Angela Y. Davis, “Myth of the Black Rapist,” in Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage, 1983); and Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword among Lions (New York: Amistad, 2008). 57. By the 1940s, Claudia Jones’s pamphlet and editorial work would also take gender into account, pointing out the “super exploitation of Black Women.” This work was building off earlier, but not as widely read, declarations of “super exploitation” by Maude White and other Party activists. For more on black women in the Party, see Jones and White in particular; and Carol Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); and McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom.

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58. DuBois’s seminal work Black Reconstruction was also published in 1935. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction (New York: Russell & Russell, 1935). 59. For a more thorough discussion of this, see Trevor Joy Sangrey, “Productive Fiction and Propaganda: The Development and Uses of Communist Party Pamphlet Literature,” in Activism in Modern United States Print Culture, ed. Rachel Schreiber (London, UK: Ashgate, 2013).

part 2

Consensus Contested

By the Pinch and the Pound less and more protest in american vegetarian cookbooks from the nineteenth century to the present Laura J. Miller and Emilie Hardman

Cookbooks are in many ways the workhorses of print culture. Typically segre-

gated from other books in a household, their well-worn covers and stained pages testify to their role as manuals instructing readers in some of the most mundane activities of everyday life: selecting, preparing, and eating food. Yet, despite their prosaic qualities, cookbooks matter on many different levels. Through communicating a moral vision of how day-to-day life should be conducted, cookbooks contain an implicit, and sometimes explicit, politics. While this political message generally affirms and gives guidance on how to uphold conventional social relations and practices, there are times when cookbooks act as important beacons of social change, drawing far-flung readers into communities of dissent. Whether a cookbook should be understood as a document of protest depends not just on its manifest content but also on its physical characteristics, from typeface to illustrations to binding. Most importantly, the oppositional nature of a cookbook is related to the social worlds in which it is embedded, including those groups with which an author identifies, the publisher and distributors that make a book available, and the networks of readers that attribute meanings to a text. In this chapter, we examine how vegetarian and vegan cookbooks in the United States, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era, present a message of opposition to conventional systems of food production and 111

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consumption, opposition that is meant to be integrated into routines of everyday life. Related to this, we examine a number of historical changes that have taken place in how that oppositional vision is communicated within the cookbook form. Through this, we seek to understand how the cookbook as a printed document contributes to the communication of dissent, the identification of social problems, and the formation of advice on how to achieve social change. We are not arguing that all vegetarian cookbooks are equally oppositional. Instead, locating where one falls on an oppositional spectrum entails paying attention to both the material form it takes and the social context from which it emerges. This analysis is based on an examination of library catalogs and bibliographies,1 of actual cookbooks, and on research on the history of American vegetarianism and veganism more generally. We examined bibliographic information on the universe of vegetarian and vegan cookbooks published in the United States from 1800 to 2006, and made more direct study of a sample of approximately three hundred books. A focus on cookbooks as a gendered form of print culture is perhaps the dominant analytical frame in scholarship on cookbooks.2 In a representative argument, Janet Theophano claims that women have used cookbooks as “vehicle[s] for constructing, defending, and transgressing social and cultural borders.”3 Here, there is recognition that cookbooks have been a means to express a moral vision and assert an association between food, food-related labor, and the larger social order. Yet this outlet is thought to be primarily confined to a world in which women are speaking to other women. Susan J. Leonardi’s 1989 essay, “Recipes for Reading,” was influential in this regard, as she argues that recipe sharing has been a way for women to enter into a gendered discourse that downplays authority in favor of an invitingly informal and chatty tone.4 However, as we intend to argue, vegetarian and vegan cookbooks challenge the assumption that cookbooks rest firmly within the sphere of domestic arts and female culture. So many of them, especially the earliest and later ones, are not just addressed to women, nor are they all authored by women. It would be incorrect to consider them completely ungendered, as many do explicitly describe a special role for women in furthering vegetarianism, one which arises out of women’s responsibilities for feeding the family. And, as Maria McGrath discusses, some do make a connection between vegetarianism and female empowerment.5 Still, the majority do not tie their promotion of vegetarianism to assumptions about female skills or proclivities, and they indicate that men will be equally as interested in their advice as women, even when it is understood that women will be doing the actual cooking. Indeed, inscriptions in library copies of early vegetarian cookbooks demonstrate extensive male ownership of these books.6

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Furthermore, vegetarian cookbooks are as much guides to a worldview and advocates of a lifestyle as they are straightforward recipe books. They frequently mix, in a single text, food philosophy and history with how-to instructions. They often discuss cooking and eating practices—not just as a key to an appropriate domestic life or to personal transformation, but as a way to actively promote much broader social and political change. Family responsibilities are only one theme among others that propose how both women and men can use food preparation to achieve social change. Thus, cookbooks can be devices for communicating political ideals and for mobilizing people—both men and women—to put those ideals into practice. The opposition to meat eating, which characterizes vegetarianism, or to the consumption of any animal-based food product, which characterizes veganism, has several dimensions, and cookbooks usually make explicit reference to at least one of them. First are ethical concerns about raising and slaughtering animals; second are the health benefits that come from a vegetarian diet; third are the environmental problems that arise from the greater resources needed to raise animals compared to plants and that come from disposing of animal wastes and other by-products; fourth is the greater complexity of raising and processing animal-based food, which leads to dependence on a profit-minded industry; and fifth is a perspective that sees vegetarianism as a more natural or original diet; this latter argument is often couched in religious terms that pose vegetarianism as the diet ordained by God. However, the scope of the vegetarian critique goes beyond these concerns, as such ills are believed to be connected to more far-reaching problems. As Mattie M. Jones wrote in 1864 in her Hygienic Cook-Book, The table! how vast an influence it exerts on human life and character; how much of the weal or woe of humanity clusters around it! In determining our physical, mental, and moral conditions, no other one thing in all the material universe has so vast a power as that which we take daily in the shape of food and drink. Much, very much, of the sickness, suffering, and premature death in the world; much of its vice, immorality, and crime, can, if traced to its starting point, be found to originate here.7

These sentiments are echoed a century later in the 1974 Back to Eden Cookbook: “It is wrong habits of eating and the use of refined and adulterated foods that are largely responsible for the intemperance, crime, and sickness that curse this world.”8 Cookbooks thus contain a protest against, and theories for alleviating, the wrongs that humans do to themselves, to their fellows, to other living creatures, and to the natural world. These cookbooks do not take what Arjun Appadurai calls a gustatory approach, meaning one that is independent of its moral and medical implications.9 Instead, moral and medical considerations are central. They integrate

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nutritional information with economic analysis and ethical principles, generally in terms that the average American can understand. Especially after the initial period of growth in the nineteenth century, and up until the emergence of the vegan cookzine (a cooking-oriented zine), vegetarian cookbooks are less obtrusive than more traditional political manifestos, and indeed are organized so that the reader can, if he or she wishes, skip most of the philosophizing and go straight to the recipes. Still, even those that contain no overtly political content stand as a challenge to authority and convention by defying taken-for-granted assumptions about the desirability of meat. Meat has been at the center of the American diet since the colonial era;10 it communicates household prosperity and conformity with national culinary traditions. The population’s regard for meat is reflected in rates of consumption, which have risen steadily over time, reaching an average of 195 pounds per person in 2000.11 Up until recently, most professional nutritionists endorsed this preference for meat, while insisting that vegetarianism resulted in nutritional deficiencies.12 To reject all this accepted wisdom is to challenge basic ideals about how to achieve individual wellbeing and the general good. Yet vegetarian cookbooks do not just operate at the ideological level. They are manuals for action, presenting the logic behind vegetarianism side by side with practical advice about how to adopt the vegetarian lifestyle. An understanding of their potential efficacy entails analyzing their status as print documents, which has been essential for cookbooks’ ability to reach an audience of both committed and experimenting vegetarians, to have their messages last over time, and to provide highly flexible instructions on dissent. Early Vegetarian Cookbooks Most of the existing scholarly literature on vegetarian cookbooks focuses on classic texts coming out of the 1970s counterculture.13 These cookbooks are certainly significant and worthy of attention, as we will later discuss. But we disagree with Sherrie A. Inness, who claims that the 1970s natural foods movement represented a shift away from promoting individual betterment to a focus on improving the world.14 That concern with improving the world was there from the start. Perhaps the first English-language vegetarian cookbook was Thomas Tryon’s Wisdom’s Dictates, published in England in 1691. While most of this book was a treatise on vegetarianism, his section called “Bill of Fare” contained recipes.15 Like the rest of the book, the dense text of this section, unbroken by white space or illustration of any kind, communicates the seriousness of purpose contained within. Martha Brotherton’s Vegetable Cookery, originally published in England in 1812,16 was heralded as the first book actually devoted to vegetarian recipes.17 Brotherton’s book served as a guide for Americans who began to

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self-identify as vegetarian in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The British were an important influence on the early American vegetarian movement, with direct contact occurring between British and American adherents, and with Americans reading and sometimes reprinting British tracts. The first American-published vegetarian cookbooks appear in the 1830s. Similar to Tryon’s guide, these early books make a case for a vegetarian lifestyle, but grudgingly mention circumstances in which meat might be eaten. Unlike Brotherton’s book, they were not primarily lists of recipes or, as they were then called, receipts. Rather, the recipes were an addendum to the lengthy disquisitions on the importance of vegetarianism. Indeed, in his 1838 book, The Young House-Keeper or Thoughts on Food and Cookery, William A. Alcott, one of the best-known early American proponents of vegetarianism, deplored the large number of published books that were “little more than large bundles of recipes for fashionable cookery.” In contrast, his work intended to lay out important principles in regard to foods.18 Alcott’s 1849 Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages, Including a System of Vegetable Cookery19 puts more stress on his philosophy of vegetarianism, whereas The Young House-Keeper emphasizes more the qualities of different foods. But both include a final, modest section of recipes containing rather curt and undetailed instructions for preparing a variety of foods. Alcott solicited the recipes for The Young House-Keeper from members of the Ladies’ Physiological Institute, the women’s branch of the vegetarian association that Alcott helped to lead.20 In the book, Alcott notes that he could have included hundreds of additional recipes, but “was unwilling to devote more space to matter of so little comparative importance.”21 A contemporary book, Asenath Nicholson’s 1835 Nature’s Own Book, similarly presents a section on recipes as something of an afterthought to Nicholson’s views on the complete way of life that conforms to the principles of Sylvester Graham, an influential food reformer. These principles were enforced in the temperance boardinghouse that Nicholson ran in New York City. Like the simple living Nicholson promoted in her boardinghouse, the look of her book, as was Alcott’s, was plain, even severe.22 In the following decades, one of the more significant changes to take place in vegetarian cookbooks is that the proportion of text given over to recipes increases, while the amount devoted to explicating a rationale for vegetarianism declines. At the same time, illustrations begin to appear. A transitional text is The New Hydropathic Cook-Book (1854) by R. T. Trall, which integrated vegetarian convictions with Trall’s beliefs in water cure and opposition to alcohol. The recipe section is a little less than half of the book, and there are numerous drawings of the plants meant to be the basis of a vegetarian diet, though no images of the people who prepare or eat this food appear.23 It is still the case here that the power of ideas, not the tastiness or attractiveness of recipes, was

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meant to be the book’s strength. Later nineteenth-century vegetarian cookbooks place recipes front and center.24 Another new addition to this latter group is the appearance of advertisements on the inside covers and beginning and end pages. These announcements tend to be for other health-reform books and periodicals available from the cookbooks’ publishers, but could also include, as with Mattie M. Jones’s book, food items such as graham crackers, and cooking implements such as bread pans. As well as drawing cooking into a commercial context, such advertisements connect vegetarianism to a more diverse set of philosophies represented by the publications for sale. What these changes also reflect is the trend, over time, to appeal to a broader audience than just people interested in debating vegetarian ethics. This is perhaps best seen with some of the earliest cookbooks written to emphasize recipes over philosophy: those associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Beginning in 1876, this institute was run by John Harvey Kellogg, who also directed the first truly systematic and successful effort to commercialize meat substitutes. Both Kellogg and his wife, Ella, published cookbooks that drew upon and advertised Sanitarium products, such as Protose, Granose, and Nuttolene.25 Ella E. Kellogg’s 1892 book, Science in the Kitchen (figure 16), included many photographs of artfully arranged dishes, like Protose Salad or Nut Roast, meant to highlight the elegance of the foods resulting from the book’s instructions. In this book, Kellogg integrated recipes into an extensive discussion of digestion, nutrition, cookware, and other topics, with vegetarianism seemingly taken for granted. However, in her Every-Day Dishes, published in 1897, Kellogg devotes a mere 8 pages to introductory material, and the rest of the book, almost 150 pages, is given over to instructions on choosing and preparing food with a final, substantial chapter providing general advice about housekeeping, especially the need for thrift, cleanliness, and efficiency.26 The ability to save money by forgoing meat was an abiding theme in vegetarian cookbooks of the early twentieth century. Cookbook authors’ frequent reference to thriftiness fit with their attempt to situate vegetarian cooking in the everyday concerns of the average homemaker. Lenna Frances Cooper, head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium School of Home Economics, used her 1917 book, How to Cut Food Costs, to tout the economizing advantages of vegetarian menus. In this volume, Cooper makes a direct argument for vegetarianism, not by appealing to ethics, but by emphasizing cost savings and nutrition.27 Another of Cooper’s cookbooks, The New Cookery, is likewise full of practical advice but devotes little space to a philosophy of food and food preparation. Her references to vegetarianism are veiled and easily overlooked by someone unfamiliar with her intentions. She writes, we now know that the health and efficiency of the organism is not only maintained but is increased by the use of a lesser quantity of food and a smaller

Figure 16.  Ella E. Kellogg, Science in the Kitchen, page 459.

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proportion of protein than was formerly supposed necessary. . . . Housewives who have long been accustomed to providing meat and other “high protein” dishes for their families are ofttimes at a loss to know how to prepare a wellbalanced meal without these articles and at the same time serve a palatable and attractive meal.28

Aside from an excerpt from Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “The Hermit,” which advocates pity for animals instead of slaughtering them for food, these remarks are the extent of Cooper’s commentary on vegetarianism. The real argument is intended to come from the recipes themselves, which feature meat substitutes. Battle Creek cookbooks and guides continue over the next several decades to make vegetarianism nonthreatening. From the turn of the twentieth century through the 1950s, there was a particular emphasis on faux meat dishes,29 suggesting to readers that they need not give up the cooking styles of average Americans. The Influence of Social Worlds With these cookbooks, we are not primarily referring to community cookbooks, those collections of recipes produced, often for fund-raising purposes, by local civic and religious groups and meant for their members’ own use. 30 Instead, vegetarian cookbooks were generally authored by a single individual and intended for a wide distribution beyond the immediate community in which the author was situated. The dispersal of the audience is an important feature. As Donna R. Gabaccia notes in regard to ethnic enclaves, women who were closely tied to their communities learned to cook from their mothers and therefore did not need cookbooks.31 But vegetarian readers could potentially be isolated from other vegetarians and so could find cookbooks indispensable sources of information and confirmation of the soundness of their eating choices. And for those just experimenting with vegetarianism, the cookbook offered entrée into an otherwise mysterious world. Nonetheless, most vegetarian cookbook authors did have ties to other vegetarians. As such, the nature of the opposition presented in these cookbooks is connected to the social worlds from which the authors derive. With some exceptions,32 these social worlds were primarily religious until the 1970s. Such groups were mostly Christian sects marginalized from the religious mainstream.33 Although American vegetarian cookbooks coming out of Eastern religions did not really emerge until the 1970s, occasionally non-Christians were represented: Jews, Zoroastrians, Theosophists.34 These religious communities impart a moral imperative to their instructions. Opposition to meat eating is thus understood as opposition to evil, which degrades not just the individual, but all of humanity. As Frank J. and Rosalie Hurd wrote in the widely read Ten Talents, published in 1968:

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It was not until nearly 1,700 years after creation that the Lord allowed man to eat flesh. This was to shorten man’s sinful life of indulgence. Because of man’s unnatural craving for flesh, his life was rapidly shortened, so that by 3,000 years after creation the life span was only three score and ten—(not much more than it is today).35

By conceptualizing vegetarian practices as related to the divine, adherents gained not only the certitude but also the strength to stand up to the majority of the population, which consistently ridiculed vegetarian dietary practices. Religious authority is also capable of standing up to the authority of the scientificmedical establishment, which largely opposed vegetarianism, and the institutions connected to the conventional system of food production, which had the backing of various arms of federal and state governments, such as the US Department of Agriculture and the land-grant colleges. While proponents of vegetarianism often sought to use science to legitimate their arguments, they remained largely indifferent to the attempts by professional medicine to assert authority over all matters connected to health and illness. The moral authority of proponents of vegetarianism was bolstered by teachings that the spiritual benefits of a particular diet should take precedence over commercial concerns, in contrast to the obvious financial interests of physicians and conventional food companies in monopolizing knowledge about correct habits of eating. The importance of religious communities for promoting vegetarianism was reflected in the publishers of vegetarian cookbooks, which were also mostly religious until 1968. The single largest group of books appearing before that date was published by affiliates of the Seventh-day Adventists.36 Most of the rest were either self-published37 or published by other religious or political organizations.38 This type of insider publishing was important as it allowed vegetarian communities the freedom to express sentiments that could alienate a mainstream readership and, therefore, be verboten to general trade publishers. There are occasional exceptions to this trend, with forays into vegetarian cookbooks by some prominent publishers, such as Little, Brown and Company’s 1912 reprint of The Golden Rule Cook Book or Dell’s 1943 book 275 Recipes for Meals without Meat.39 However, several of these were less about a total way of life than about advice for meat-eaters about how to cook during Lent or how to make do without meat during wartime.40 1968 was a pivotal year with a spurt of books published by mainstream trade publishers and meant for a general audience. This ushers in a new force in vegetarian cookbooks. The Counterculture Embraces Vegetarianism The universe of vegetarian cookbooks expanded considerably when vegetarianism caught on among segments of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. The grounds for protest against meat eating did not change significantly, though the

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emphasis did. Spiritual reasons receded somewhat, while a sense of anger at a profit-minded industrialized food system increased. The theme of exploitation is explicit, for example, in Helen Nearing’s Simple Food for the Good Life: We are not only killers; we are slave drivers and exploiters; we are food robbers. We rob the bees, for honey; we rob the chickens, for eggs; we rob the cows, for milk. Cattle in their wild state suckle their calves for fifteen months. Domesticated cows are pushed beyond their normal breeding capacity, separated from their calves often at birth and are fooled into giving us milk instead of to their calves.41

On the other hand, what constituted a major change was the visual and rhetorical style of the cookbooks now being published. The old style tended to cram in as many recipes as possible,42 whereas the new style now displayed one or two recipes on a single page, suggesting that each recipe deserved contemplation and appreciation. In addition, photos receded and artwork increased. Drawings were often whimsical, emphasizing pen-and-ink or hand lettering. In line with this was a tone that was, with some exceptions,43 very inviting and inclusive, more gentle than didactic. This approach reassured the reader that anyone could learn to cook vegetarian, and that one does not have to give up meat entirely to reap the benefits of vegetarian practice. The 1980 Peaceable Kitchen Cookbook stated: “Eating a meat-less meal on a regular basis, perhaps once or twice a week, can raise our awareness about hunger and its impact on millions of human lives. This in turn can point us toward concrete action in the realm of public policy.”44 The reassurance that the reader was not being held to any test of purity was especially true of those books that had the largest following and came to define a countercultural vegetarian canon: The Moosewood Cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure books, Tassajara Cooking, and Laurel’s Kitchen.45 For instance, in recounting her path to vegetarianism, and eventually becoming a vegetarian cookbook author, Carol Flinders of Laurel’s Kitchen writes: “I bought a natural foods cookbook, a very stern and uncompromising one that had me putting brewer’s yeast into everything we ate until an unnamed party confiscated the jar.”46 Through this vignette, she lets the reader know that her position will be forgiving of compromises of principle, while being less inclined to compromise on the taste and appeal of food. Similarly, The Moosewood Cookbook downplayed politics. Indeed, in her brief introduction, Moosewood author Mollie Katzen says firmly, “There is no specific dogma attached to the Moosewood cuisine.”47 These statements reflect their authors’ countercultural social worlds, in which consensus reigned on the need for social change, but divisions remained on how to achieve it. Showing a collective weariness with such battles, the vegetarian cookbooks of the era mostly chose inclusive flexibility over narrow partisanship. The publishing history of Moosewood encapsulates the movement that was taking place, with vegetarian cookbooks emanating from self-publishing to

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small presses to large commercial houses. Moosewood started as a photocopied bundle of twenty recipes that Katzen put together to hand out to customers who requested the Moosewood restaurant’s recipes. With an increase in the number of requests, one of Katzen’s friends, a man who owned a bookstore and a small press, agreed to print and sell them. With books rapidly selling, Katzen then looked for a national publisher and in 1977 decided to go with Berkeley’s Ten Speed Press. The commercial success of Moosewood helped to steer Ten Speed into the cookbook niche; it remains a major publisher of cookbooks today. Ten Speed is currently owned by Penguin Random House, and continues to sell new editions of The Moosewood Cookbook. Publishers specializing in spiritual matters were still central in the counterculture era. This can be seen with Nilgiri Press, publisher of Laurel’s Kitchen, and Shambhala, publisher of Tassajara. But an increasing number of the major trade houses entered the vegetarian field. They included publishers of widely read books like The Vegetarian Epicure, published by Knopf; Diet for a Small Planet, published by Ballantine; and The Findhorn Cookbook, published by Grosset and Dunlap.48 With the entry of major trade publishers came better production values, and also a turn toward books that did not assume an insider readership. In other words, authors were now speaking not necessarily just to a counterculture but, as with Janet Barkas’s 1975 Meatless Cooking, Celebrity Style, published by Grove Press,49 to people interested in trying out vegetarianism without leaving the cultural mainstream. The clout of the trade publishers also translated into increased availability. Whereas vegetarian cookbooks had once been difficult to obtain, distributed primarily via mail order, health-food stores, or religious networks; they were now increasingly found in general bookstores. And whereas recommendations of such books had formerly been confined to specialized publications like Let’s Live magazine or The Whole Earth Catalog, mainstream periodicals were now starting to feature them in book reviews. By stepping out of the shadows, vegetarian cookbooks could bring their messages to the view of a larger segment of the population. But that opportunity also impacted the oppositional nature of a new generation of cookbooks. Speaking to the Mainstream Coming out of the 1970s, evolving aesthetic and rhetorical options for the vegetarian cookbook were fueled in part by the support of publishers, like Knopf, who had considerable marketing power and looked to make a place on the shelves for books beyond the “vegetarian niche.” This led to a more polished and conventional mode of presentation from cover to introductory text to the recipes themselves; a middle- and higher-class aesthetic and set of values infused the books. In this mainstreamed mode, vegetarian cookbook authors tacitly and explicitly accepted the role of meat in traditional American diets, and

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labored within that framework to offer recipes and discourse that met the expectation of normative meat-centered meals by presenting “high protein” dishes that would still be “satisfying” and “substantial,” as well as “stylish” and up-to-date. Consideration of the faux-meat centered recipes of the nineteenth century makes acceptance of meat’s predominance in the meal seem like old news. Within a certain set of the cookbooks published in the 1980s, however, including The Mostly Vegetable Menu Cookbook by Nancy B. Katz; Enough Is a Feast: A NonVegetarian Vegetarian Cookbook by Elin Smith; or the oddly titled Times Books offering, Jean Hewitt’s International Meatless Cookbook: Over 300 Delicious Recipes, Including Many for Fish and Chicken,50 we see an interesting new blend of capitulation and quiet, maybe even optional, opposition: acceptance of a meat-eating community blended with the provision of a nonaggressive alternative to it. This came both from a vegetarian community of cooks and writers and from outside of it as well, with texts like Betty Crocker’s 1982 Meatless Main Dishes or Grace Gluskin’s I Am Not a Vegetarian: Meatless Main Dishes for Meat Eaters.51 Such texts celebrated the option of a meatless meal, for whatever reason home cooks may have had for making it. Less grounded in an identity or a social movement, vegetarian cuisine, as apart from vegetarianism, could be embodied with more fluidity than rigidity. Books with this focus, interestingly, gave those outside the vegetarian scope ways to both oppose and accept a vegetarian critique; perhaps an animal rights framework was resisted while a health rationale was taken on, or a part-time “cleansing” or spiritual argument could be embodied while a strong religiously located argument for veganism became “going too far.” Publication by a mainstream trade press did not necessarily mean that an analysis purporting opposition to dominant food systems was absent. But the way in which that analysis was presented needed to be made more accessible to appeal to a broad audience, with oppositional elements sometimes being obscured with exciting graphical elements or sometimes reframed with text displayed as optional areas for consideration. Of course, this gesture toward mainstreaming the vegetarian cookbook is only one facet in a steadily increasing publishing record through the 1980s and a booming one in the 1990s. Connected to it was an evolving interest in moving away from the ascetic portrayal of vegetarian cooking with books like Recipes for Health and Pleasure: Delightful New Recipes for New Age Living—and Easy Digestion— Plus a Total Plan for Zestful Vegetarian Nutrition by David Phillips and The New American Vegetarian Menu Cookbook: From Everyday Dining to Elegant Entertaining by Paulette Mitchell.52 Books such as these took less assimilationist approaches to the acceptance of meat-based diets, and made instead a gambit toward modeling the change they wanted to see. Posed in positive terms as something newly normative, vegetarianism was offered as a mode of eating that not only fit into the American lifestyle, but could replace it.

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Finding themselves in a more mainstream position in the 1980s, many vegetarian cookbooks notably kept up with trends in the publishing industry and in the culinary fashions of the time. While this meant that there were a great number of books about vegetarian cooking and the microwave or books about using other contemporary, quick-cookery methods, like The Electric Vegetarian: Natural Cooking the Food Processor Way,53 being au courant now also served to expand the vegetarian repertoire and its cultural capital. International cuisines in particular acted as themes for books and inspired many recipes within general vegetarian cookbooks. Both the vegetarian books coming out of publishing houses like Random House or Hearst,54 and those more located in countercultural spheres, were particularly drawn to the actual and imagined vegetarian cuisines abroad. These books used the compelling foreignness of international cuisine to fuel a vegetarian mode of eating that drew on traditions in physical, culinary, and often spiritual opposition to dominant modes of American eating. Specific interest in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian cuisines gave authors a chance to give the culinary traditions of those countries a vegetarian focus, which was often grounded in religiously conceived systems of consumption. In mainstream books like Yamuna Devi’s 799-page mammoth volume, which was published by a subsidiary of Viking Penguin as Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking,55 these religious influences were present but kept in the background in favor of foregrounding the exoticism of the foreign culinary techniques and ingredients. On the other hand, in books published in a countercultural space, like The Hare Kr.s. n.a Cookbook: Recipes for the Satisfaction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead by Kr.s.n.a Dev¯ ı D¯as¯ ı and S´ama Dev¯ ı D¯as¯ ı, republished throughout the 1980s, and Zorba the Buddha Rajneesh Cookbook: Recipes from Zorba the Buddha Rajneesh Restaurants, Rajneesh Meditation Centers, Ashrams and Neo-Sannyas Communes Around the World by Osho, religious motivation reigned supreme and was utilized to emphasize the rightness, the “Higher Taste,” as the International Society of Krishna Consciousness put it, of a vegetarian approach over dominant modes of eating and spiritual orientation.56 The Rise of Vegan Cookbooks and Zines Though there are cookbooks of and polemics within the nineteenth and even the eighteenth centuries that would fit under a formal definition of vegan, the deployment of the term, coined in 1944 by a cofounder of the [ British] Vegan Society,57 marked a specific deviation away from the term vegetarianism and established vegan as distinct from vegetarianism, from which the term is coined (VEGetariAN).58 In 1951, the society extended its definition of veganism from a no-dairy, no-egg vegetarianism to a more conceptual doctrine-based definition concerned with the avoidance of animal exploitation, in which diet was considered as a primary part, but by no means the entirety of the parcel:

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One may become a vegetarian for a variety of reasons—humanitarian, health, or mere preference for such a diet; The principle is a matter of personal feeling, and varies accordingly. Veganism, however, is a principle—that man has no right to exploit the creatures for his own ends—and no variation occurs. Vegan diet is therefore derived entirely from “fruits, nuts, vegetables, grains and other wholesome non-animal products.”59

For twenty years in England, vegan publications and cookbooks were produced by the [ British] Vegan Society before the American Vegan Society was founded in 1960. The American branch of the society also recognized, early on, the importance of publishing recipes and cookbooks to further the mission of ending animal exploitation. Somewhat less rationalist in the Americans’ approach was that the branch linked an understanding of veganism to ahimsa, a Sanskrit word that describes a tenet of “no harm,” which is integral to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. In telling its own history, the American Vegan Society also identifies the Seventh-day Adventist Church as critical to the communication of vegan ideals and practice through food preparation.60 The sharing of information and resources needed to realize a vegan diet was an early priority, and the cookbook was seen as a powerful consciousness-raising tool. The cookbook additionally offered practical support to converts, interacting with them in the personal and private moments of the home as they prepared food for themselves and their families within the parameters of the vegan diet. The number of specifically vegan cookbooks published through the 1980s was relatively small in comparison to vegetarian cookbooks and miniscule when taken as a number relative to all cookbooks published during the same time period. The handful that was published tended to be issued by smaller presses, often nonprofits like the American Vegan Society or Gentle World, Inc. Although often created with a mission of conversion, these cookbooks tended to be deeply immersed in a religiously, socially, and/or politically countercultural space. Linda Runyon’s vegan forager’s cookbook, Lawn Food Cook Book: Groceries in the Backyard, with its recipes for dishes like burdock burr casserole, would have presented any number of challenges to even a willing mainstream cook.61 Harder to find are vegan cookbooks published by mainstream publishing houses at this time. Leah Leneman’s 1989 The Single Vegan: Simple, Convenient, and Appetizing Meals for One, published in the United Kingdom by Thorsons, a division of HarperCollins, and distributed in the United States by Sterling, is rare, not only for its vegan recipes but also for inclusion of the word “vegan” in the title. More common are books like Mary Estella’s 1985 Natural Foods Cookbook, published in the United States through Harper and Row, which had a subtitle of “Vegetarian Dairy-Free Cuisine” and was functionally a vegan cookbook.62

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In the absence of vegan cookbooks and the presence of social interest in veganism, which took root in radical subcultures, another significant element of the print record evolved: the cookzine. These documents are materials that could be overlooked by formal analysis of the publishing history, but that are critical to understanding the evolving rhetoric and aesthetic of vegetarian, and particularly vegan, cookbooks of the twenty-first century. According to ZineWiki, the communally constructed definition of a cookzine is that the term is a contraction of “cooking” and “zine,” and that a zine is an independently published booklet, with a cookzine “primarily composed of recipes, but [which] also discuss[es] the politics of food and eating, especially the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.”63 The cookzine took on a place of subcultural primacy as a means of politically reframing the cookbook as something that should be accomplished internally, as has been done with music and other cultural substance of these communities. While zines evolved and existed in a variety of cultural spaces, the vegan cookzine was fostered particularly in a variety of localized DIY (do-it-yourself ) punk scenes, in which the music, style, and politics were strongly oppositional to anything understood as the American mainstream. Possibly the first cookzine—and certainly among the most enduring, still in print, and widely read of these early cookzines—was Soy, Not Oi! It was assembled by the Hippycore Krew, a punk co-op in Arizona in the late 1980s, and served as a punk rock treatise on veganism. It was a cut-and-paste, 100+ page document of recipes, music playlists, and illustrations, such as punks carrying grocery bags full of produce, and avocados in anarchist capes and gauntlets (figure 17). Its subtitle was “Over 100 Recipes Designed to Destroy the Government.”64 The physical form of many cookzines is that they are visually and textually challenging in ways that sometimes make them the first thing seen on the page (e.g., the Vegan Death Squad’s Eat Yr Goddamn Veggies or I’ll Fucking Kill You; or Spoonfight’s Vegan Manual to Kitchen Terrorism65), and sometimes they are enmeshed even within the recipes on the page. In another enduring example from the genre (Please Don’t Feed the Bears! a State College, Pennsylvania, cookzine from the 1990s, shown in figure 18), a recipe for spring rolls is preceded with a line, “Music: Jenny Piccolo-Information Battle to Denounce the Genocide lp” and followed, after the instruction to “Drain on paper towels,” by several lines: Fuck your vision of a world where no one’s ugly and no one’s old Fuck your version of a beauty that sets the standard for all the runners up Fuck your definition of perfection, the smiling commodity that isn’t human, that isn’t allowed to step off the page and testify this isn’t real Fuck your headless torsos Fuck your young white skin Fuck your tan shaved limbs “This isn’t real” Born Against.66

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Figure 17.  Hippycore Krew, Soy, Not Oi!, back cover.

The culturally uninitiated would be entirely forgiven for wondering how these song lyrics extend from the recipe given, but the inclusion of such collaged political and cultural materials in the cookzine is a defining feature that extends the idea of a resistance fed, literally, by veganism into other arenas of protest. In this way, zines offer a textual representation of the comprehensively oppositional life projected from the punk scene as ideal. Notable also in the early punk cookzines was the involvement of men, with Soy, Not Oi! taking an explicitly feminist stance. The male cookbook author is not anomalous of course, but men have tended to be represented more heavily

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Figure 18.  Brad Misanthropic, Please Don’t Feed the Bears!, page 19.

as authors of professional cookbooks and as trained chefs. Subverting the tendency to see women as the ones who occupy the amateur cookbook writer role, and further challenging the notion of men as the party to cook for, these cookzines subtly critiqued the role of gender in the kitchen. In another cookzine that more directly played with gender, Bark+ Grass, the author’s layout puts an essay on the sexual politics of pornography (inspired by eco-feminist Carol J. Adams67) next to a list of “Animal Abuses,” which describes common animal products in foods and cosmetics and then segues into a conventional cookbook section on breakfast.68 It is accepted and expected that the cookzine form

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transcends the basic function of sharing recipes. Pain Pills for Bleeding Hearts,69 for example, is cross-referenced by the Papercut Zine Library (Somerville, MA) under “Feminism,” “Health & sex,” “Queer/trans [issues],” and “Food/cookbooks.” As much as these cookzines are in opposition to a conventional mode of consumption, they are also resistant to the vegetarian cookbooks that they have taken their cues from, a stance that made possible extrapolation of the concept of freeganism. The practice of freeganism was certainly active prior to the coining of the term, which happened in the mid-1990s and was expressed through zines like Evasion (1990s, serial), which gained wide circulation in the US political punk community. The zines were anonymously published accounts of meeting all needs and fulfilling desires without spending, or indeed, acquiring, any money. In a spirit similar to Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 Steal This Book,70 Evasion laid out ideas for scams, shoplifting, squatting in empty buildings or abandoned public spaces, and perhaps most significantly, acquiring food by dumpster diving, stealing, or gardening in spaces sanctioned or not. Freeganism combines the “do no harm” tenet of veganism with a differently actionable critique of the economic systems of food production, which, writers argue, are necessarily harmful in a capitalist system, whether or not food is vegan. The writer of Evasion summarized the politics: By what logic was food deadly the moment it entered a trash bag, or passed through the back door? Food that had been on the shelf hours prior. . . . Maybe I was the looney one. I mean, I could listen to abrasive anti-god music, display disturbing antisocial behavior, eat only plants, and somehow I was still tolerated. Until dumpster diving became my favorite hobby, then . . . exiled from middle class society. Which was fine. I didn’t need them, I needed their trash.71

The complex political framework opened by zines like this puts us in the position of reading recipes for raccoon roadkill casserole and having to understand them as politically, if not technically, vegan. And although a 2005 cookzine, Cooking with Surplus ’n’ Excess, may present only vegan recipes, it still plays in this thematic space, critiquing veganism as politically damaged, privileged, white, judgmental, and socially and culturally isolating.72 The construct reaches back to a core vegan principal of ahimsa and finds space, potentially, for different foods, methods, preparations, and gathering techniques to express it. The vegan cookzines open up, interestingly, another facet of opposition, one certainly to the mainstream generally, but also to the startling growth, in the 2000s, of explicitly vegan cookbooks put out by publishers large and small. On the one hand, large publishing houses, such as Macmillan and Chronicle Books, entered this arena.73 The New Vegan Cookbook: Innovative Vegetarian Recipes Free of Dairy, Eggs, and Cholesterol, by Lorna J. Sass and Jonelle Weaver, a glossy and picture-rich production, reflects many of the trends for these publications.

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Its “newness” drew on a script that put forth veganism as something exciting and innovative, fresh and relevant to a modern cook. Sass, a longtime cookbook author with specific health-conscious and ecological approaches, who had previously written cookbooks vegan in effect but published under the vegetarian label, now had her first vegan-branded book; the word, apparently, was no longer taboo in a mainstream context. The look of her book stressed the fun and pleasure of its dishes, which she acknowledged one might eat for a variety of health or philosophical reasons as well. In this way, the message was framed broadly and aimed toward a wide audience and avoidance of any suggestion of the “rightness” of veganism, dwelling rather on its exciting possibilities. At the same time, independent publishers were printing vegan cookbooks by subculturally affiliated authors geared toward mainstream audiences. The Arsenal Pulp Press How It All Vegan!, a bestseller with fourteen reprints between its 1999 first issue and continuingly popular tenth anniversary edition, serves as a useful archetype for exploration.74 The playful cookbook was certainly intended to have appeal beyond the community in which it was conceived, a subcultural space in which criticism for not being “vegan enough” was a legitimate cause of anxiety. In contrast, the mainstreamed audience that How It All Vegan! reached out to likely had to manage concerns on the other end of the spectrum—families and communities that struggled with acceptance of veganism at all, much less its perfect realization. The kitschy, “just kidding,” threat communicated textually, graphically, and personally by the book and its authors provided a fun and ultimately entirely nonaggressive way into veganism for readers outside a vegan-politicked community and offered them insight into the concerns, habits, and lived political and social experience of a vegan life. Looking at the cookzines that were created in comparable social spaces, but which did not intend to transcend them, we can see some notable patterns in terms of aesthetic representations of veganism. The fork or the whisk almost as weapon, revolutionary symbolism, and similarly clear subcultural-style cues are present in both cookbook and cookzine, but in the zines, the winking, midcentury kitsch subversion of How It All Vegan! is turned toward a different and certainly more dissenting political and social end. l From what to buy and what not to buy, to why and even how to do so (or not do so), the ingredients of the vegetarian and vegan cookbook loom large. They are a defining element of the texts, and it is primarily around them that the political discourse of the cookbook takes shape, implicitly and explicitly. Taken as a group, American vegetarian cookbooks from 1800 to the contemporary era form a record in which difference, distinction, and dissent are described for vegetarian adherents and dabblers alike. Some of these cookbooks argue that

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not only what we eat, but how the food is produced, distributed, purchased, and consumed are all political decisions with observable social impacts, and these cookbooks prescribe actions to remedy problems and reconceive the political landscape of food. Other cookbooks are framed by a social understanding of dissent against dominant modes of consumption, which include animal products, but are not themselves oppositional. No matter the cookbook’s location on this spectrum of dissent, in its pages each reader is offered the opportunity to enact and embody a vegetarian politic through selecting ingredients, preparing dishes, and sharing food. Instruction may take shape simply, perhaps in the presentation of a recipe for an omelet without ham, a rather basic omission that may nonetheless feel like a complete reformulation of previous knowledge, or in the quiet familial training of meals shared. On the other end, a cookbook may take as its mission the training of readers to eat entirely outside corporate systems of food production. These cookbooks sometimes teach, sometimes proselytize, but always offer guidance toward the realization of something—personal, political, or practical. The history of vegetarian and vegan cookbooks helps us better understand the relationship between print and protest. Uniquely, the cookbook serves as an important potential form of protest in its ability to be continually used and referenced; its durability creates an anchor for ideas and provides a means of expressing them in the action of cooking and sharing food. In this way, print is different from those singular, fleeting events in which people physically gather to announce their dissent. Print lasts even beyond the lifetime of its author, to be constantly rediscovered and referenced anew. For this reason, print allows conversation between socially, geographically, and temporally disconnected people, bridging differences that often render protest communities small and isolated. Again, uniquely though, as social as the book is in its ability to cross divides and bring people together, the reader interacts with it in very individual and personal ways. It is in moments of reader privacy that the book’s voice of dissent can be heard most loudly. Therefore, it is important to recognize that print is not merely a medium for communicating ideas about dissent, which are then made “real” through practices of demonstrating, boycotts, or other familiar types of collective action. The book can itself be a form of protest, using formal qualities, such as a particular binding, typeface, and illustration, to announce a challenge to dominant assumptions about the way the world is and ought to be. The cookbook, with its great variability and flexibility of form, is especially conducive to being created in this way. Unlike a political manifesto, which is generally a single narrative that achieves its punch by being read in its entirety, the cookbook does not ask to be read as a comprehensive whole. Instead, it is designed to be modular, with recipes, background material, and maybe even song lyrics presented in bite-sized—but actionable—pieces. It is perhaps unpredictable, but

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in this way it empowers readers and communities of readers to interpret, act, and embody its signs, symbols, and statements in a variety of ways. Of course not all vegetarian cookbooks must be understood as an object of dissent. As we have argued, it is not just the final printed book, but the production process itself that changes the nature of protest. Authors, who are shaped by the social worlds in which they are embedded, use print in various ways to accomplish their purposes. The very aesthetic and rhetoric of protest get defined in the production process, with the result that a book’s alternative worldview may be stark or obscured, and its instructions for dissent may be pointed or indirect. As so much scholarship on reception has shown, there are no guarantees that the reader will follow instructions as given, but the aesthetic and rhetorical decisions made in production create books that present politics in ways easy or difficult for the reader to avoid. Understanding food preferences and choices concerning what food to obtain and where to obtain it are generally considered to be matters of taste, but this is a formulation that naturalizes, and thus depoliticizes, the decisions made concerning food. Without historical context it might seem easy to locate the newly broad recognition of food as political as a more contemporarily accepted concept. Certainly this is not accurate; however, the location of this understanding as part of an extending “mainstream” American reality has become evident, and, with the exception perhaps of grocery stores and other sites of consumption (the restaurant, the food truck, the school), nowhere is this more demonstrable than in the print record of the cookbooks that ground social and political ideas about food in the practices of making it. There seems to be a recent coalescence of efforts to express ideas around how Americans could eat in a more sustainable fashion, covering organic agriculture, locally produced food, farmers’ markets, and the avoidance of dwindling supplies of fish. This oblique framework of sustainability certainly has encompassed vegetarian foods and even vegan foods as politically normative, at least on the leftward end of the spectrum. How this will manifest in the print record, the understanding of which must be expanded to include Internet discussion forums, blogs, photo sharing, and other personal and corporate social media output, remains to be analyzed. Pursuit of this question makes the cookbook a continually compelling document for study. Investigation is possible from a variety of macroperspectives: the ebbing and flowing themes documentable in the publishing record, the rhetorical and aesthetic landscapes available for analysis across variously definable collections. Cookbooks are remarkably social texts, broadly and closely reflective of big ideas and standards of practice within private and yet perform­ ative spaces. Scholars have tended, perhaps because of academic interests that have skewed “feminine,” to be drawn toward the private moments indicated by the cookbook: marginal notes by users, again mostly by women, about their successes or failures, a family member’s likes or dislikes, a party menu, and so

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on. These moments, however, are also equally expressive of social and political experiences in which food is considered, purchased, prepared, and shared, and in which the action almost always means more than just nourishment. Notes 1. WorldCat, Harvard University’s HOLLIS, University of California’s Melvyl, University of Michigan’s Mirlyn, Loma Linda University Del E. Webb Memorial Library, Boston University Metropolitan College Gastronomy Program Library, Paper Cut Zine Library, the Denver Zine Library, and William R. Cagle and Lisa Killion Stafford, American Books on Food and Drink: A Bibliographic Catalog of the Cookbook Collection Housed in the Lilly Library at the Indiana University (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998). 2. For example, Sherrie A. Inness, Secret Ingredients: Race, Gender, and Class at the Dinner Table (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); and Jessamyn Neuhaus, Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 3. Janet Theophano, “Home Cooking: Boston Baked Beans and Sizzling Rice Soup as Recipes for Pride and Prejudice,” in Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, ed. Sherrie A. Inness (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 139. 4. Susan J. Leonardi, “Recipes for Reading: Pasta Salad, Lobster à la Riseholme, Key Lime Pie,” in Cooking by the Book: Food in Literature and Culture, ed. Mary Anne Schofield (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989). 5. Maria McGrath, “Recipes for a New World: Utopianism and Alternative Eating in Vegetarian Natural-Foods Cookbooks, 1970–84,” in Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias, ed. Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 6. For example, see the two copies of William A. Alcott’s Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages (Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, 1838) at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, [call numbers] 641.75 A35ve, 1838, c.1; 641.75 A35ve, 1838, c.2. 7. Mattie M. Jones, The Hygienic Cook-Book Containing Recipes for Making Bread, Pies, Puddings, Mushes, and Soups, with Directions for Cooking Vegetables, Canning Fruit, Etc. to Which Is Added an Appendix, Containing Valuable Suggestions in Regard to Washing, Bleaching, Removing Ink, Fruit, and Other Stains from Garments, Etc. (New York: Miller & Browning, 1864), iii. 8. Jethro Kloss, Promise Kloss Moffett, and Doris Kloss Gardiner, The Back to Eden Cookbook (Santa Barbara, CA: Lifeline Books, 1974), 12. 9. Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 2008), 290. 10. Harvey Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 8; Lloyd Morris, Postscript to Yesterday: America; The Last Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1947), xvii.

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11. United States Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Fact Book, 2001–2002 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2003), 15, http://www.usda.gov/documents/usda-factbook2001-2002.pdf. 12. See, e.g., Darla Erhard, “The New Vegetarians,” Nutrition Today 8, no. 6 (1973). 13. McGrath, “Recipes for a New World”; Inness, Secret Ingredients; Stephanie Hartman, “The Political Palate: Reading Commune Cookbooks,” Gastronomica 3, no. 2 (2003); and Warren J. Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 1966–1988 (New York: Pantheon, 1989). 14. Inness, Secret Ingredients, 86. 15. Thomas Tryon, Wisdom’s Dictates, or, Aphorisms and Rules, Physical, Moral, and Divine; for Preserving the Health of the Body, and the Peace of the Mind, Fit to Be Regarded and Practised by All That Would Enjoy the Blessings of the Present and Future World to Which Is Added a Bill of Fare of Seventy Five Noble Dishes of Excellent Food, for Exceeding Those Made of Fish or Flesh, Which Banquet I Present to the Sons of Wisdom or Such as Shall Decline That Depraved Custom of Eating Flesh and Blood (London, UK: Printed for Tho. Salisbury at the Sign of the Temple, 1691). 16. [ Martha Brotherton], A New System of Vegetable Cookery: With an Introduction Recommending Abstinence from Animal Foods and Intoxicating Liquors, by a Member of the Society of BibleChristians, 2nd ed. (Salford, UK: Academy Press, 1821). 17. William E. A. Axon, “The Literature of Vegetarianism,” Good Health, December 1893, 357. 18. William A. Alcott, The Young House-Keeper or Thoughts on Food and Cookery (Boston, MA: George W. Light, 1838), 18. 19. William A. Alcott, Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages, Including a System of Vegetable Cookery, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (New York: Fowler & Wells, 1859). Originally published 1849. 20. Entry, 14 November 1837. Ladies’ Physiological Institute, Recordbook, 1837– 1840, Codman-Butterfield Papers, 1834–1910, Massachusetts Historical Society. 21. Alcott, The Young House-Keeper, 392. 22. Asenath Nicholson, Nature’s Own Book, 2nd ed. (New York: Wilbur & Whipple, 1835). 23. R. T. Trall, The New Hydropathic Cook-Book: With Recipes for Cooking on Hygienic Principles; Containing Also a Philosophical Exposition of the Relations of Food to Health; the Chemical Elements and Proximate Constitution of Alimentary Principles; the Nutritive Properties of All Kinds of Aliments; the Relative Value of Vegetable and Animal Substances; the Selection and Preservation of Dietetic Materials, Etc., Etc. (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1854). 24. For example, R. T. Trall, The Hygeian Home Cook-Book, or, Healthful and Palatable Food without Condiments (New York: S. R. Wells, 1874); Jones, The Hygienic Cook-Book ; Lucretia E. Jackson, Health Reformer’s Cook Book: How to Prepare Food from Grains, Fruits and Vegetables (Dansville, NY: F. W. Hurd, 1867); and Harriet H. Skinner, Oneida Community Cooking or a Dinner without Meat (Oneida, NY: [Oneida Community], 1873). 25. For example, John Harvey Kellogg, The Hygienic Cook Book: Comprising, in Addition to Many Valuable Recipes for the Preparation of Healthful Food, Brief Remarks upon the Nature of Food, How to Make the Change of Diet, Time for Meals, Canning, Fruit, &c. (Battle Creek, MI: Office of the Health Reformer, 1876).

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26. Ella E. Kellogg, Science in the Kitchen: A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties, Together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes (Battle Creek, MI: Health, 1892); and Ella E. Kellogg, Every-Day Dishes and Every-Day Work (Battle Creek, MI: Modern Medicine, 1897). 27. Lenna Frances Cooper, How to Cut Food Costs (Battle Creek, MI: Good Health, 1917). 28. Lenna Frances Cooper, The New Cookery: A Book of Recipes Most of Which Are in Use at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (Battle Creek, MI: Good Health, 1913), [2]. 29. For example, Battle Creek Foods, You Will Enjoy These Modern Recipes (Battle Creek, MI: Battle Creek Food Company, [1940s?]). 30. Anne L. Bower, ed., Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997); and Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 181. 31. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 182. See also Jack Goody, “The Recipe, the Prescription, and the Experiment,” in Food and Culture: A Reader, ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 2008), 89. 32. For instance, Otto Carqué, Natural Foods: The Safe Way to Health (Los Angeles: Carqué Pure Food, 1925). 33. For instance, Vegetarian Cook Book (Benton Harbor, MI: Israelite House of David, 1912). 34. For example, A. B. Mishulow and Shifre Mishulow, Vegetarishe Cokh Bukh: Ratsyonale Nahrung (New York: Better Health and Correct Eating Institute, 1926); Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, Mazdaznan Encyclopedia of Dietetics and Home Cook Book: Cooked and Uncooked Foods; What to Eat and How to Eat It, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Mazdaznan, 1904); and Emily B. Sellon, From Hand to Mouth: Vegetarian Recipes (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical, 1942). 35. Frank J. Hurd and Rosalie Hurd, Ten Talents (Chisholm, MN: Dr. and Mrs. Frank J. Hurd, 1968), 35. 36. For example, Glendale Sanitarium Kitchen, Vegetarian Recipes (Glendale, CA: Glendale Sanitarium, 194[6]). 37. For example, Louise Lust, The Practical Naturopathic-Vegetarian Cook Book: Cooked and Uncooked Foods (New York: Benedict Lust, 1907); and Mrs. Henry Lindlahr, One Thousand and One Vegetarian Recipes: The Health Cook Book (New York: Lindlahr’s Magazine, 1930). 38. For example, Constance Wachtmeister and Kate Buffington Davis, eds., Practical Vegetarian Cookery (San Francisco: Mercury, 1897); Unity School of Christianity, The Unity Inn Vegetarian Cook Book: A Collection of Practical Suggestions and Receipts for the Preparation of Non-Flesh Foods in Palatable and Attractive Ways (Kansas City, MO: Unity School of Christianity, 1923); and Unity School of Christianity, Unity Vegetarian Cookbook Set a Vege-Table (Lee’s Summit, MO: Unity School of Christianity, 1958). 39. M. R. L. Sharpe, The Golden Rule Cook Book: Six Hundred Recipes for Meatless Dishes, new ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1912); and Anita M. Auch and Phyllis Krafft Newill, 275 Recipes for Meals without Meat (New York: Dell, 1943). 40. For example, Auch and Newill, 275 Recipes; and Pauline Dunwell Partridge and Hester Martha Conklin, Wheatless and Meatless Days (New York: D. Appleton, 1918). See

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Neuhaus, Manly Meals, 108–10, on cookbook responses to meat rationing during World War II. 41. Helen Nearing, Simple Food for the Good Life: An Alternative Cookbook (New York: Delacorte, 1980), 49. 42. For example, Max Heindel, New Age Vegetarian Cookbook (Oceanside, CA: The Rosicrucian Fellowship, 1968). 43. For example, Frances Moore Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet (New York: Ballantine, 1971); Nearing, Simple Food; and Bloodroot Collective, The Political Palate: A Feminist Vegetarian Cookbook (Bridgeport, CT: Sanguinaria, 1980). 44. Kate Cusick Easterday, The Peaceable Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes for Personal and Global Well-Being (New York: Paulist, 1980), 28–29. 45. Mollie Katzen, The Moosewood Cookbook: Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant, Ithaca, New York (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed, 1977); Anna Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure (New York: Knopf, 1972); Anna Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two (New York: Knopf, 1978); Edward Espe Brown, Tassajara Cooking (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1973); and Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition (Berkeley, CA: Nilgiri, 1976). 46. Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey, Laurel’s Kitchen, 24. 47. Katzen, The Moosewood Cookbook, viii. 48. Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure; Thomas, The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two; Lappé, Diet for a Small Planet; and Barbara Friedlander, The Findhorn Cookbook: An Approach to Cooking with Consciousness (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1976). 49. Janet Barkas, Meatless Cooking, Celebrity Style (New York: Grove, 1975). 50. Nancy B. Katz, The Mostly Vegetable Menu Cookbook (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1982); Elin Smith, Enough Is a Feast: A Non-Vegetarian Vegetarian Cookbook ([ Lynnwood, WA]: Cross Creek, 1983); and Jean Hewitt, Jean Hewitt’s International Meatless Cookbook: Over 300 Delicious Recipes, Including Many for Fish and Chicken (New York: Times Books, 1980). 51. Meatless Main Dishes, Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, vol. 2 (New York: Golden, 1982); and Grace Gluskin, I Am Not a Vegetarian: Meatless Main Dishes for Meat Eaters (Detroit, MI: Concern, 1980). 52. David Phillips, Recipes for Health and Pleasure: Delightful New Recipes for New Age Living—and Easy Digestion—Plus a Total Plan for Zestful Vegetarian Nutrition (Santa Barbara, CA: Woodbridge Press, 1983); and Paulette Mitchell, The New American Vegetarian Menu Cookbook: From Everyday Dining to Elegant Entertaining (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 1984). 53. Paula Szilard and Juliana J. Woo, The Electric Vegetarian: Natural Cooking the Food Processor Way (Boulder, CO: Johnson, 1980). 54. For instance, Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking (New York: Knopf, 1981); and Ken Hom, Asian Vegetarian Feast: Tempting Vegetable and Pasta Recipes from the East (New York: W. Morrow, 1988). 55. Yamuna Devi, Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987). 56. Kr.s.n.a Dev¯ ı D¯as¯ ı and S´ama Dev¯ ı D¯as¯ ı, The Hare Kr.s.n.a Cookbook: Recipes for the Satisfaction of the Supreme Personality of Godhead (New York: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1973); Osho, Zorba the Buddha Rajneesh Cookbook: Recipes from Zorba the Buddha Rajneesh Restaurants, Rajneesh Meditation Centers, Ashrams and Neo-Sannyas Communes around the World

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(Rajneeshpuram, OR: Rajneesh Neo-Sannyas International Commune, 1984); and A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup¯ada, The Higher Taste: A Guide to Gourmet Vegetarian Cooking and a Karma-Free Diet; Based on the Teachings of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta ¯ arya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Los Swami Prabhup¯ada, Founder-Ac¯ Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1985). 57. Donald Watson, The Vegan News: Quarterly Magazine of the Non-Dairy Vegetarians, no. 1 (Leicester, UK: [ British] Vegan Society Press, 1944). 58. Elsie Shrigley, “Our President,” The Vegan News 12, no. 7 (1962). 59. Leslie Cross, “Veganism Defined,” The Vegetarian World Forum 5, no. 1 (1951). 60. American Vegan Society, “History,” American Vegan, accessed September 16, 2012, http://www.americanvegan.org/history.htm. 61. Linda Runyon, Lawn Food Cook Book: Groceries in the Backyard (Glens Falls, NY: Williams Graphic Arts, 1985). 62. Leah Leneman, The Single Vegan: Simple, Convenient, and Appetizing Meals for One (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK: Thorsons; New York: Distributed by Sterling, 1989); and Mary Estella, Natural Foods Cookbook: Vegetarian Dairy-Free Cuisine (Tokyo and New York: Japan Publications, through Harper & Row, 1985). 63. “Cookzine,” ZineWiki, accessed January 6, 2012, http://zinewiki.com /Cookzine. 64. Hippycore Krew, Soy, Not Oi! (Minneapolis, MN: Profane Existence; reprint, 1996). 65. Vegan Death Squad, Eat Yr Goddamn Veggies or I’ll Fucking Kill You (n.d.); and Spoonfight, Vegan Manual to Kitchen Terrorism (n.d.). 66. Brad Misanthropic, Please Don’t Feed the Bears! No. 2 (State College, PA: selfpublished, 1998). 67. Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 1990). 68. Kim, Bark+ Grass: Revolution Supper, No. 2 (Chicago: Positive Press, [1990s?]). 69. Liz Defiance, Pain Pills for Bleeding Hearts (Phoenix, AZ: self-published, n.d.). 70. Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book (New York: Pirate Editions, 1971). 71. Evasion (Atlanta: CrimetInc., 2001), 65. 72. Sy Loady, Cooking with Surplus ’n’ Excess: Featuring Recipes for Large Hauls of One Item, Gov’t Distro Food, Hiding Wierd Stuff in Other Food ([San Francisco, CA: Sy Loady], 2005). 73. See Lori Sandler, The Divvies Bakery Cookbook: No Nuts, No Eggs, No Dairy, Just Delicious! (New York: St. Martin’s, 2010); and Lorna J. Sass and Jonelle Weaver, The New Vegan Cookbook: Innovative Vegetarian Recipes Free of Dairy, Eggs, and Cholesterol (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001). 74. Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer, How It All Vegan! (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp, 1999).

Meeting the Modernistic Tide the book as evangelical battleground in the 1940s Daniel Vaca

Addressing the annual convention of the National Association of Evangelicals

in 1946, Wilbur M. Smith shared some bad news. Then a Bible professor at Moody Bible Institute, the flagship training ground for fundamentalist Protestant ministers and missionaries, Smith (1894–1977) lamented that a “wave of souldestroying, agnostic, God-denying books and periodicals” had saturated American culture. He and his listeners lived in an age, Smith explained, “when the Army distributes such a book as Bruce Barton’s The Book Nobody Knows; when Harry Emerson Fosdick’s columns have a phenomenal sale within two months of publication . . . ; when most of the official religious lists of books put out by the various national library associations, reading clubs, etc., are made up for the most part of modernistic titles; when our religious book stores are advertising and hanging up for display charts supposedly sketching the development of religion from the earliest times, and show our faith to be ultimately descended from the mythological conceptions of savages.” Taken together, the production and circulation of modernistic books “deceive many people into thinking they are reading something that is religious truth.”1 Even more worrying, conventional tactics could not solve the problem. Smith cautioned against repeating “what many people think is such a smart statement, but is really a dangerously erroneous one, that all we need to do is to put the Bible in the hands of men and women, and it will suffice.” Like most fundamentalists, Smith remained confident that the Bible possessed answers to 137

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every theological question; but he had become convinced that modernistic authors, publishers, and publications increasingly misrepresented the Bible’s teachings, thereby preventing ordinary Americans from discovering the Bible’s truths for themselves. To listeners who insisted upon attacking modernism with nothing more than a Bible-only strategy, Smith inveighed, “the Bible is in the hands of thousands of people today who are lying about it.”2 Yet Smith offered good news alongside the bad. Together, he suggested, evangelicals could beat back the wave of modernistic books by producing their own. “It is time,” Smith insisted, “that we begin the production of some literature that can powerfully and triumphantly, let us pray God, meet this mounting tide of faith-destroying literature.” Smith announced that “it is our business not only to begin to produce this type of literature, but to advertise it, talk about it, circulate it, and introduce it into schools where nothing but destructive literature is now known, until these enemies of the cross are provoked to anger, until they are forced to give a reason for their own unbelief, and are faced in class, and on the campus, in literary periodicals.” As Smith’s address suggests, the late 1940s saw evangelical leaders come to treat the production, circulation, and consumption of books as practices of protest. This print protest crystalized concerns that had inspired the new evangelical movement itself, which Smith and other fundamentalist leaders had drawn together during the first half of the 1940s with the goal of challenging what they perceived as liberal Protestantism’s cultural hegemony.3 Books became objects of protest not only because they symbolized the battle of ideas that evangelical leaders hoped to win but also because evangelicals drew inspiration and took tactical cues from the same liberal culture that they hoped to undermine. Having achieved a high cultural profile during World War II, liberal book culture became an object of attack. But organizational initiative alone could not meet the modernistic tide. Just as liberal book initiatives achieved influence through the cooperative efforts of liberal Protestant leaders and prominent publishing executives, evangelical leaders solicited support from entrepreneurial evangelicals, who expanded and initiated an array of publishing and bookselling initiatives. In this way, a new evangelical book industry not only emerged out of print protest but also became the means of pursuing it.4 This chapter explores both the emergence of the evangelical book industry as well as the liberal Protestant book initiatives that inspired evangelicals to protest through print. By recognizing that books are commodities that circulate through commercial pathways, this story challenges social movement scholarship that rarely situates protest within commercial contexts. As this story suggests, these contexts deserve attention for the ways that they orient how social movements pursue their political objectives, cultivate collective identities, and generate social publics after waves of protest recede.5

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The Spirit of Protest The year 1946 seemed like an ideal time to launch a campaign of print protest. Part of that timing involved the logistics of book publishing. During World War II, for example, publishers had coped with wartime paper rationing partly by devoting their limited paper supplies to printing books with proven sales potential. When the end of the war brought paper rationing to an end, publishers, authors, and readers found themselves eager to capitalize upon renewed printing capacities by publishing and purchasing new titles. Meanwhile, print increasingly seemed the most reliable media technology. Although radio, for example, had become a popular medium during the 1930s, the arrival of frequency modulation and television led some of radio’s advocates to worry about the wisdom of investing too heavily in a volatile medium.6 But the principal impetus behind the evangelical book campaign involved new institutional capabilities and provocations. Over the course of the 1930s, some conservative Protestant leaders had grown increasingly frustrated with the way that disagreements over theological and social principles often kept conservatives from cooperating in pursuit of shared objectives. A few years before Smith’s 1946 address, these frustrations inspired an institutional response, when Smith and a handful of other fundamentalist leaders founded the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) as a medium of united action among fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants.7 The association’s founders used the “evangelical” label partly because they hoped to conjure the spirit of Protestantism in the nineteenth century, a time when Protestants often used that label to describe Protestant identity that transcended denominational division and dominated American culture. But an “evangelical” designation also appealed because few denominations used it. Derived from the Greek word for gospel, the term avoided divisive sectarian connotations while gesturing toward the biblical orientation that evangelicals saw as the principal distinction between their strain of Christianity and that of liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics. The NAE had taken the Federal Council of Churches as its prototype. Founded in 1908 in the spirit of ecumenical cooperation, the Federal Council always had drawn the suspicion of conservative Protestants. But that suspicion had transformed into outright hostility in the late 1920s, when the Federal Council began urging radio’s national networks neither to give nor to sell airtime to broadcasters whose messages the council deemed sectarian in appeal. The leading radio networks generally had followed the council’s advice.8 Objecting both to the Federal Council’s advice and to radio networks’ acceptance of it, the Boston-based minister Harold Ockenga—who would become the NAE’s first president—remarked in 1940 that the collusion of the council and the main radio networks had ensured that a “large group of religious minded people are not being represented upon the air. These people are

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Protestants whose opinions are not represented by The Federal Council of Churches.”9 Writing to the head of NBC, Ockenga complained that “NBC extends a monopoly of religious broadcasting time to the Federal Council for Protestants.” As a solution to the impasse, Ockenga suggested that NBC’s policy “should be modified so as to include Protestants of a different opinion from the liberal Federal Council. A representative organization of this second group could easily be formed.”10 And the idea of forming a representative organization ultimately blossomed into the founding of the NAE. Although the NAE’s institutional authority and capabilities remained embryonic in 1946, the group gave organizational form to a social movement that previously lacked a center. In this way, it helped its organizers to articulate their goals and to develop strategies for pursuing them.11 In his 1946 call to arms, for example, Wilbur Smith testified to the organization’s value, insisting that the NAE presented organizational resources that made a campaign of print protest possible. “An evangelical Christian church,” Smith explained, “can do it.” We can search out the very best men available in this country, and across the water, lay the opportunity and privilege and necessity of such works as these upon their souls, aid in underwriting the cost of such compositions, and pray that God will give them the wisdom and facility of expression by which from their pens may come pages, and chapters, and books, that will stir our indifferent laodicean age, and make young men and women realize once again that Jesus of Nazareth is none other than the only begotten Son of God.12

To be sure, books neither inspired the NAE’s founders to adopt organizational form nor determined that organization’s form. Radio possessed greater causal claim, in that conservatives’ desire to secure greater airwave access not only led them to organize but also inspired them to model their organization on the institutions that they saw as the gatekeepers of radio access and liberal Protestant power. But if radio policy had inspired evangelicals to begin creating their own counterparts to liberal institutions, other liberal initiatives soon would become targets of this new institutional strategy. In the middle of the 1940s, Smith and his colleagues would identify books as a target of urgent concern. The Modernistic Wave From Harry Emerson Fosdick’s columns to the US Army’s book selections to libraries’ booklists, Wilbur Smith found modernistic material everywhere. And his anxieties reflected more than conspiratorial imagination. During the 1940s, liberal Protestant leaders and American book executives presented books as weapons in the fight against fascism and the gateway toward a more tolerant American future. Insofar as liberal book initiatives cast the buying and reading

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of liberal religious books as a cultural imperative, a survey of some of those initiatives helps explain why and how evangelicals turned toward print protest.13 Liberal book initiatives began in the 1920s. Matthew S. Hedstrom explains that Protestant leaders and book publishing executives collaborated in pursuit of “increased sales, cultural redemption, and spiritual revitalization.” To this end, they married “cutting-edge business practices with a liberal religious outlook.” Through this alliance, they hoped not only to build new book markets but also to strengthen the spiritual lives of middle-class Americans struggling to navigate their culture’s shifting intellectual and social terrain. Encapsulating this alliance was Religious Book Week, an initiative held March 13–20, 1921, which saw the New York publishing world turn its marketing expertise toward building a coordinated national campaign around what Hedstrom describes as “a simple message about modern books and a modernized faith.” Focused not just on promoting books but especially on cultivating the right kind of readers, the spirit of Religious Book Week ultimately inspired such initiatives as the Religious Book Club (founded in 1927).14 Using the Book-of-the-Month Club (1926) as its organizational model, the Religious Book Club focused its offerings especially on books that explored religion’s relationship with psychology and science.15 Both the publishing industry and its religious reading initiatives lost momentum during the Depression years, when the imperative of financial survival led publishers to rein in their ambitions. At the same time, however, the Depression also streamlined publishers’ booklists and book stocks, as publishers cut title production in the hope of having their supply suit more-limited demands. This ultimately helped clear the way for the industry’s reinvigoration during the 1940s. During World War II, publishers discovered opportunities for marketing and outreach that previously had eluded them. Despite their best efforts, even leading publishers previously had encountered logistical and financial difficulties in their attempts to build a national book industry. Centered in New York City, the industry had just a handful of minor outposts throughout the United States. Part of the problem was that American men often perceived book-related endeavors like teaching and librarianship as little more than effeminate hobbies; as a result, the book industry’s nonprofessional participants almost all were women. But the advent of World War II created a mandate for the industry’s expansion.16 Operating under the motto “Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas,” the Council on Books in Wartime became one engine of that expansion. Founded in February 1942 by a collection of New York publishers, the council not only promoted books and reading but also produced Armed Services Editions of 1,322 titles. Altogether, the council coordinated the production and distribution of almost 123 million paperback books. By circulating free books among

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members of the armed services, the council’s members hoped, the recipients of their books might ultimately become dedicated readers and—upon returning home—dedicated customers.17 One of the council’s most prominent organs was its Religious Book Committee. This committee organized the distribution of the kinds of books that worried Wilbur Smith—including Bruce Barton’s The Book Nobody Knows, which Smith had singled out. “Religious books are being bought and read in astounding numbers,” Chairman Pat Beaird explained to the New York Times in 1943; “a trend in this direction is expected in a democracy where religious freedom is considered worth fighting for.” With their fathers’ World War I experience in mind, Beaird explained, however, that young soldiers at the time “do not discount the dangers ahead. They are more realistic than their fathers of the first world war, give more thought to religion and are asking for and receiving more religious books.” Beaird was right to suggest that soldiers were receiving large numbers of books. The armed services solicited books from publishers as a way to provide soldiers with leisure activities. But the council emphasized books’ power for cultural and religious uplift both on the battlefield and on the home front.18 Beaird reported that back in the United States “books to strengthen personal faith are the vogue, as with the boys in the service.” The most popular books reportedly were “not generally found in libraries” but rather “designed to be read in small doses, usually in quiet moments at home, during the lunch hour, or while commuting.” In Beaird’s view, “religious books are becoming recognized as important to a sustained total war effort. The Council on Books in Wartime, aided by a publishing industry eager to assist in prosecuting the war and maintaining morale, has given this recognition.”19 Working in tandem with the council and its Religious Book Committee was the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), an interfaith group founded in 1927 that encouraged Americans to see the idea of Judeo-Christianity as the cornerstone of American democracy. The NCCJ was the cooperative effort of Jewish leaders and such liberal Protestant leaders as Harry Emerson Fosdick and Samuel McCrea Cavert. These same Protestant leaders had helped found the Religious Book Club.20 Between 1943 and 1948, the NCCJ annually organized Religious Book Weeks, which drew inspiration both from the Religious Book Weeks of the 1920s and from a similar initiative held in Boston in 1942. The first NCCJ Religious Book Week kicked off on March 28, 1943, with a fifteen-minute broadcast over the NBC radio network. At the opening gala event for the 1943 Religious Book Week, Henry Seidel Canby served as master of ceremonies. Canby personified the spirit that guided Religious Book Week and related initiatives. In addition to serving as an adviser to the Council on Books in Wartime, Canby served the Book-of-the-Month Club as chairman of its book selection

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committee and, unofficially, as its most influential figure from 1926 until his retirement in 1956.21 Premised on the notion that American democracy and a future without fascism demanded religious tolerance and spiritual vitality, Religious Book Week focused not just on encouraging good books but on cultivating forwardthinking faith. To that end, it produced lists of books that it endorsed, and it disseminated those lists through a variety of outlets. The NCCJ printed the complete list in pamphlet form and distributed it to more than six thousand libraries throughout the United States. But the list also appeared in radio spots and in national newspapers. Occupying four broadsheet pages, for example, in the Sunday, March 28, 1943, issue of the New York Times, the first Religious Book Week list appeared under the headline “Works of Permanent Value Selected for Religious Book Week.” This list presented books in four categories: the Jewish List, the Catholic List, the Protestant List, and the Good-Will List. These categories allowed Jews, Catholics, and Protestants to discover books that both addressed the devotional or theological concerns of their own traditions and approached those concerns with a common spirit of openness and inclusivity. The Good-Will List enshrined that spirit. Signaling the importance that the leaders of Religious Book Week gave to the Good-Will List, they placed it before the other lists and intended for members of all traditions to read its books. The Good-Will List offered works of both nonfiction and fiction, all of which attempted to cultivate understanding of and appreciation for each other’s traditions. With German crimes against Jews seemingly in mind, several books attempted to historicize and condemn anti-Semitism. In Jacques Maritain’s A Christian Looks at the Jewish Question, for instance, the list suggested that “a famous Catholic writer condemns anti-Semitism as un-Christian”; Louis Golding’s The Jewish Problem promised to explain “anti-Semitism, its causes, nature and manifestations”; and Cecil Roth’s The Jewish Contribution to Civilization chronicled exactly what its title described. Other books focused on emphasizing how members of each tradition faced shared social problems and pursued shared objectives. Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, for example, offered readers “the story of a parish priest and his beneficent influence on the community,” and B. Y. Landis’s Religion and the Good Society presented “parallel statements about society from Protestant, Catholic and Jewish sources.”22 Throughout the 1940s, the profile of Religious Book Week rose steadily; leaders of government, unions, and culture all lined up behind the notion that a tolerant form of religious life lay at the heart of the American way. One member of Congress, for instance, spoke about the initiative from the floor of the House in 1944. In 1947, the Library of Congress produced a complementary exhibit. The chaplain of the War Department had Religious Book Week materials sent to outposts overseas and to Veterans Administration hospitals, while such

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unions as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union distributed materials to its chapters. To be sure, organizations other than the NCCJ also created booklists.23 Beginning in the 1920s, for instance, American Catholic leaders publicized lists of recommended books, and those lists appeared regularly in prominent newspapers. But Catholic booklists prescribed relatively few religious books. Emerging out of Catholic leaders’ desire to help American Catholics develop consumer tastes that complemented the ethical and moral principles of American pluralism, Catholic booklists endorsed works from such varied genres as fiction, history, biography, and travel. By comparison, the NCCJ’s lists not only claimed an expansive cultural mandate but also propagated liberal religious inclinations more directly.24 If sales figures are any indication, liberal book initiatives were effective. Between 1935 and 1945, religious books rose from 4.7 percent to 9.9 percent of all book sales. “When American booksellers added up their sales figures for the year 1949,” Eugene Exman, the head of Harper and Brothers’ religious-book department reported in 1953, “they discovered that four out of the five bestselling titles of non-fiction . . . were religious titles.”25 But another measure of influence proves just as compelling as sales figures: the ire of fundamentalist and self-avowed evangelical Protestants. Evangelicals like Smith became convinced that liberal book initiatives represented a threat to the future of the United States and its Christian culture. Like liberal religious leaders and book publishers, evangelicals would come to see books as weapons in the war of ideas. For evangelicals, however, the war was domestic. Promoting Protest Perceiving liberal book campaigns as a threat, fundamentalists and evangelicals identified two strategies of response. The traditional fundamentalist response centered less on engagement than on criticism. A fundamentalist named Charles Lamb, for instance, wryly suggested that not even God himself could leech spiritual benefit from liberal books. Even though Lamb urged Christians to “ask God’s blessing on our reading by always praying beforehand,” he joked that “saying grace over a meal of poisonous mushrooms wouldn’t make them edible.” He therefore insisted that Christians “should read only those books that will contribute to our betterment and growth.” Lamb concluded that “the dearth of good reading in America today is one of the most lamentable conditions of our society.”26 In contrast to this approach of criticism, the activist spirit of the new evangelical movement led the NAE’s leaders to insist that evangelicals should focus not merely on avoiding contemptible books but rather on creating evangelical counterparts. Meeting in Evanston, Illinois, from September 19–20, 1944, the

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NAE’s Board of Administration began their turn toward books in a conciliatory style. The board voted to establish “a supplementary service to the American Library Association (ALA), providing them with a list of outstanding evangelical books and periodicals each year.” Amending this initial motion, a second motion determined “that the N.A.E. request representation on the committee of the A.L.A. which makes up the list of religious books, and that they be requested to appoint someone to the committee of the N.A.E.”27 Failing to receive representation on the ALA’s booklist committee, evangelical leaders set out to produce a list of their own. Toward that end, they sought the assistance of book publishers. As early as January 1945, Leslie R. Marston—a Free Methodist bishop from Greenville, Illinois—began sending letters to publishers with information about a new initiative. “The National Association of Evangelicals is setting up an Evangelical Book Committee,” the form letter began, “to select each year’s outstanding books which are evangelical in religious viewpoint and literary in quality. This list is intended to supplement the American Library Association’s general list of outstanding religious books, and it is hoped will serve Christian America as a guide to the best in current evangelical thought.” Assuring publishers that “the committee of course will have no publication connections or commercial interest in the books selected, for we are attempting no ‘book-of-the-month’ or similar project on a profit basis,” the letter explained that “the Evangelical Book List will be made available to librarians, Christian publications, book dealers, and in general the religious reading public.”28 Initially, the selection process proved opaque. The invitation letter explained that “lists of cooperating publishers will not be announced, nor will the committee discriminate against books of general publishers, nor against general religious publishers in favor of definitely evangelical publishers.” The letter insisted that “books as literary presentations of evangelical thought will be judged rather than publishers or their denominational or doctrinal affiliations.” Yet books would be judged only after passing the “preliminary examination” of the committee’s secretary, who then would pass acceptable books on to three anonymous readers.29 As the invitation letter explained, the committee planned not just to present a list of “outstanding evangelical books” but also to prepare “another list of books not necessarily evangelical but of striking evangelical significance.” The invitation asked publishers to submit books for both lists.30 Marston later explained that the latter list would contain “outstanding books of significance which are a ‘must’ for evangelicals to read.”31 A little over a month after sending out the invitation letters, Marston reported that “these publishers are not waiting for further details regarding the organization of the committee but are already sending books.” Marston took this interest as a sign that “this is a ripe opportunity and that we should proceed

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quickly with the matter of organization.” He accordingly made the selection procedure slightly clearer, explaining that the committee’s secretary would receive readers’ reports and determine which books should appear on “the list of outstanding books for the year.” The NAE’s magazine United Evangelical Action (UEA) announced the launch of the Evangelical Book Project in April 1945, and the first NAE booklist appeared on June 15. While the list would span multiple pages in subsequent years, the first list occupied just one. Starting in 1946, UEA began dedicating an entire issue to books, with its “Annual Book Number.” By 1950, these book numbers appeared in both the fall and spring. Every year’s list contained two separate categories: “Evangelical in Sentiment” and “Not Evangelical in Sentiment.” While the former list highlighted evangelicals’ position of protest, the latter list served as a way of measuring their campaign’s effectiveness. In March 1945, before the first list appeared, the NAE’s executive committee appointed Carl F. H. Henry as secretary of the Evangelical Book Committee.32 In 1947, both Henry’s title and the name of the committee received an upgrade, with Henry using the more impressive “Chairman of the NAE Book Commission.” Henry cut a sharp contrast with Leslie Marston, who was a regular speaker on the revival circuit and an authority on methods of evangelism. Marston’s understanding of books and print reflected his revivalist orientation. For Marston, print served above all as a tool of proselytization. After passing on oversight of the Evangelical Book List to Henry, Marston became the leader of the NAE’s newly organized Publications Committee, which emphasized sharing “the world view of the Christian mission.”33 By comparison with Marston, Henry styled himself not as an evangelist but rather as an intellectual and activist. In addition to serving as secretary of the Book Committee, he served as literary editor of United Evangelical Action, was professor of philosophy of religion at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, and would become a founding professor and dean at Fuller Theological Seminary. In the 1960s, he would serve as the first editor in chief of the flagship magazine Christianity Today.34 For Henry, as for Wilbur Smith, books served less as instruments of conversion than as means by which evangelicals could and should strengthen their minds, deepen their convictions, and gird their religious identities. Only in this way, they insisted, could Christians evangelize effectively. This emphasis on ideology lay at the heart of the evangelicalism that many of the NAE founders envisioned.35 Through cooperation, they believed, evangelicals could achieve more as the sum of their institutional parts; but they could do so only by securing and revitalizing their doctrinal defenses. This ideological impulse had inspired initiatives beyond books. In the middle of 1946, for example, the NAE founders began recruiting faculty for a new seminary. Whereas the fundamentalist paradigm of Bible institutes had emphasized

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relatively narrow Bible training, the new seminary’s advocates hoped that their new institution might herald a dynamic approach to conservative theology, not only invigorating those whom the seminary trained but also spilling over to congregations and laypeople. Located in Pasadena, California, the seminary became known as Fuller Theological Seminary. Wilbur Smith would leave Moody Bible Institute to become one of its first faculty members, and Carl Henry would join him there. Initially reluctant to leave Moody, Smith had decided by the spring of 1947 that “we greatly need an outstanding interdenominational seminary of high scholastic standing for the training of young men with gifts in the preaching and defense of Christian faith.”36 Upon his hire, Smith immediately had set about buying books to stock the new seminary’s library. In an article introducing the first Evangelical Book List in June 1945, Carl Henry laid out his vision for the list’s future. He predicted that “as the annual project gains momentum, it will accomplish several important ends.” The list would: (1) encourage wider reading of significant books by evangelicals generally; (2) stimulate the publication of a higher quality of evangelical literature by evangelical publishing houses; (3) remind secular publishing houses of the vast demand for evangelical publications which is now largely overlooked; (4) remind evangelical leaders of the rather meager quality of thought, doctrinally conservative, that attempts to make historic Christianity relevant to peculiar contemporary problems; (5) provide a comparison and contrast between the spear-head interests of most books evangelical and not evangelical in sentiment.37

As many of these goals suggest, Henry considered the NAE’s list of books “not evangelical in sentiment” just as important as the list of evangelical books. In an italicized, parenthetical description of the “not evangelical” list that appeared in booklists throughout the 1940s, Henry explained that “the volumes listed below as not evangelical are so designated either because (1) they are doctrinally inarticulate, obscuring their evangelical loyalties; or (2) they clearly reflect various degrees of departure from evangelicalism, yet represent a viewpoint or achievement with which evangelicals should be familiar; or (3) they are compilations of representative viewpoints and hence necessarily are not exclusively evangelical.”38 Henry saw non-evangelical books as a means of educating evangelicals and challenging them to engage the issues most relevant to an outward-facing Christian faith. To drive home this point, Henry regularly described non-evangelical books not merely as equally important but even as superior to evangelical books. “The plain fact is that, by and large, non-evangelical thought continues to speak definitely in numerous crisis areas because no orthodox treatment appears,”

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Henry complained. “Too frequently,” he continued, evangelicals had relied upon books that have taught them “to detect the weakness of a position which the modern mind itself had abandoned, or seriously modified.”39 Even when Henry praised evangelical books, he sometimes offered that praise as backhanded criticism. In 1947, for instance, he described the list of evangelical books as “by far the strongest, taken as a whole, which has yet represented the evangelical camp.” But he meanwhile insisted that evangelical books continued to lag behind nonevangelical books, by most measures of quality. “A comparison of the two lists discloses that while the evangelical viewpoint may have a stronger representation than in recent years,” Henry explained, “nonetheless its volumes, however much truer their perspective, do not measure up by and large to the vigor of the non-evangelical treatments.”40 As late as 1950, Henry continued to cast evangelical books in a negative light, but he admitted their improvement. “The evangelical volumes reflect a considerable merit,” Henry explained, “although in the main they do not yet grapple with current theological and cultural problem centers with a life-ordeath interest. But even a casual glance at the list indicates that it is no longer true, as might have been said not too many years ago, that the evangelicals are permitting other thinkers exclusively to define the issues and problems which theology must face in our times.”41 Alongside his criticism of evangelical books, Henry disparaged what he saw as the cause of their inferiority. In his view, one of the primary impediments to evangelicalism’s intellectual advance was the widespread practice of reprinting. During the 1930s, such conservative Protestant publishing firms as William B. Eerdmans Company had found commercial success by reprinting titles that had passed out of print and out of copyright. Many reprints were nineteenthcentury British works that had become theological classics. Due both to chronological and geographic distance from their original publication, many of these classics had become rare in the United States. Savvy publishers therefore could profit tremendously by acquiring printing plates and selling fresh copies to American conservatives eager to avoid the high prices for rare imported editions. Reprinting out-of-copyright books became particularly helpful during the Depression, when money saved by avoiding royalty payments helped publishers subsist on small profits, which had fallen as publishers dropped prices to foster consumer demand.42 Before the evangelical turn of the 1940s toward ecumenism among conservatives, fundamentalists often emphasized theological distinctions and defensiveness in a way that treated older theology as better theology. As a result, fundamentalists provided a ready market for reprints. Looking back on the 1930s in a 1957 profile, William Eerdmans Sr. would remark that he became a “major publisher” only when he “acquired more standard sets of books than any other publisher in the United States—standards which are used in

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seminaries and Bible schools of all denominations.”43 Testifying to reprinting’s profitability, a variety of firms mimicked Eerdmans’s practice during the 1930s and 1940s. By the end of the 1940s, this reprinting practice had become so pervasive that Carl Henry spoke out against it. “A word must also be said about the reissuance of choice evangelical volumes which have been long out of print,” Henry remarked, “a program for which the William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company especially provided impetus.” Offering a measure of praise for these “restorations,” Henry noted that Eerdmans’s The Pulpit Commentary had received a place on the 1950 Evangelical Book List. He highlighted its scale, explaining that it would “require fifteen solid carloads of paper and will occupy the largest offset press in the country for more than six months.”44 But after remarking that “many of the restorations have done a substantial service to the evangelical cause,” Henry suggested that they had proven valuable mostly by “confronting liberalism with a solid perspective with which it has never ably grappled.” Henry argued that “lacking contemporary volumes of similar merit, the evangelical movement has had to step into the gap with older classics, tried and true, but which had disappeared from the markets because liberalism had no interest in them. But at most this is a delaying action which if not paralleled by contemporary evangelical effort, will result only in embarrassment to the evangelical cause.” The year after beginning this line of criticism, Henry intensified it, lamenting that “the republication of last-century books has taken hold” largely because publishing firms “with deep roots in the evangelical past” have capitalized on “an opportunity to reissue volumes on which a publisher’s royalty need no longer be paid.” Acknowledging that such books retain “an apologetic value . . . until a competent contemporary literature arises to take its place,” Henry pointed out that “last-generation and even lastcentury material” should not receive priority when “rather acceptable substitute volumes are available.”45 Henry would elaborate upon the relationship between theology, books, and the future of evangelicalism in his The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Published in 1947 by Eerdmans, the book lamented that fundamentalism and evangelicalism (terms Henry used interchangeably) had become “divorced from the great social reform movements.” This had occurred, Henry complained, not only because modernists had become leaders of those movements but also because fundamentalists had become convinced that supporting those movements would effectively endorse the “non-Biblical formula” upon which modernists had based their “world-changing efforts.” To be sure, Henry insisted, fundamentalists had been right in opposing modernism, with its “shallow insis­ t­ence on inevitable world progress and on man’s essential goodness.” But he lamented that fundamentalist disengagement had ensured that “the liberal goes scot free in a forest of weasel words.”46

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Insisting that fundamentalists could ground social engagement on conservative theological principles, Henry pointed out that fundamentalists had failed to remain committed to social reform because they too often had backed themselves into theological corners, compelling themselves to take up positions “so extreme that only a mental incompetent would subscribe to it.” He complained that fundamentalists had “needlessly invited criticism and even ridicule, by a tendency in some quarters to parade secondary and sometimes even obscure aspects of our position as necessary frontal phases of our view.” (Henry sometimes called this phenomenon “fundamentalist phariseeism.”)47 In order to address fundamentalism’s social shortcomings, fundamentalists needed to address their theological limitations. One of the best ways to do this, Henry explained, was to develop “competent literature in every field of study” and, with that literature in mind, “project a solution for the most pressing world problems.”48 To be sure, centuries of Christians had insisted that sanctified ideas could and should translate into righteous action. The difference here, however, was that Henry positioned books not only as the carriers of these ideas but also as the foundation for action and collective mobilization. Commercializing Protest However much evangelical leaders promoted print protest, they required assistance to produce it. Wilbur Smith and Carl Henry may have admired books, but they neither published nor distributed them. Their vision for evangelical books accordingly required support from publishers and booksellers. With Henry and other leaders sanctioning evangelical books as gateways to the Christian future, publishers realized they had encountered an unprecedented opportunity, and they seized it. They fashioned business strategies in its service. One strategy was the creation of various book contests and awards. Publishers launched awards both for fiction and for nonfiction, often with prizes of thousands of dollars. “The Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,” an August 1946 Eerdmans advertisement trumpeted, “announces an Evangelical Book Award which will be given to the author of a book in the field of Evangelical Christianity. . . . Long a leader among evangelical publishers, Eerdmans is seeking to encourage writers, both old and new, to produce volumes which will make a real contribution to the field.” In the contest rules, the company explained that “with the exception of fiction, all unpublished manuscripts in accord with the spirit and great doctrines of Evangelical Christianity are eligible for the award. Writers should be positively and constructively Christian in their approach.”49 The submission deadline for Eerdmans’s award was September 1, 1947; in February 1948, the firm would announce that Edward J. Carnell won the $5,000 prize with his An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, which an Eerdmans

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press release reported “was planned and written in response” to the award advertisement. Originally entitled The Logic of Conservative Christianity, Carnell’s book insisted that empirical conditions of existence could verify the consistency of theological convictions. Carl Henry wrote the book’s foreword, explaining that “‘few things are as promising for the future of conservative Christianity as the vigorous apologetic mood among the younger evangelicals, among whom Prof. Carnell stands as an able and effective representative.”50 Largely on the strength of such sentiment, Charles E. Fuller would invite Carnell to join Henry as a member of Fuller Seminary’s faculty in 1948.51 Alongside this Evangelical Book Award, Eerdmans launched a fiction award. The company announced the fiction award in February 1946, several months before announcing the Evangelical Book Award. Setting the prize at $5,000, Eerdmans solicited the novel “most successfully depicting Christian faith and Christian living.” Advertising the contest in such prominent conservative periodicals as Moody Monthly, King’s Business, and the Christian Herald, Eerdmans explained that “on the whole, Christian fiction has fallen far short of the literary standards established and maintained in the secular fields.” Noting agreement with a recent Moody Monthly article that made precisely this point, Eerdmans set out to “raise the art of the Christian novel to a new and acceptable level.”52 In a mailing for the contest, Eerdmans printed extracts from a recent article in The Presbyterian Guardian by Robert Atwell, of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Westfield, New Jersey. In his article-cum-advertisement, Atwell attributed “the dearth of good Christian fiction” to three factors. “First, is the anti-intellectualism of our day which has put its stamp so emphatically on our current ‘Christianity.’ Second, even in fundamentalist circles, there is a povertystricken conception of Christianity which surrenders the whole realm of nature to the world in the mistaken conviction that it is Satan’s domain. Third, Christians have mistakenly adopted a defeatist attitude.” Atwell explained that this attitude led evangelicals to accept that if books “present the true Gospel of Christ,” then they “would not be a best-seller.” As counterexamples, Atwell cited the Bible, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Ben-Hur, and the case of William Shakespeare, whose prose drew upon biblical language but “suffers not a whit in popularity from Biblical quotation and from large elements of Christian morality.” In conclusion, Atwell shared that “literature, including good fiction, is an instrument both for grounding the faith and nourishing the zeal of the Christian and for presenting the gospel truth to the non-Christian. Let us then claim it for our God.”53 To be sure, Eerdmans had not invented the idea of book contests. “If Doubleday Doran will award a $20,000 prize to Elizabeth M. Howard for her corrupt and corrupting Before the Sun Goes Down,” Atwell insisted, “it is high time for Christian publishers to offer greater incentives for Christian novels.” Both

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Eerdmans and other firms accordingly pitched their contests in explicit opposition to mainstream counterparts and books like Elizabeth Howard’s, which the Washington Post described as a “teeming novel of small town life” that “delight[s] in slapping on sex with a trowel.”54 In April 1945, Moody Press—the publishing wing of Moody Bible Institute—launched a writing contest with $1,000 for first prize, $750 for second, and $250 for third. Noting that prizes would be offered in addition to royalties, Moody’s contest rules explained that “new high grade fiction would be a blessing to youth in an age which has been particularly hard on its young people.”55 Highlighting Moody Press’s distinguished fiction contest, Eerdmans’s fiction contest, Abingdon-Cokesbury’s prose contest ($7,500), and a rumored Zondervan contest in his 1946 comments on the second annual booklist, Carl Henry explained that these and other competitions would enable writers to “present the thrust of the gospel with greater literary power.” Henry supposed that “if evangelicals can speak anew, they will speak more creatively in the present hour of indecision than may again be their opportunity for many decades.” Above all, book contests demonstrated that “the modern mind is being remade.”56 Although book contests publicly took comments like Henry’s as their official operating logic, they also emerged out of a desire for sales. The genius of book contests was that they operated in two registers. On the one hand, they provided a way to encourage people to write or submit good manuscripts. On the promise of cash and status, authors would write and submit manuscripts that they might not otherwise. Perhaps more important than their ability to solicit books, however, was that book contests appealed to firms because they generated sales. The contest was essentially a marketing campaign wrapped in the language of Christian service. Every time a publisher selected a contest winner, the firm initiated a publicity campaign that touted both the book and the interest it had generated. In January 1950, for example, the evangelical firm Zondervan Publishing House announced in such periodicals as United Evangelical Action that it had chosen Sallie Lee Bell’s Until the Day Break as the second winner of its International Christian Fiction Contest. A housewife from New Orleans, Bell received a $2,000 prize for her novel, a tale of romance in the time of Jesus that included appearances from such characters as John the Baptist and Herodias, the wife of the tetrarch of Galilee. Zondervan noted that Bell’s book had been “selected as the book of the month choice by the Family Book Club of the Doubleday and Company, New York City,” and that it had sold more than 75,000 copies in its first edition. Such sales temporarily made it the bestselling title in Zondervan’s history.57 The sales expectations of book contests became sufficiently high that authors occasionally felt guilty when their books did not meet sales expectations. In 1948, for example, Edward Carnell felt the need to apologize to his publisher for his book’s low sales. “Doubtless Mr. Eerdmans is disappointed,” Carnell

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wrote to an Eerdmans editor, “that my Introduction is such a shameful piece of work from the point of view of sales, in comparison with Root out of Dry Ground.” But Carnell touted the book’s quality, noting that “the only consolation I have is that the Introduction is of such thorough and penetrating character that it will make up in enjoying immortality for what it lacks as a flashy ‘take’ with the public right now.” Although Carnell’s book gained neither commercial nor theological immortality, testimony to the dramatic rise of evangelical books lies in Carnell’s ability to measure his own success by an ever-rising standard.58 Despite these heightened commercial expectations and capacities, evangelical books did not immediately rank alongside mainstream bestsellers. The 75,000 copies of Sallie Lee Bell’s novel, for example, paled in comparison to Hervey Allen’s Anthony Adverse (1933), which sold more than 600,000 copies in the second half of the 1930s, or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936), which sold several million. But as John Sutherland explains, mainstream books began achieving these sales figures in the twentieth century less because of the books’ content than because the “machine” of book production and distribution established better cooperation between different forms of media, deployed more effective publicity strategies, and developed more sophisticated retailing methods.59 With evangelical leaders inviting entrepreneurs to meet the modernistic tide as effectively as they could, leaders like Wilbur Smith and Carl Henry essentially sanctified the expansion of an evangelical book machine. Once running, that machine became free to run its own course. l Recounting a recent lunch with a distinguished professor in his address to the 1946 NAE convention, Wilbur Smith revealed that his lunch companion had strayed long ago from his Presbyterian faith yet had reached such intellectual heights as “a Ph. D. From Harvard, twice Guggenheim fellow” and a mastery of “the major European languages.” After their lunch the professor had surprised Smith by asking for a book that might give him an understanding of the Bible, a personal knowledge of Christ, and lasting peace in his soul. But Smith drew a blank. “My friends,” Smith asked his audience with frustration, “do you know of something to put in the hands of a man like that today? I am afraid I don’t! But we ought to have something!”60 Had Smith asked the same question a decade later, he could have found suitable books in rapidly proliferating Christian bookstores, read about suitable books in Evangelical Book Lists, or sought out potential books through any number of other evangelical outlets. Does this mean that Smith’s call to arms succeeded? The answer depends upon the measure of success for social movements and protest initiatives. Social movement scholarship conceptualizes both social movements and their outcomes in varying ways; at minimum, however, scholars generally describe

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social movements as “collectivities acting with some degree of organization . . . for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part.”61 Success, meanwhile, lies not just in challenging or defending authority but in generating collective identity in the service of those objectives.62 In the decades after 1946, evangelical identity saturated American Protestantism, and the evangelical book industry helped make it so. One step in this evangelical advance occurred in 1950, when evangelical book advocacy and awareness of commercial opportunity inspired Christian booksellers to organize the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) as an evangelical counterpart to the American Booksellers Association (ABA). Since the turn of the twentieth century, the ABA had served the mainstream book industry by linking bookstores together, by negotiating relationships with publishers, by providing booksellers with marketing materials, and by facilitating the creation of new stores. The CBA set out to offer Christian bookstores comparable services, and Christian bookstores began appearing throughout the United States. By the 1970s, this new distribution potential helped such books as The Living Bible (Tyndale House, 1971) and The Late Great Planet Earth (Zondervan, 1970) to earn a place among that decade’s bestsellers.63 Through this kind of commercial expansion, evangelical books became devotional and ideological lodestones of a rapidly diffusing middle-class evangelical culture.64 Yet if Wilbur Smith would have seen the diffusion of evangelical culture as a kind of success, he might also have lamented that success ultimately abetted a kind of failure. Both Smith and Carl Henry not only had called for the expansion of evangelical book production and distribution but also had demanded that those books adhere to conservative theological principles, maintaining an ideological and instructive cast. This was, in many ways, the very point of turning to books. Although many evangelical books would continue to address that ideological desire, the evangelical book industry would not grow solely on that basis. To the contrary, evangelical books increasingly would become what Zondervan’s company historian describes as “dynamic but less didactic,” a trend that publishers and booksellers pursued in the name of “cultural relevance.”65 Having responded to the rise of liberal religious books by drawing upon its methods of book production and distribution, evangelical publishers and booksellers would continue in subsequent decades to draw upon mainstream methods, such as using market research to identify themes that might appeal to the broadest customer base.66 In the name of protest, Wilbur Smith had called upon evangelicals to meet the modernistic tide by producing a tide of their own. But if evangelical publishers and booksellers had responded by laboring in a spirit of protest, they

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simultaneously have labored in pursuit of profit. To be sure, protest and profit conjoin regularly; as this story suggests, profit-seeking businesses can help mobilize resources on behalf of social movements. But this story also suggests that the pursuit of profit tends to mitigate the oppositions and exclusions that protest requires. Profit undermines protest, just as protest undermines profit. On evangelical battlegrounds no less than others, profit and protest make uneasy allies. Notes 1. Wilbur M. Smith, “The Urgent Need for a New Evangelical Literature,” United Evangelical Action, June 15, 1946, 3–5, 16–18, 20–22; quotations on 4, 20–21. For background on Moody Bible Institute and Wilbur Smith’s career as a fundamentalist and evangelical leader, see George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1987). See also George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2. For more on fundamentalist attitudes toward the Bible, see Peter J. Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 3. On the emergence of the twentieth-century evangelical movement, see Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). In this essay, I conceptualize twentieth-century evangelicalism as a social movement that performed various strategies of protest against existing conditions. This distinction between protest movements and social movements recognizes James M. Jasper’s suggestion that “protest and social movements are not quite the same: there can be individual protest outside of organized movements, and there can be movements (for example, many religious movements) that pursue social change without protesting against existing conditions.” Other sociologists note that social movements “mainly rely upon protest, that is, unconventional forms of political participation.” See James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13, no. 3 (September 1, 1998): 397–424, esp. 397, fn. 2; and Donatella della Porta and Olivier Fillieule, “Policing Social Protest,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah Anne Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, Blackwell Companions to Sociology (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 217–41, esp. 217. 4. Although this chapter presents the twentieth-century evangelical book industry’s institutional networks and objectives as “new,” that industry stands both within and against a long tradition of evangelical print culture. For histories of evangelical print culture in the nineteenth century, see Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789–1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); and David Paul Nord,

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Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). For more on connections between the twentieth century and previous eras, see Daniel Vaca, “Book People: Evangelical Books and the Making of Contemporary Evangelicalism” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012). 5. Ruud Koopmans argues that the terminology of protest “waves” is superior to that of protest “cycles,” in that the former term gestures toward the way in which periods of protest occur in bursts of heightened contention, ultimately abating once the objects and methods of protest realign. This chapter bears out his preference. Ruud Koopmans, “Protest in Time and Space: The Evolution of Waves of Contention,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, ed. David A. Snow, Sarah Anne Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, Blackwell Companions to Sociology (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 19–46. 6. Even Charles E. Fuller, the most well-known evangelical radio broadcaster of the twentieth century’s first half, expressed anxiety about the future of radio. Writing to Wilbur Smith in 1947, Fuller remarked: “Truly none of us has any idea of the power or coverage of radio. Yet with Frequency Modulation and television in the offing I may not be on by next spring, or, if I am on, it may be a greatly reduced schedule for soaring prices interfere with the weekly income and over $40,000 must come in each week to carry on this ministry.” Charles E. Fuller to Wilbur M. Smith, 14 April 1947, Box 40 “Fuller Records,” Folder “Smith, Dr. Wilbur M., 1947,” Harold J. Ockenga Papers and Manuscripts, Ockenga Institute, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA. Hereafter “Ockenga Papers.” For background on Fuller’s popularity as a broadcaster, see Philip Goff, “ ‘We Have Heard the Joyful Sound’: Charles E. Fuller’s Radio Broadcast and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 9, no. 1 ( January 1, 1999): 67–95. 7. Founded in 1942 as the “National Association of Evangelicals for United Action,” the organization abbreviated the name the following year. 8. For more on the radio controversy, see Tona J. Hangen, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Jeffrey K. Hadden, “The Rise and Fall of American Televangelism,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 527 (May 1993): 113–30; and Quentin J. Schultze, “Evangelical Radio and the Rise of the Electronic Church, 1921–1948,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 32 (1988): 289–306. 9. Similarly, the New York Baptist minister and broadcaster William Ward Ayer criticized the government for colluding with the Federal Council. “The government,” Ayer lamented, “gladly does business with the Federal Council as representing Protestantism.” But the Federal Council, Ayer insisted, “does not represent me in many of its programs and pronouncements. . . . There is not an outstanding evangelical speaker broadcasting under the direction of the Federal Council who, without fear or favor, preaches Christ and Him crucified.” A broadcaster himself, Ayer used the radio controversy to prove his point. Complaining that “liberals control the free radio time assigned to Protestants upon two of the great networks,” Ayer warned that they even were “endeavoring to control the religious time upon local stations.” Soon, Ayer worried, conservatives would have no access to radio at all. William Ward Ayer, “Evangelical Christianity Endangered by Its Fragmentized Condition,” in Evangelical Action! A Report of the Organization of the National Association of Evangelicals for United Action, by National Association of Evangelicals (Boston, MA: United Action, 1942), 42–43.

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10. Harold John Ockenga to Lenox R. Lohr, 6 January 1940, Box 2, Folder 6 “Federal Council of Churches,” Ockenga Papers. 11. As Elisabeth S. Clemens explains, “across movements or episodes of mobilization, organizational form appears crucial for movement success.” Elisabeth S. Clemens, “Two Kinds of Stuff: The Current Encounter of Social Movements and Organizations,” in Social Movements and Organization Theory, ed. Gerald F. Davis et al., Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 351–65, esp. 354. 12. Smith, “The Urgent Need for a New Evangelical Literature,” 20–22. Here and elsewhere, emphasis is original to the quotation. 13. See John B. Hench, Books as Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 14. Matthew S. Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27, 49. 15. Erin A. Smith, “The Religious Book Club: Print Culture, Consumerism, and the Spiritual Life of American Protestants between the Wars,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 217–42. 16. Trysh Travis, “Books as Weapons and ‘The Smart Man’s Peace’: The Work of the Council on Books in Wartime,” Princeton University Library Chronicle 60, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 353–99, esp. 361–62. 17. Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion, 126. 18. Travis, “Books as Weapons,” 387. 19. Pat Beaird, “Religious Books and the War,” New York Times, March 28, 1943, book review. 20. Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion, 143–50. 21. “Religious Book Week Opens,” New York Times, March 28, 1943. See also Joan Shelley Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and Janice Radway, A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 22. “Works of Permanent Value Selected for Religious Book Week,” New York Times, March 28, 1943, book review. 23. For a contemporary reflection upon the value of booklists, see Esther Stallmann, “Ruminations on Reading Lists,” Peabody Journal of Education 11, no. 5 (March 1, 1934): 225–32. 24. See, for example, “Catholics List Approved Books,” New York Times, September 20, 1932, 24; “Catholics List Approved Books,” New York Times, March 22, 1941, 13; and “Catholic Book List for Summer Out,” New York Times, July 28, 1945. For a discussion of Catholic leaders’ desire to inculcate lay Catholics with ethical and moral consumer behavior, see Anne Klejment, “ ‘Catholic Digest’ and the Catholic Revival, 1936–1945,” U.S. Catholic Historian 21, no. 3 ( July 1, 2003): 91–93. 25. Eugene Exman, “Reading, Writing, and Religion,” Harper’s Magazine 206, no. 1236 (May 1953): 84. 26. Charles Lamb, “Grace before Books,” Moody Monthly, February 1948, 398. 27. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Administration, N.A.E., North Shore

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Hotel, Evanston, IL, Sept. 19–20,” Box 13, Folder “National Association of Evangelicals, Minutes and Financial Reports, 1944,” Ockenga Papers. 28. Leslie R. Marston to the Cokesbury Press, 25 January 1945, Box 13, Folder “National Association of Evangelicals Correspondence, 1945,” Ockenga Papers. 29. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Administration and Advisory Council, National Association of Evangelicals, May 1, 1945,” Box 13, Folder “National Association of Evangelicals Minutes and Financial Reports 1945,” Ockenga Papers. 30. Marston to the Cokesbury Press. 31. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Administration and Advisory Council, National Association of Evangelicals, May 1, 1945.” 32. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee, National Association of Evangelicals, LaSalle Hotel, Chicago, Ill., March 2, 1945,” Box 13, Folder “National Association of Evangelicals Minutes and Financial Reports 1945,” Ockenga Papers; “Evangelical Book Project Launched,” United Evangelical Action, April 4, 1945, 3. 33. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Administration, Chicago, October 1–2, 1946,” Box 13, Folder “National Association of Evangelicals Minutes and Financial Reports, 1945,” Ockenga Papers. 34. Carl F. H. Henry, “Another Year in Books,” United Evangelical Action, June 15, 1947, 12; Ockenga invited Henry to become professor of theology and dean. Harold J. Ockenga to Carl F. H. Henry, 19 April 1947, Box 40, Folder “Henry, Carl, 1947–1948,” Ockenga Papers. 35. For a history of twentieth-century evangelical intellectual life and debates over ideological authority, see Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 36. Wilbur M. Smith to Harold J. Ockenga, 10 March 1947, Box 40 “Fuller Records,” Folder “Smith, Dr. Wilbur M., 1947,” Ockenga Papers. 37. Carl F. H. Henry, “N.A.E. Book List,” United Evangelical Action, June 15, 1945, 12. 38. Ibid., 14. 39. Carl F. H. Henry, “Literature for Our Time,” United Evangelical Action, June 15, 1946, 14. 40. Henry, “Another Year in Books.” 41. Carl F. H. Henry, “The Year in Books,” United Evangelical Action, March 15, 1950, 9. 42. John William Tebbel, Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 282–84. 43. Rene Cappon, “Forgotten Books Boost Business,” Grand Rapids Press, September 16, 1957. 44. Henry, “The Year in Books.” 45. Carl F. H. Henry, “A Look at the Year in Books,” United Evangelical Action, April 1, 1951, 10. 46. Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1947), 33, 36, 61. 47. Carl F. H. Henry to Harold J. Ockenga, 22 January 1948, Box 40, Folder “Henry, Carl, 1947–1948,” Ockenga Papers. 48. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, 68–70.

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49. “Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,” Christian Life and Times, February 1948. I encountered this press release and subsequent advertisements in a large unpaginated scrapbook that Eerdmans Company maintained in the 1940s. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Archives, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI. 50. Ibid. 51. Rudolph Nelson, The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind: The Case of Edward Carnell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 64–72. 52. From Eerdmans Company scrapbook. 53. Ibid. 54. “Before the Sun Goes Down,” Washington Post, January 27, 1946, S4. 55. Eerdmans Company scrapbook. 56. Henry, “Literature for Our Time.” 57. “Zondervan Announces New Work of Fiction,” United Evangelical Action, January 1, 1950, 14; and James E. Ruark, House of Zondervan, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 56–57. 58. Edward John Carnell to Peter de Visser, 14 December 1948, Folder “Carnell,” William B. Eerdmans Sr. Papers, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Archives, Grand Rapids, MI. 59. John Sutherland, Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 40. 60. Smith, “The Urgent Need for a New Evangelical Literature,” 3–5. 61. David A. Snow, Sarah Anne Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi, “Mapping the Terrain,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Blackwell Companions to Sociology (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 3–16, esp. 11. 62. Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 ( January 1, 2001): 283–305, esp. 284. 63. Chandler B. Grannis, “More Than Merchants: Seventy-Five Years of the ABA,” in Bookselling in America and the World: Some Observations and Recollections in Celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the American Booksellers Association, ed. Charles B. Anderson (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1975), 65–107, esp. 79. For a detailed but concise survey of the ABA’s history and innovations, see both Grannis’s essay and John William Tebbel’s “A Brief History of American Bookselling,” in Bookselling in America and the World, 3–25. 64. For more on books, middle-class evangelical culture, and commerce, see Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Heather Hendershot, Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Amy Johnson Frykholm, Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Jan Blodgett, Protestant Evangelical Literary Culture and Contemporary Society (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997). See also Vaca, “Book People.” 65. Ruark, House of Zondervan, 198. 66. Paul C. Gutjahr, “The Bible-Zine Revolve and the Evolution of the Culturally Relevant Bible in America,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed.

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Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 326–48, esp. 342–44. To be sure, publishers long have attempted to cultivate the broadest customer base by producing books that appealed to diverse palates. In the nineteenth century, for example, nondenominational publishers consciously avoided points of denominational disagreement. In the late twentieth century, however, evangelical publishers increasingly would reach beyond avowed evangelical—or even confessedly Christian—audiences. See Brown, The Word in the World, esp. 61.

Children and the Comics young readers take on the critics Carol L. Tilley The whole argument over comic magazines is very silly and needless. The kids know what they want. They are individuals with minds of their own, and very definite tastes in everything. . . . It is time that society woke up to the fact that children are human beings with opinions of their own, instead of brainless robots to be ordered hither and yon without even so much as asking them their ideas about anything. David Pace Wigransky, Cain before Comics [ letter], Saturday Review of Literature, 24 July 1948, page 20

In the years following the end of World War II, American youth loved all things comics, and sales of comic books boomed. Comic books, originally conceived in the early 1930s as promotional pamphlets that repackaged newspaper comic strips, captured the imaginations of young readers, especially after the introduction of superheroes and other original adventure, humor, and science fiction content in the late 1930s. In fact, surveys of the readership by both marketers and reading researchers found that nearly all children—boys and girls—read comic books regularly. New comic book sales rose tenfold in a little more than a decade, rocketing from 10 million copies monthly in 1940 to nearly 100 million copies monthly by 1954,1 the equivalent of thirty comic books a year sold to every living person in the United States. This pervasive readership spurred 161

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some adults to action, as they feared comics would seduce child readers to lives of illiteracy and violence. For example, literary critic and author Sterling North issued one of the first salvos in the campaign against comics in 1940, warning that comics’ “hypodermic injection of sex and murder” would lead to “a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one.”2 Immediately after the war, comic book publishers sought to hold on to more mature readers, so they expanded offerings to include stories with criminal, romantic, and macabre themes. With that, North’s early warning gained urgency; and teachers, librarians, and other adults renewed their fight against comics. Throughout the country; rallies, legislation, speeches, and bonfires accompanied the concerns of adults. The apex came in 1954 with the publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, an anticomics study, and with the televised hearings from the US Senate on the relationship between reading comics and juvenile delinquency.3 The 1948 letter excerpted for this chapter’s epigram provided a stringent counternarrative and argument to this era’s ubiquitous anticomics rhetoric. In the letter, David Pace Wigransky dissected, countered, and probed the assertions made by psychiatrist Wertham in his May 1948 article entitled “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” for the Saturday Review. Wigransky deplored what he believed to be Wertham’s overly protectionist stance toward children, believing the position to be based on misconstrued data. Then he dismantled Wertham’s claims, marshaling evidence; such as the case of precomic-book-era, teenaged murderers Leopold and Loeb and early twentieth-century criticism of comic strips.4 In the lengthy letter—which the magazine edited only for length and not for content— Wigransky leveraged his youthful experiences and perspective, and as the owner (and reader) of more than five thousand comics, he issued a call to arms for young people and comics producers to fight back against those forces who had comics in their crosshairs. “Let any who starts to raise his voice in protest to this generation,” he wrote, “first compare it with any preceding one. I am certain that he will discover the cards are stacked in favor of the comic-book readers of the present age.”5 David Pace Wigransky, who mounted this forceful attack on one of America’s eminent forensic psychiatrists and placed the discussion in the pages of a national magazine of ideas, was a fourteen-year-old, high school junior. Although Wigransky’s letter was perhaps an anomaly for the Saturday Review, he was not the only young person to speak out against adult critics of comic books. In the early 1950s, several dozen young people from across the United States wrote to Fredric Wertham, as well as to the US Senate subcommittee investigating the relationship between comic books and juvenile delinquency. Few wrote as cogently as Wigransky, and none submitted their missives for mass scrutiny, preferring instead to write directly to the sources of their discontents and fears. Yet through their “civic writing,”6 these young people

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questioned adults, who at times made spurious claims about those who read comics, and raised salient points about issues such as intellectual freedom. While Wigransky’s letter surfaces occasionally in histories of comics, the voices, ideas, and stories of other young people who wrote in protest have remained obscured in archival collections. This essay examines these letters, written by children and teenagers more than a half century ago, and situates their ideas within broader social and historical contexts. Where possible, the letters are contextualized by interviews I have conducted with their authors, who are now adults in their seventies and eighties. This essay, then, serves to highlight the intersection of print culture and political geography, both of which are scholarly arenas that tend to neglect youth, especially in ways that allow their unmediated voices and lived experiences to speak for themselves.7 The Anticomics Apex The Saturday Review of Literature, a weekly magazine of ideas and a forum for prosaic cultural criticism, joined the comics scrum in 1948. The magazine’s resident theater critic John Mason Brown spoke about the medium in a March 1948 radio forum that was partially transcribed and published in the magazine. In the radio conversation with cartoonist Al Capp and others, Brown described comic books as “the marijuana of the nursery . . . the curse of the kids, and a threat to the future.”8 Two weeks later, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham presided over a symposium on comics under the auspices of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Psychoanalyst Paula Elkisch and folklorist Gershon Legman were counted among the event’s speakers. Judith Crist, who had yet to make a name for herself as a film critic, highlighted the symposium in the New York Herald Tribune. Soon afterward, Crist brought Wertham’s clinical research on comic books to broader public attention in an article for Collier’s Weekly. The combined publicity spurred Norman Cousins, Saturday Review of Literature’s esteemed editor, to invite Wertham to publish a version of his symposium remarks in that publication. When the Saturday Review of Literature printed Fredric Wertham’s article “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” in May 1948, the psychiatrist had only recently begun the campaign against comic books that would—for better or worse— come to define his professional life. Wertham, who had studied under the eminent Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins University, was then director of the mental hygiene clinics at both Bellevue and Queens Hospitals in New York. He had enjoyed popular success as the author of the forensic study Dark Legend: A Study in Murder (1941) and would soon again enjoy success for The Show of Violence (1949). Beginning in 1946, he had also received favorable attention in the national press for helping found and operate the Lafargue Clinic, Harlem’s first social welfare and psychiatric clinic. Yet in early 1948, Wertham’s attention

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shifted somewhat inexplicably from issues like forensics, psychoses, and racial prejudice to comic books. “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” outlined Wertham’s arguments on comics, arguments that readers would see again in his later book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Wertham proposed that comic books are products of a deceitful industry, luring young readers with colorful pages, ubiquitous placement, and inexpensive cover prices. To Wertham’s mind, the industry and its sycophants claimed that comics had educational value or promoted harmless fantasy, while peddling lurid and sadistic stories, which primed readers for lives of crime and neuroses. He hinted in this article at his idea for restricting the sales of crime comic books to readers aged fifteen and older, a proposal he explicated in later interviews and texts. He undergirded his arguments with examples of the mischief and depravity of various young people he had examined in his psychiatric practice or had read about in news reports; some, but not all, read comics. In defining crime comics (something Wertham does best in Seduction of the Innocent), he cast his net broadly so that a superhero fighting a villain, a cartoonish anthropomorphized animal smacking its pal, and visual depictions of true crimes—all exemplified crime comics. Reader’s Digest condensed his Saturday Review article, as the Digest also did with his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, which helped extend his ideas further in the popular media. However, Wertham’s book sold well enough, moving more than 16,000 copies in the United States in less than six months.9 The month following Seduction’s release, Senators Robert Hendrickson, Estes Kefauver, and Thomas Hennings presided over televised comic book hearings that featured testimony from more than a dozen people, including Helen Meyer, vice president of Dell Publications; Walt Kelly, the creator of the Pogo comic strip and president of the National Cartoonists Society; and William Gaines, publisher of Entertaining Comics Groups (EC). During the preceding year, the subcommittee under the direction of Richard Clendenen canvassed social workers, juvenile court judges, law enforcement officials, and comics industry professionals to assess the extent to which crime comic books, as well as other kinds of comic books, encouraged juvenile delinquency.10 In addition, the subcommittee was tasked with investigating other forms of mass communication, such as television, and held separate hearings for each medium. For the comics portion of its charge, the subcommittee built on an earlier Senate investigation into the publication and distribution of comic books, as in 1950 a different Senate committee had probed the impact of crime comic books on delinquency as part of its investigation into organized crime. Senator Estes Kefauver commissioned Wertham to serve as a consultant for the 1950 investigation, which the psychiatrist eagerly did at first. Ultimately Wertham grew frustrated with Kefauver and the committee as its report concluded there was little evidence to connect comic book reading with criminal behavior.

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Despite his disapproval of the outcome of the 1950 investigation, Fredric Wertham testified in the 1954 hearings, representing what Clendenen’s staff deemed “the extreme [conservative] position among the psychiatrists.”11 As such, his testimony balanced the more moderate position offered by Dr. Harris Peck, director of the Bureau of Mental Health Services for the Children’s Court of New York, and the liberal position held by Dr. Lauretta Bender, a senior psychiatrist at Bellevue and a consultant for DC Comics. The testimony of these latter two psychiatrists is seldom cited in the scholarly or popular record. Instead Wertham emerged alongside William Gaines as the hearings’ star witnesses. Scheduled to testify immediately following Wertham in the afternoon of April 21, 1954, Gaines heard Wertham recapitulate the views on comics he had rehearsed in speeches and writing over the past six years. Gaines seemed eager to offer a retort to the psychiatrist’s position, and the panel of senators and their counsel seemed eager to spar with Gaines. Gaines was a divisive figure, popular with many comics readers and loathed by many adult critics. In the seven years since the unexpected death of his father, Max, Bill Gaines transformed Entertaining Comics (EC) from a publisher of innocuous, sometimes educational, children’s comics to one of the vanguard.12 EC’s titles, including Shock SuspenStories, Frontline Combat, and Weird Fantasy, featured fresh artwork and riveting stories filled with black humor, surprise twists, and authentic details. Aimed at an audience of more mature readers, EC’s lineup also featured plenty of gore as well as challenges to prevailing social norms. All told, these comics found immense popularity among teen and adult readers, eager for something different. Moreover, the company responded to readers’ ideas by printing letters from fans and foes in the pages of its comics, by sponsoring the EC Fan Addicts Club that facilitated the development of a visible network of readers, and by inspiring some the first comics-related fanzines.13 The subcommittee took issue with the contents and presentation of EC’s stories as well as with its publisher’s brashness. On the whole comics conflagration, Bill Gaines had printed both a satirical take, “Are You a Red Dupe?” which proposed that any restrictions on comics were a Communist conspiracy, and an editorial urging EC’s readers to share their views on comics with the subcommittee. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency issued its report on comic books in March 1955, concluding that there was no certain proof of the relationship between the reading of crime and horror comics and the incidence of juvenile delinquency. The report recommended that parents, social welfare professionals, educational and psychological researchers, comic book publishers, and others cooperate to investigate “the exact kind and degree of influence exerted by comic books on children’s behavior.”14 In addition, the subcommittee urged as a national aim, the elimination “of all materials that potentially exert detrimental effects.”15 The subcommittee’s proposals meant little, as

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comics publishers banded together to form the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) in September 1954. The CMAA created a self-regulating editorial practice, the Comics Code Authority (CCA), initially headed by Judge Charles Murphy, thus successfully avoiding federal intervention. Like the Motion Picture Production Code, the CCA carried no legal authority, and publishers were not required to participate in the CCA. Yet few publishers could get their comics onto newsstands without the CCA’s “Seal of Approval.” Scores of comic book titles ceased publication, including the EC titles that resonated with so many young fans, as many publishers found it untenable financially or creatively to meet the CCA’s requirements. The Comics Code did not tolerate lust and gore; unsavory illustrations; attacks on authority figures; stories featuring vampires, werewolves, or curvy women; or a myriad of other elements that had helped comics resonate with a generation of children and teenagers. The Letters Most young people living in the United States in 1954 had never known lives without the presence of comic books. Although comics have never been solely a child’s medium, children consumed comics insatiably during the 1940s and 1950s, as more than 90 percent of elementary school-aged children and 80 percent of secondary school-aged children read comics regularly. Comics were also the defining cultural product of young people’s lives during these decades. The phenomenal sales of new comic books and the equally pervasive trading and resale of those comics serve as partial testament to this truth. The variety of comics-related media tie-ins (e.g., radio serials and the abundant consumer products from lunchboxes to bedsheets, decoder rings to ray guns that were also available) in these decades give further evidence. It should come as no surprise, then, that some youth were moved to defend comics in letters to the medium’s biggest bogeymen: Fredric Wertham and members of the Senate subcommittee. This section highlights some of these letters and three themes evident in them: generational divides, reading experiences, and civic participation. ONLY A CHILD: GENERATIONAL DIVIDES

Dear Sir: I have read your item “Comic Books—Blueprints for Delinquency” in the current issue of Reader’s Digest. I agree with you that crime and horror comics must go, or delinquency will grow. But when you say that all comic books must go, I say you’re deadly wrong. I am an eleven-year old boy. I read about a dozen comics every day, and I don’t see how you can say that crime comics total 4/5 of all comic books. . . . Anybody that goes out and kills someone because he read a comic book is a simple-minded idiot. Sound silly? So does your item. . . .

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I sincerely wish that you could understand comic books as I do, and I hope that someday in the future people will know their goods and their evils. Sincerely yours, Brian Arthur McLaughlin16

In late 1954, Time carried a brief article highlighting psychoanalyst Robert M. Lindner’s theories on teenagers. Lindner; more popularly known as the author of Rebel without a Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath, on which the iconic 1955 film starring James Dean is based; shared with Wertham and other contemporaries a fear that teenagers were unnaturally debauched, perverse, and sadistic. Lindner opined that “the youth of the world today is touched with madness, literally sick with an aberrant condition of mind formerly confined to a few distressed souls but now epidemic over the earth.”17 Undoubtedly the young people who wrote to Wertham and to the subcommittee were aware of this wider societal perception of their behaviors and (lack of ) competence. As Thomas Hine proposed in his popular history of teenagers in the United States, despite the growing middle-class acculturation accompanying the rising percentage of young people attending high school, “adults looked at their children and saw not a blossoming bourgeoisie, but rather an alien culture in their midst.”18 Thus for these young writers, situating themselves as competent, respectable teens above the influence of comic books was an essential rhetorical strategy. McLaughlin’s closing words—“I sincerely wish that you could understand comic books as I do”—reflected more than simple frustration. Indeed they give evidence of a perceived gulf in understanding between child and adult, one that spurred a longing by young people to be heard and respected. Yet some writers seemed dubious that adults would either listen to or value their insights. For instance, thirteen-year-old Lyn Crawford bluntly stated that belief in her letter to Wertham: “My opinion probably doesn’t mean a thing to you because I’m only a child.”19 Similarly John Hegarty of Attica, Kansas, and a fan of Classics Illustrated told Wertham, “I am only sixteen years old, so I don’t know what I’m talking about.”20 From available evidence, it seems that the children were justified in their fears of being—at best ignored or—less charitably— viewed as incompetent by the adults. For example, only one of the handful of letter writers to the Senate with whom I have spoken, recall receiving any acknowledgement of their correspondence; the one who did have some memory of having a reply believed it to be nothing more than a formulaic response on a postcard that thanked him for writing to the subcommittee. Wertham seldom responded to the young people who wrote him, especially if they disagreed with his views. Moreover, he had a habit of red-penciling their letters ostensibly (marking the spelling and grammar errors he found) to confirm the debilitating effects of comics reading on their formal communication skills. As this was not

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his common practice in correspondence from adults, it has the appearance of petty mindedness and disdain. As a means to demonstrate their competence and to distinguish themselves from the stereotype of comics readers as juvenile delinquents, some writers asserted their normalcy and decency. At a basic and subtler proleptic level, writers such as Harley Elliott and Josephine Campiglia described themselves respectively as a “normal American boy” and “an average seventeen year old girl.”21 Brian E. Mulholland sought to build greater rapport with the senators, telling the subcommittee that he was “as honest and as clean as you would want your own son to be.”22 Other young people such as Brian Arthur McLaughlin engaged in more explicit prolepsis. His statement that only “a simple-minded idiot” would kill someone because of having read a comic placed him as a member of a small chorus arguing that only someone predisposed to violence would be spurred to action through comics. For example, Donald Lowry of Evansville, Indiana, wrote the subcommittee that, “If a child’s mind is weak enough to be driven to crime by comic books he was on the verge of delinquency to start with.”23 Some writers spoke about predisposition and influence in more personal ways. Harry Levy III, a freshman at Southern Methodist University, wrote to Wertham: “Possibly little boys are sadistic, but, where I could laugh at the ‘poor innocent maiden getting her teeth kicked in,’ I never got the impression that I should try the same thing on any of my acquaint­ ances.”24 Bob “Bhob” Stewart, aged sixteen and living in Kirbyville, Texas, likewise implored Wertham: You criticize drug addiction depicted in comics. Did you read THE MONKEY (SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES #12)? I don’t see how any adolescent could “start popping” after reading it. All curiosity I ever had about whether or not I would try marijuana just for fun if I had the chance was totally dispersed after I finished that story.25

Some writers provided credentials of various kinds—their academic grade averages or the numbers of comic books they owned—to demonstrate their competence to the adults whom they wrote. For instance, high school junior Dick Cashwell told Wertham in his letter that he was of “fairly high intelligence” and “a defensive linebacker on an unbeaten championship team.”26 Ron Baumgardner opened his correspondence to the subcommittee with his credentials: “I ranked very close to the top of a class of 206. I am a member of the National Honor Society and have received a four-year matriculation fee scholarship to Illinois State University.”27 Other writers refused to see their youth as limiting their competence, especially with regard to comics and juvenile delinquency. Ople Noble Sorich asserted in her letter to Wertham: “We are all teen-agers. . . . We think we know more about the causes of delinquency than do some of our elders.”28 Noble Sorich wrote to Wertham on behalf of her

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eighth-grade class in Bisbee, Arizona.29 Her correspondence with the psychiatrist is unique in that he responded, asking to learn more about her classmates’ thoughts on comics. He even sent them a box of chocolates from Macy’s, which Noble Sorich remembers as a distinctive treat, as some of her classmates had never seen chocolates quite like those. Her confident tone likely resulted in part from the attitude of her teacher Mrs. Bledsoe, who strived to create a democratic classroom in which each student’s contributions were valued. An older woman with graying hair, she even allowed the students to vote on her choice of hair dyes; the students favored one of the purple tones over the yellow. Perhaps Louis Abate of Lawrence, Massachusetts, had his own version of Mrs. Bledsoe, as he was even more direct than Noble [Sorich] in his letter to the subcommittee. “I am fourteen,” he wrote, “and I know what I am talking about.”30 WE BUY THEM FOR THE STORIES: THE READING EXPERIENCE

I am thirteen years of age and a normal American boy. I read comics every day and also collect them. Many war comics have historical stories in them. Thus I learn more about the world. Science-Fiction stories boost my dreams for the future. Horror stories increase my imagination. Humorous comics make me forget my worries and troubles. Harley Elliott31

Young comics readers were also frustrated by a different sort of gap between them and many adults, one pertaining to the role that reading comics played in their lives. Adults, especially librarians and teachers, frequently dismissed comics as frivolous junk, a passing fad, or a stepping stone on the way to more meaningful reading. As librarian Helen Armstrong decreed, “Children don’t confuse comics with real reading.”32 Likewise, some adults expressed outright hostility toward comics. In an often cited article by former librarian Jean Gray Harker, she declared, “Youth’s Librarians Can Defeat Comic Books,” and urged librarians to assist in drafting state and national legislation to restrict comics sales.33 Many adults from beyond the realm of education and librarianship had similar feelings about comics. Thus, America’s newspapers and airwaves carried reports and debates on young people’s comics reading; legislative bodies proposed regulations for comics; and in a few handfuls of locales, adults successfully encouraged young people to gather up and burn their comics in communal bonfires.34 The adults who condemned comics had in many cases been weaned on comic strips, dime novels, and series books, all of which had caused their own elders similar consternation, but that experience seemed to have been lost over time. In an effort, though, to sway the views of adults who had the potential to be effective censors of comics, the young letter writers attempted to describe their own reading responses to comics.

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Tommy Tudor, Clarence Flynn, and Gene Walker were graduating high school seniors in Wilson, Oklahoma, when they typed their letter to Wertham in late-April 1954.35 They acknowledged that the psychiatrist was not the only person trying to restrict comics, stating, “We have noted for some time . . . the articles . . . on the harm caused by these degrading and generally harmful pieces of reading.” Their choice to describe comics in negative terms was a sarcastic one, as the next sentence makes clear. Slipping from plural to singular pronouns, the letter continued, “Well, I think that I could give as much on your precious old literature that is supposed to be a great help to the human race . . . than you . . . could hope to give on the comic book question.” The remainder of the letter argued that classic literature—such as the kind that Wertham favored quoting and alluding to in his texts—along with pocket paperbacks36 and contemporary fiction were at least as degrading as Wertham claimed comics were. Notably these three teens had enough familiarity with “classic” literature to recognize that comics creators sometimes drew from it in shaping their own stories. Reading comics was not done at the expense and exclusion of other reading; instead it supplemented and extended other reading. This familiarity with noncomics literature is evident in the protest letters written by other young people including C. J. Smith, who invoked fairy tales and folktales, and Barry Cherin, who referenced numerous contemporary novels, including Douglas’s The Silver Chalice.37 One of Wertham’s assertions was that comics readers seldom read anything beyond comics, especially where Classics Illustrated was concerned. This series, which originated in the early 1940s, adapted works of literature, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Julius Caesar, into comics form. In many respects, Classics performed functions similar to the condensed texts (including Wertham’s own Seduction of the Innocent) published by Reader’s Digest: they provided readers with a working knowledge and highlights of a text. A number of the young people who wrote to Wertham were offended by his attacks on Classics Illustrated and sought to counter his arguments against the series. For instance, John Hegarty’s letter mentions seven different books including Verne’s Michael Strogoff and Eliot’s Silas Marner that he was either inspired to read or that had been made more intellectually accessible because he had read the comics versions.38 Sixteenyear-old Jack Osborne noted in his letter that Classics Illustrated not only made Shakespeare’s works more understandable to him, but also allowed him and others short on time to “have some contact with good literature.”39 Linda Faye Scalia explained to Wertham that she owned more than one hundred Classics Illustrated and that they had led her to read the original texts in most instances. She said in her letter that she would have preferred to own the original texts but that the comics were more affordable.40 The EC titles published by William Gaines inspired special devotion among readers. Harley Elliott, whose letter opens this section, was an EC fan

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who particularly enjoyed Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, two comic books with a military focus. Although his letter to the subcommittee did not mention specific titles or offer rich details about his reading experiences, Elliott found in these comics an honesty and candidness that he was unable to find about the world in the other media available to him. For instance, comics published by EC helped him understand the war in Korea and race relations in the United States.41 Bob “Bhob” Stewart addressed this issue in his letter to Wertham by stating, “EC is the only comics house that respects the readers’ desires, and is the only comics house that ‘writes up’ to its audience. They see a reader as someone to be pleased, not an ‘innocent kid with a dime.’ ”42 Philip Proctor’s letter to the Senate in June 1954 offered a bit more insight into his reading experiences. Aged fourteen and a student at Manhattan’s prestigious AllenStevenson School, Proctor did his best to uphold his school’s aim of training scholars and gentlemen. “Dear Sirs,” he wrote, I am disgusted with your ridiculous claims about comics. . . . I assure you that I am not, and do not want to be, a juvenile delinquent. . . . We don’t buy these mags because we have a thirst for blood, we buy them for the stories, the snap endings, the artwork, and because they deal with the unknown.43 A FINE UNITED STATES: CIVIC PARTICIPATION

To Whom It May Concern I have, for the past few months, been urged by the editors of E.C. comics to write to you about the recent comic book investigation. I had failed to do so because I thought it absurd that the United States government would or could abolish harmless literature. But just yesterday I read that E.C. comics is being forced to drop five of its’ [sic] publications because wholesalers and retailers throughout the country have been intimidated into refusing to handle crime and horror type comic books. That is the type of thing that goes on in Russia but not in America. Of course I realize that the reason for the stopping of this type of literature is to prevent juvenile delinquency. I have a collection of 85 E.C.’s which are supposed to be detrimental to the morals of the American youth and yet I am as honest and as clean as you would want your own son to be. I am speaking for the majority, the comic book readers, as opposed to the minority who have been so successful, the few disturbed parents. Sincerely Brian E. Mulholland44

The nation’s voting age was still set at twenty-one, meaning that the teenagers who wrote to the subcommittee and to Wertham had several years before they could officially enter the public conversation through casting ballots. Yet through their letters, these writers made political statements that challenged prevailing assumptions about comics reading and readers. In some instances,

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the writers directly critiqued adults in authority positions and advocated for democratic ideals, a stark contrast to the future conjured a decade earlier by Stanley J. Kunitz, who warned that “comics can spawn only a generation of Storm Troopers, Gauleiter, and coarse, audacious Supermen.”45 Some of the letters may have been imbued with youthful naiveté and passion, but there was also a core of truth. More than half a century later and recently retired as a district attorney, Brian E. Mulholland commented about his letter, which opens this section: “I was surprised at the maturity of thought and expression. . . . I don’t know if I could have done a better job now.”46 The young people who wrote to the Senate subcommittee often broached the subjects of democracy, free communication, and market regulation, topics within the purview of the senators. In contrast, many of the teens who wrote Wertham focused more on issues of imitative behaviors, a topic within the realm of a psychiatrist’s purview, so clearly the writers had some understanding of audience. For instance, in his letter to the subcommittee, Harley Elliott referenced freedom of the press and the differences between democratic and fascist societies: “This is America where man has freedom of the press. The less freedom the people of America get the more our country will become a dictatorship and the people as its slaves.”47 Other letters to the subcommittee urged clear actions or envisioned specific outcomes. “Leave the comic book publishers alone,” exclaimed Donald Lowry in his letter.48 Josephine Campiglia wrote, “I hope that in the future forever and always I and a million other people like me, will still be able to buy and read [comics].”49 Charles Funicello even proposed that the senators themselves had “read [comics] at some time and enjoyed them” and implored the “men of the Congress . . . [to] please let them stay on the stands.”50 With little political capital, Isidor Saslav, a sixteen-year-old from Detroit, pleaded his message to the senators. “You are the custodians of my constitutional rights until I reach the age of 21,” he wrote. “Please don’t send them down the drain for the interests of a small, but vocal minority.”51 Of course some young people did address their political concerns to Wertham. For instance, the oppressive political climate of the early 1950s was captured in part by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. Bob “Bhob” Stewart, an avid science fiction reader, invoked this book and its message in his letter to Wertham: “Once comics are outlawed out of existence it’ll only be a short step to the book-burnings Bradbury science-fictionizes [sic] in FAHRENHEIT 451.”52 In a letter to Wertham from thirteen-year-old Lyn Crawford, the writer plays with issues of causality and regulation.53 “I have at least 25 friends who read the same kind of comics as I do and of which you speak in your article,” Crawford wrote. She went on to counter Wertham’s causative argument for juvenile delinquency: “I sincerely believe we are all sound of mind and I very sincerely seriously doubt that comic books will injure us.” She even asked pointedly for specific data on the number of comics readers

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who commit murder. The bulk of her letter featured a series of rhetorical questions that drew parallels between comics and what she termed “adult amusement,” suggesting that adults imperiled themselves in ways that outstripped any harm that might befall young comic-book readers. In particular, she wanted to know whether Wertham proposed any controls for lewd adult literature, tobacco, and alcohol. Humorously, she advised that children could quit reading comics and instead turn to “cigarettes, adult crime and sex books, and liquor. . . . If we did wouldn’t we have a fine U.S. in a few years?” Other writers, including Dick Cashwell and Bob “Bhob” Stewart, proposed that regulation was less needed than improvements in children’s home environments, as poor family conditions were more apt to lead to juvenile delinquency than comics reading. Comics, Print Culture, Political Geography Millions of young comics readers did not write Wertham or the subcommittee, but a few hundred did.54 Yet the story of these comics readers is worth telling in greater detail because it gives evidence of young people’s agency; of their willingness to engage adults in dialogue about matters of material, intellectual, and social importance; and of their ability to craft messages that both built on personal experiences and respond to the particular needs of their audiences. This story is, then, in its truest sense a microhistory, examining the outliers and documenting the individual interactions that make up larger social structures.55 It might be tempting to propose that teenagers in the 1950s were simply more civically engaged than today’s youth, but that would be a nostalgic trap. During this era, less than 20 percent of adults engaged in civic writing, either in the form of letters to the editor or in letters to politicians.56 Although youth at midcentury had the benefit of increased attention given to civic education in schools, it seems unlikely that they would have participated in civic writing in greater numbers than did adults. In perhaps the largest study of youth civic writing, Robert Cohen’s examination of children’s letters to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the number of letters Roosevelt received from young people appeared to be proportionally and significantly smaller than those from adults.57 Despite the affection that children and teens had for comics, it seems reasonable that the youth would have felt a sense of less urgency to preserve comics in their lives than the sense of urgency that youth would have felt about the acquiring material assistance, such as food and money, during Mrs. Roosevelt’s time. Young people who chose to write to Wertham or the subcommittee were protesting an idea—that comics might be regulated, that comics might cause harm to readers—rather than some material change. Writing these letters required them in part to overcome their age-based predisposition to idealize political authority.58 It demanded that they assert their own agency

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and legitimacy. The fact that they did all of these things in an era of such profound conformity, and in which they lacked suffrage, must change our understanding of young people’s civic engagement. The letters from comics fans are also important because they preserve the voices—unmediated by adults—of young readers. For instance, library historian Kate McDowell described the paucity of both primary sources relevant to children’s reading as well as scholarship that analyzes those sources. Her work, for instance, documented young people’s reading interests and habits in the early twentieth century by examining librarians’ accounts of children’s experiences. Consequently, she had to rely on evidence reconstituted by adults who had professional interests in shaping those same children’s literary experiences; her analysis added yet another layer of mediation.59 With the letters from comics fans, young people’s voices remain intact, offering insights into their reading experiences and allowing for the possibility of closing a communication circuit— or at least filling in some gaps—for comics in the mid-twentieth century. 60 Worth noting, as well, is that this history of reading must be constructed in large measure from ethnographic and archival resources in the same tradition as Jonathan Rose’s work to document the cultural and intellectual milieu of several generations of Britons.61 Despite its general promise, Christine Pawley’s vision of the library as a locus for studying readers’ experiences is inadequate for considering the relationship between children and comic books, as the latter were notably absent from most library collections until the waning years of the twentieth century.62 A Postscript In June 1954, Robert Warshow, an associate editor at Commentary magazine, published a personal reflection on the comics controversy, invoking the recent subcommittee hearings as well as Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent. Titled “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham,” Warshow’s article focused on his eleven-year-old son, Paul, who was an EC Fan-Addict Club member and preferred that company’s more mature titles like The Vault of Horror to other publishers’ more innocuous superhero and gag comics. Paul seemed to show no ill effects of his comics reading, yet the elder Warshow still longed for “Senator Kefauver and Dr. Wertham [to] find some way to make it impossible for Paul to get any comic books.”63 The article attracted Wertham’s attention, and he wrote to Paul Warshow. “You may not agree with everything [your father] says, but I assure you . . . you will be proud that your father wrote one of the most thoughtful articles about comics books.” 64 A few days later, Paul responded, displaying good manners, but refuting Wertham’s argument on comics as other young writers had.

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Dear Dr. Wertham: Thank you very much for your letter. I have read my father’s article and I think it is very good. I don’t agree with all the things in it. I don’t think comics do much harm to children. I don’t think they are all good though. Most children learn enough to know if a comic is sensible. Only a few would take an unlikely story seriously. I don’t take them seriously but I enjoy some of them. Thank you again for your letter. Best wishes, Paul Warshow P.S. I would very much like to meet you.65

There is no indication that Wertham and Paul Warshow ever met. The Letter Writers Mentioned Herein Louis Abate (Lawrence, Massachusetts) Ron Baumgardner (Bloomington, Illinois) Josephine Campiglia (Brooklyn, New York) Dick Cashwell (Albemarle, North Carolina) Barry Cherin (Miami, Florida) Lyn Crawford (Atlanta, Georgia) Harley Elliott (Salinas, Kansas) Clarence Flynn (Wilson, Oklahoma) Charles Funicello (Yonkers, New York) John Hegarty (Attica, Kansas) Donald Lowry (Evansville, Indiana) Brian Arthur McLaughlin (Cresskill, New Jersey) Brian E. Mulholland (Erlton, New Jersey) Ople Noble Sorich (Bisbee, Arizona) Jack Osborne (Gary, Indiana) Philip Proctor (New York, New York) Linda Faye Scalia (Monroe, Louisiana) C. J. Smith (Albany, New York) Bob “Bhob” Stewart (Kirbyville, Texas) Tommy Tudor (Wilson, Oklahoma) Gene Walker (Wilson, Oklahoma) Paul Warshow (New York, New York) David Pace Wigransky (Washington, DC)

Notes 1. Cf. Carl H. Melinat, “Magazine Best Sellers,” Wilson Library Bulletin 21 (1946): 171– 72; “540 Million Comics Published during 1946,” Publishers Weekly 152 (1947): 1030; and “The Hundred Million Dollar Market for Comics,” Publishers Weekly 165 (1954): 1906.

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2. Sterling North, “A National Disgrace,” Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1940, 56. 3. For more about the anticomics movement, see James B. Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford, 1986); David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Macmillan, 2009); and Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998). For more on Wertham’s book and questions about his presentation of evidence, see Carol L. Tilley, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications That Helped Condemn Comics,” Information and Culture: A Journal of History 47 (2012): 383–413. 4. Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb were young students at the University of Chicago who kidnapped and murdered a fourteen-year-old boy, Robert Franks, in 1924. Their crime and trial riveted the country. 5. David Pace Wigransky, “Cain before Comics” [letter], Saturday Review of Literature, July 29, 1948, 19–20. 6. Sandra Stotsky, “Writing in a Political Context: The Value of Letters to Legislators,” Written Communication 4 (1987): 394–410. 7. For political geography’s historical neglect of children, see, for instance, Chris Philo and Fiona M. Smith, “Guest Editorial: Political Geographies of Children and Young People,” Space and Polity 7 (2003): 99–115. 8. John Mason Brown, “What’s Wrong with the Comics (America’s Town Meeting of the Air),” ABC Radio broadcast, March 2, 1948. Digitized audio for this program is available online at www.historicalvoices.org. Brown and Capp’s opening statements are available in print here: “The Case against the Comics,” Saturday Review of Literature, March 20, 1948. For more on Capp’s critique of Brown, see Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen, Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 133–35. 9. Rene de Chocor to Fredric Wertham, 5 August 1954, Box 124, Folder 3, Fredric Wertham Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as Wertham Papers). 10. WNYC (radio) broadcast these hearings live. Digitized recordings are available at http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/neh-preservation-project/2012/aug/24/senatesubcommittee-juvenile-delinquency. At least one day of the hearings (April 22) was televised on WPIX, the Tribune News–owned independent station in New York, but the ongoing Army-McCarthy hearings clearly were the bigger media draw. See, for instance, the discussion in James L. Baughman, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948–1961 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 225–29. 11. Background Statement—Dr. Fredric Wertham, Box 171, “Witness Lists and Backgrounds,” Records of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency [10E3/16/11/2], National Archives, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as Subcommittee Papers). 12. Two useful sources for information on William Gaines and EC are Maria Reidelbach, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and the Magazine (New York: Little, Brown, 1992); and Frank Jacobs, The Mad World of William M. Gaines (New York: Bantam Paperbacks, 1972). 13. Bob “Bhob” Stewart was instrumental in two of the original EC fanzines. When he wrote to Wertham in 1954, he enclosed a copy of Potrzebie, one of the fanzines he edited. In a telephone interview with the author (November 12, 2012), Stewart reported

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that he never received a response from Wertham although to his memory he sent the psychiatrist other issues as well. 14. US Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency, Interim Report, 83rd Congress, 1st Session, Rep. No. 62, p. 32. 15. Ibid. 16. Brian Arthur McLaughlin to Fredric Wertham, 23 April 1953 [sic], Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. Although the letter is dated 1953, the writer indicated he had read Wertham’s “Blueprints for Delinquency,” which was not published until 1954, leading me to conclude the letter writer misstated the date. 17. “Rebels or Psychopaths?” Time, December 6, 1954, 71. 18. Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Avon Books, 1999), 243. 19. Lyn Crawford to Fredric Wertham, 4 May 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers. 20. John Hegarty to Fredric Wertham, 17 April 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. 21. Harley Elliott to the Subcommittee, received 10 August 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers; and Josephine Campiglia to the Subcommittee, 17 September 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 22. Brian Mulholland to the Subcommittee, received 28 September 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 23. Donald Lowry to the Subcommittee, received 18 June 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 24. Harry Levy III to Fredric Wertham, 21 April 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. 25. Bob Stewart to Fredric Wertham, 5 June 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. 26. Dick Cashwell to Fredric Wertham, 22 April 1954, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. 27. Ron Baumgardner to the Subcommittee, 11 June 1954, Box 169, “Corres ProComic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 28. Ople Noble [Sorich] to Fredric Wertham, 25 November 1953, Box 123, Folder 7, Wertham Papers. 29. Ople Noble Sorich, telephone interview by Carol L. Tilley, October 31, 2012. 30. Louis Abate to the Subcommittee, received 28 September 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 31. Harley Elliott to the Subcommittee, received 10 August 1954, Subcommittee Papers. 32. Helen Armstrong, “Reading Is for Delight,” ALA Bulletin 49 (1955): 273. See Carol L. Tilley, “Of Nightingales and Supermen: How Youth Services Librarians Responded to Comics between the Years 1938 and 1955” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2007), for a full discussion of comics as discussed in library professional literature during this era. 33. Jean Gray Harker, “Youth’s Librarians Can Defeat Comics,” Library Journal 73, no. 21 (1948): 1705–7. Harker sent an early draft of her article to Wertham for his

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comment. Although he kept the copy and borrowed from it for his work, Wertham does not seem to have replied. See Jean Gray Harker to Fredric Wertham, 4 August 1948, Box 112, Folder 3, Wertham Papers. 34. For the most comprehensive accounting of these ideas and activities, see Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague. 35. Tommy Tudor, Clarence Flynn, and Gene Walker to Fredric Wertham, 22 April 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers. 36. Pocket paperbacks were also widely contested as appropriate reading for both adults and children during this era. For more information, see Kenneth C. Davis, TwoBit Culture: The Paperbacking of America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984). 37. C. J. Smith to the Subcommittee, received 24 September 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers; and Barry Cherin to the Subcommittee, 23 September 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 38. Hegarty to Wertham, 17 April 1954. 39. Jack Osborne to Fredric Wertham, 19 April 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers. 40. Linda Faye Scalia to Fredric Wertham, 2 July 1954, Box 124, Folder 1, Wertham Papers. In a telephone interview I conducted with Scalia (November 19, 2012), she mentioned that she still had her comics collection. She also mentioned that she had gone on to earn two master’s degrees, including one in English. 41. Harley Elliott, telephone interview by Carol L. Tilley, May 10, 2012. 42. Bob Stewart to Fredric Wertham, 5 June 1954, Wertham Papers. 43. Philip Proctor to the Subcommittee, received 9 June 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. Proctor’s disappointment in the demise of EC’s comics title following the Senate hearings helped propel him to his career as a satirist and founding member of the Firesign Theater; as Proctor recounted in a telephone interview with me (May 6, 2012), he wanted to ridicule the “blue-nosed, tight-assed censors.” 44. Brian Mulholland to the Subcommittee, received 28 September 1954, Subcommittee Papers. 45. Stanley J. Kunitz, “Libraries, to Arms!” Wilson Library Bulletin 15 (1941): 670–71. When he wrote this article, Kunitz, who was later appointed as poet laureate of the United States, was editor for Wilson Library Bulletin. 46. Brian Mulholland, telephone interview by Carol L. Tilley, May 25, 2012. 47. Harley Elliott to the Subcommittee, received 10 August 1954, Subcommittee Papers. 48. Donald Lowry to the Subcommittee, received 18 June 1954, Subcommittee Papers. 49. Josephine Campiglia to the Subcommittee, 17 September 1954, Subcommittee Papers. 50. Charles Funicello to the Subcommittee, received 27 October 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 51. Isidor Saslav to the Subcommittee, received 10 June 1954, Box 169, “Corres Pro-Comic Letters,” Subcommittee Papers. 52. Bob Stewart to Fredric Wertham, 5 June 1954, Wertham Papers. 53. Lyn Crawford to Fredric Wertham, 4 May 1954, Wertham Papers.

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54. In Seal of Approval, Nyberg discusses the Senate letters, but she reduces several hundred letters to two paragraphs (121–22), one that summarized key themes and one that provided a handful of examples. 55. See Carlo Ginzberg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things I Know about It,” trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi, Critical Inquiry 20 (1993). 56. Leila A. Sussman, “Mass Political Letter Writing in America: The Growth of an Institution,” Public Opinion Quarterly 23 (1959): 203–12. 57. Robert Cohen, ed., Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from the Children of the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 58. See Fred I. Greenstein, Children and Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965). 59. Kate McDowell, “Understanding Children as Readers: Librarians’ Anecdotes and Surveys in the USA, 1890–1930,” in The History of Reading, vol. 1 of International Perspectives, c. 1500–1900, ed. W. R. Owen and Shafquat Towheed (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 147–62. 60. Robert C. Darnton, “What Is the History of Books?” Daedalus 111 (1982): 65–83. 61. Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 62. Christine Pawley, “Retrieving Readers: Library Experiences,” Library Quarterly 76 (2006): 379–87. 63. Robert Warshow, “Paul, the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham,” Commentary, June 1954, 604. Unlike many of his contemporaries and in spite of his critique in this particular article of EC’s selections, Warshow was not comics averse. For instance, he wrote lovingly about George Herriman’s comic strip “Krazy Kat.” See, Warshow, “Woofed with Dreams,” Partisan Review, November 1946, 587–90. 64. Fredric Wertham to Paul Warshow, 5 June 1954, Box 159, Folder 13, Wertham Papers. 65. Paul Warshow to Fredric Wertham, 10 June 1954, Box 159, Folder 13, Wertham Papers.

part 3

Dangerous Print

Paper Soldiers the ally and the gi underground press during the vietnam war Derek Seidman

In June 1970, nearly a dozen soldiers stationed in Vietnam penned a collective, scrawled letter to an antiwar newspaper called the Ally. The GIs were all part of the Eighty-Sixth Maintenance Battalion and hailed from ten different states, Arkansas to New York, South Carolina to Pennsylvania. Some troops may have been gung ho about the war and military, but these soldiers identified more with the antiwar movement and the counterculture. “We have all been fucked in some way by this [olive drab] Army,” they proclaimed. “Some of us are draftees, the others enlistees, but we all agree that this war is immoral.” They scribbled their signatures at the end of the letter, accompanied by peace signs, hip slogans, and declarations of their hometowns. “Peace to all, Keep the faith,” wrote Spider from Philadelphia. “Don’t kill the pigs—turn them on!” wrote a soldier from Queens. They thought the Ally was “definitely cool,” and they asked that fifty issues be sent their way since they knew “quite a few heads” who would “dig” it. Papers like the Ally spoke for them, and they wanted to help spread the good word.1 It was troops like these who consumed, distributed, wrote for, and produced the Vietnam-era GI underground press. These soldier-oriented antiwar newspapers, scores of them, were one of the most dynamic expressions of the GI dissent movement that emerged during the last half-decade of the Vietnam War. They found their way across oceans and continents and linked together hundreds, even thousands, of readers. In these papers, soldiers gained access to 183

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news and analysis that spoke to their dissatisfaction with the war, their anger toward military authority, and, for many, their yearning to connect with the protest movements and countercultures back in “the world.” Nor did they just read the papers. They took it upon themselves to circulate the GI press deep into the military. Hundreds of soldiers wrote letters to the papers in which they poured out their frustrations and reported on their own protest activities. Many of these letters were in turn published in the papers, turning the GI press into a joint project between editors and readers, a bottom-up platform for soldiers across the world. Dissident troops may have been separated by geography, but the GI press provided them a sense of larger community and a collective narrative that centered around the idea of a global movement of rank-and-file soldier protest. The Ally was one of the most successful of all the GI underground papers. It began in 1968 as a modest project based in Berkeley, but it soon grew into a larger operation with a readership in the thousands that reached soldiers throughout the United States, Western Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Vietnam. The Ally hoped to link up with ordinary troops and give voice to their plight.2 It sought to provide oppositional content that countered the military’s views about the Vietnam War and cultivated antiwar dissent within the ranks. But far from a one-way transmission belt of information, the Ally quickly became a fluid, interactive endeavor in which soldiers became key agents for the paper’s production and circulation. The Ally may have been formally edited and printed in Berkeley, but it was, in essence, a shared undertaking based on the participation of hundreds, maybe thousands, of scattered servicemembers. Because of this interactive character, the Ally’s pages and correspondences provide unprecedented insight into the inner workings of the GI underground and the day-to-day activities and worldviews of dissident soldiers on the ground. Through the Ally, we see the larger history of the GI antiwar press in its most dynamic form. The history of the Ally also deepens our understanding of broader aspects of print protest and the Vietnam War. Regarding the interaction of protest and print forms, it sheds light on conditions that can allow dissident publications to flourish within structures like militaries that prevent a stable distribution circuit. It shows how, even within such a context, a protest paper can still closely involve a globally dispersed readership in its production and dissemination. Concerning the Vietnam War, stories like the Ally’s help take us beyond the “protesters versus soldiers” narrative that surrounds the cultural and political memory in the United States of the relationship between 1960s protest and the military. The GI underground press was part of a larger wave of troop dissent in which antiwar soldiers brought the protest movements of their day into the armed forces. This is a history that has been lost on many since the war ended.3 Whether as a window into the world of soldier dissent or a case study that

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advances a deeper and more nuanced understanding of protest on the page and of the Vietnam War, the story of the Ally and the GI underground press deserves our attention. The GI Underground Press An April 1969 issue of Newsweek ran a story on “The Peace GIs,” its label for the growing number of antiwar troops who, by then, were surfacing in the military’s ranks. These rebellious soldiers protested in a number of ways—they petitioned, marched, rallied, and visited antiwar coffeehouses. But “[s]preading the dissidents’ gospel even further,” said Newsweek, were “a host of underground GI newspapers, crammed with reports of antiwar activities and virulent antiwar polemics.”4 These subversive papers were media curiosities, but they represented much more. They were, in fact, an unprecedented phenomenon: thousands of antiwar mouthpieces, voices of a generational protest politics, diffused throughout the ranks of the world’s military superpower during a time of war. These papers gained resonance among the expanding layer of troops who were dissatisfied with the war and emboldened by the 1960s spirit of protest. But more importantly, they provided a semblance of community, a semicoherent narrative for a global pool of scattered soldiers, dissidents who came to identify with what many papers called the “GI movement.” The GI underground press was at the center of the antiwar movement’s attempt to organize soldiers during the last half-decade of the Vietnam War. It took off at the turn of 1968 and spread rapidly. The army would claim that 245 different papers sprouted up over the course of the war.5 The papers were directly produced by soldiers, veterans, and civilian organizers, though the most vibrant ones incorporated their GI readership’s contributions into their editorial assembly. There was no uniform standard for a GI antiwar paper. Some had runs in the thousands and journeyed across the world over several years; other were purely local and had a more limited lifespan (at Fort Leonard Wood the Pawn’s Pawn, for example, lasted but a single issue).6 The first and most compelling paper was Vietnam GI, founded in January 1968 by a Vietnam veteran named Jeff Sharlet. Vietnam GI carried original, hard-edged material, often produced by active-duty soldiers and veterans themselves. Most issues contained interviews with combat grunts, exposés on military corruption and troop hardships, antiwar analysis and accounts of GI protest, and dozens of letters from supportive soldiers stationed across the globe. The paper made the rounds with GIs. One troop in Da Nang explained its popularity among his buddies: “What impresses most of the guys is that Vietnam GI is written to us— the first termers and lower rank enlisted men, not the lifers.” Another soldier declared Vietnam GI to be the “best thing since bubble gum.”7 Early papers like Vietnam GI provided models that new organizers latched onto. By 1970, hundreds

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of decentralized hubs of production and circulation had spread throughout the world. The papers shared a commitment to supplying soldiers with news and analysis that was critical of the war and military. They informed servicemembers of their legal rights and provided access to civilian aid, including lawyers steeped in the intricacies of military law. The papers spoke the gritty, satirical language of the lower-ranking GI, and they were presented and received as alternatives to promilitary, prowar newspapers like Stars and Stripes. They often had clever names that mocked the military: Last Harass, A Four Year Bummer, Kill for Peace, and Fun Travel Adventure (the army’s recruiting slogan, whose acronym “FTA” became an ironic shorthand for “Fuck the Army”). Some foregrounded the iconography and language of the counterculture and the antiwar movement, while others applied an anti-imperialist, Marxist class framework to the soldier’s plight. Above all, the papers were underground. Reviled and criminalized by some authorities, the GI press had a semiclandestine life once it found its way into military spaces. Editors and distributers were, at times, targeted and disciplined. Yet the underground press defied repression. As the magazine Commonweal commented, “Soldiers who pass copies around the barracks constantly run the risk of harassment from the brass,” but “[t]he papers have a way of reappearing, phoenix-like.”8 The context for the emergence of the GI press was the veritable explosion in the 1960s of what James P. Danky has called the “oppositional press.” These were the “nonstandard, nonestablishment publications that advocate[d] social change,” papers like the Los Angeles Free Press and Berkeley Barb that merged critical left analysis and countercultural values.9 The oppositional press was a vehicle for varied strands of postwar dissent. The insurgencies of the 1960s grew and imagined themselves in its pages, and it provided communication channels and cohesion for that diverse and vaguely defined thing known as “The Movement.” The oppositional press often carried psychedelic artwork and risqué pictures that burst out of the confines of traditional print decorum. With Vietnam, it became a key medium for the articulation of antiwar views and movement building. The GI press spoke its language, and the idea of an antiwar press aimed at soldiers was initiated with other oppositional papers as reference points. More than just protest papers, though, the GI antiwar press was the lifeblood of what came to be known as the GI movement. By 1970, the US Army seemed to be unraveling as disobedience, defiance, and demoralization spread through its ranks. Much of this breakdown consisted of nonideological responses by troops to their immediate circumstances, such as drug use and desertion.10 But some tried to forge a more coherent protest effort from this reservoir of discontent. The GI movement was a joint project by enlisted soldiers, veterans, and civilian sympathizers to build dissent within the military. It lasted, roughly,

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from 1968 to 1973, and was broadly united by the common goals of organizing soldiers, ending the war, fighting racism, and defending troop civil liberties against military justice. While shaped by local conditions, the disparate parts of the movement were loosely linked through common narratives and symbols. Dozens of GI protest groups associated with it, and civilian and legal networks aided (though also sometimes impeded) its growth.11 It operated through institutions such as off-base coffeehouses and movement centers, and it had a repertoire of protest tactics that ranged from petitions and marches to the spread of antiwar propaganda on base. The GI movement generated alarm from military and political authorities and grabbed newspaper headlines.12 It was the first time in the United States that an antiwar movement genuinely attempted to organize within the military in a sustained way, imagining soldiers as a key constituency for a radical mission of ending the war and, often, re-envisioning American society and foreign policy.13 The GI underground press became a key vehicle for the GI movement and performed vital functions for its rise and maintenance. It helped build and sustain soldier dissent in three tangible ways. First, the circulation of the papers was one of the few activities that provided a sense of focus and unity between different GI organizing efforts. Locally, nationally, and internationally, the production and distribution of the underground press became a common project for the GI movement as a whole. Second, the papers were platforms for recruitment. They politicized some troops and deepened the radicalization of others. Exposure to the underground press plugged new readers into the world of GI dissent and offered a larger framework within which to conceptualize their local activity.14 Third, the GI press was a practical resource that provided uncensored news and, often more importantly, access to legal aid. For soldiers who faced harassment and punishment, or who considered going AWOL (absent without leave) or filing for conscientious objector status, the provision of such information was extremely helpful and built sympathy for the GI movement. Against daunting structural obstacles and geographical distance, the underground press sustained a loose movement culture among antiwar servicemembers. Through it, thousands of readers across the globe could all consider themselves part of a larger effort of soldier dissent. As both an organizing tool and a carrier of a protest narrative, the underground press helped build the GI movement. Few papers illustrate this more starkly than the Ally. The Origins of the Ally The Ally began as a humble four-page spread in early 1968. At its height, it attained a print run of 20,000 and enjoyed a global circulation upheld by a circle of committed soldier-distributors within the ranks. It was a par excellence

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of the GI underground press, semiprofessional in its layout and wide in its reach. Technically produced in Berkeley, its editors integrated the steady feedback they received from hundreds of GI readers. This gave the production and consumption of the Ally a democratic, interactive character, and within a year of its initiation, it could reasonably claim to be a voice for thousands of soldiers who felt they had few options for expression.15 The Ally was the brainchild of Clark Smith, a Berkeley PhD candidate and antiwar activist. Both paper and editor were products of the 1960s Bay Area protest scene. By the late 1960s, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco together had become the antiwar movement’s vanguard, a geographical hub for radical politics and cutting-edge resistance against the war and the draft. Moreover, the possibility of organizing the armed forces seemed more than a faint idea for Bay Area activists. The region hosted several military installations, including the Oakland embarkation center that processed troops headed to Vietnam. Dozens of soldiers trickled off base to participate in antiwar protests and have dialogue with those in the movement. By the turn of 1968, interaction between civilians and dissident servicemembers in the Bay Area had evolved into a concerted effort to build what would soon be called the GI movement.16 Smith was deeply involved in this scene, and the plight of American soldiers was on his mind. He was immersed in draft resistance and providing aid to troops who had gone AWOL. He took from his organizing experiences the belief that GIs were not “willing accomplices” to the Vietnam War, but “perhaps unwilling victims.”17 Parallel to these experiences, Smith was inspired by the Berkeley Barb, the luminary of the 1960s oppositional press. He had the notion to create something like it specifically for GIs: an alternative paper that could connect with soldiers and provide them with antiwar content. By February 1968, this idea became reality when the first issue of the Ally was published. The Ally envisioned its audience as GIs who harbored doubts about the war, resented military authority, and would appreciate a printed voice that articulated these sentiments. It saw soldiers less as passive consumers and more as potential political agents. “We . . . think that [the GI ] has a much more personal stake in the war,” explained the first issue’s editorial, “and that his first right as a GI is to know what kind of a war he is fighting and why.”18 The Ally provided the information to fulfill this aim. It strove to be a space that connected with and was shaped by soldiers’ own views. It sought letters, articles, and comics from troops so it could become a “forum of GI opinion.” (Indeed, the paper’s interactive character was revealed early on when, based on feedback from readers, it shifted from an orientation that encouraged desertion to one that aimed to provide resources for soldiers and serve as an organizing tool for their own self-activity.)19 The Ally would “[compete] directly” with “the Pentagon’s propaganda” and thereby “[offer] people alternative ways of thinking about things than what the army told them.” Through the Ally, Smith hoped, the

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antiwar movement and soldiers could unite. “For the first time,” he wrote, “the peace movement can work from the inside” and “the informational gap between citizen-soldiers and their civilian supporters” would be “bridged.”20 Typical issues of the Ally contained news and analysis related to the war and military, satirical cartoons, reports on GI protest, letters from soldiers, and resources for readers such as legal advice and civilian contacts. The June 1968 issue, for example, ran several stories on troop dissent that included a frontpage report on the conviction of two GIs at Fort Ord, California, who were court-martialed for distributing an antiwar leaflet. Gruesome pictures of torture by US troops and South Vietnamese soldiers ran alongside a “Chronology of U.S. Involvement” in Vietnam and a “GI Toll” that listed the number of military deaths. An article that criticized the government’s purchase of crashprone F-111 fighter jets concluded that “[t]he politicians, the corporation and the brass have it all worked out, and they don’t give a damn about the servicemen at the bottom.” The issue printed nearly twenty letters, almost all from troops, that reflected how the paper’s contents resonated with its readers. A marine, for example, declared the Ally to be “one of the very few publications that even comes close to telling the truth about Vietnam.”21 This content proved effective. Editors soon claimed a readership of 100,000 GIs.22 Moreover, the Ally quickly transformed from a paper directed by a circle of Berkeley activists into a mutual project as soldiers integrated themselves into its production and distribution. Soldier-readers didn’t technically produce the Ally themselves, but they shaped it through their direct feedback, their written contributions, and their very presence, which influenced publication decisions. Smith’s editorial openness no doubt allowed for this collaboration, but he was also responding to the bottom-up initiative of the Ally’s global readership who, through their hundreds of letters and distribution efforts, asserted some ownership over the paper. In this sense, the Ally developed a kind of interactive production between editors and readers. And because GIs identified with the paper as their own voice, they wanted to circulate it within the ranks. Spreading the Ally: GI Distributors in the Vietnam-Era Military In order to be effective, papers like the Ally needed to get into soldiers’ hands. And they did so in significant numbers. By 1969 tens of thousands of copies of antiwar papers lay scattered about the global chain of American military installations. Newsweek wondered how “[t]hese radical journals . . . somehow found their way—despite a number of bans against them—into post barbershops, bus stations, barracks and virtually every other spot where GI’s congregate.”23 The history of the Ally provides some answers. To be sure, Smith and others distributed issues directly to troops at bus stations, civilian antiwar protests, and nearby military bases. But a key way the papers reached servicemembers was

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through the distribution efforts of hundreds, even thousands, of enlisted GIs themselves.24 Soldiers on the inside, by their own gumption and often independently of each other, constructed a decentralized and uncoordinated circulation network that brought the antiwar press deep into the military. The initial bond between the Ally and GI distributors typically began when soldiers wrote to the paper. A steady stream of messily written communiqués arrived in Berkeley from Vietnam, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, West Germany, and dozens of stateside bases. A grievance, an anecdote, a cathartic rant, or a note of appreciation would be followed by a request for a stack of issues and promises to distribute them. After soldiers made contact, the Ally would send them packages of papers, sometimes with buttons, pamphlets, and other materials included. The distributors then circulated the papers through a range of means that put them in the hands of other troops. Most simply, they gave them to friends within close proximity, perhaps other soldiers in their unit. In January 1971, for example, a group of GIs wrote to say that, “We, the undersigned . . . would like as many copies over a hundred if possible,” and they explained that the papers would “be distributed between two companies here in Chu Lai.”25 Similarly, a solder in Phu Bai had “come across a very old copy” of the Ally and “read every single word in it.” He was “tired of reading these fucking lifer papers” that censored “the truth” and knew “a lot of other people” who “would love to read” the Ally. He asked for multiple copies to dole out.26 It was soldiers like this, located in hundreds of pockets throughout the late Vietnam-era military, from Long Binh to Heidelberg and Texas to Tacoma, who helped the GI press gain a foothold within the ranks. After getting hold of their bundles, GIs crafted clever ways to circulate them. One soldier at Fort Bliss distributed his fifty-five copies at “latrines at service clubs.”27 Others were sneakier, such as the two Alabama mail clerks who wanted to distribute the Ally “through our respective mailrooms” and place it “right besides Army Times” in their reading room.28 Some troops sent in their company rosters and mailing addresses of sympathizers. The rhythms of military life also facilitated the spread of the GI press to new locales. Dissident soldiers who were transferred could initiate new hubs for the GI movement. For example, an airman who got hold of the Ally while stationed in Turkey requested issues to distribute at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, where he was being relocated.29 Others discovered papers by chance encounters. One troop “heard about your groovy paper from some corpman [sic]” at Sick Bay (ship hospital) “who were “kind enough to give me your address.”30 Another hit upon the paper at “a Snack Bar in Korea” where “this cat” he met “rapped what it was all about.”31 This kind of random, word-of-mouth distribution, uncoordinated but nevertheless pervasive, helped spread the GI antiwar press throughout the armed forces. A strong element of unpredictability shaped the circulation of the GI

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press. Indeed, this was one of its greatest strengths. The military’s internal structure and disciplinary apparatus militated against a formal, stable circulation of antiwar mouthpieces that were often openly irreverent toward military authority. But GI distribution, occurring from hundreds of different points, meant that soldiers had plenty of chances to find the papers. In this way, GIs built a durable if ad hoc circulation system for the underground press. Authorities no doubt tried to stifle the papers. Soldiers sometimes sent in copies of hostile directives from commanders. They told stories of having their mail searched, how bundles disappeared, and petty harassment. Many burned out or lost contact as they trudged through the grind of their service. But taken as a cumulative whole, the GI press consistently found its way into the armed forces despite the fate of specific individuals, bringing platforms for a mass antiwar movement into the military’s ranks. Interactive Production and the Ally’s Imagined Community GI involvement with the Ally, however, was not limited to distribution. Over time, and with Clark Smith’s willing acquiescence, soldier-readers became integrated into the production of the paper’s subject matter. Their steady feedback shaped the set of concerns through which editors in Berkeley made decisions about the Ally’s content. This in turn increased soldiers’ investment in the paper and gave them a sense of ownership over it. The Ally, at its height, was produced interactively, and with this participatory thrust, it became a vehicle by which scattered readers came to view themselves as a wider community of military dissidents. Through the Ally, gripes and grievances were shared and solidarities were forged. Articles and letters that were published in the paper became new reference points that readers processed into an ever-growing, collective narrative of the war, military experience, and heroic troop resistance linked to a wider, global GI protest movement. Clark Smith had always hoped that the Ally would become a paper that soldiers saw as their own. So when letters began pouring in, often filled with raw emotion and local stories, he saw a great opportunity. “We took those letters very seriously,” Smith remembered. “[ W ]e printed any scrap of information we got from a GI in order to make the Ally a GI paper.”32 These letters were printed in the paper’s popular “Sound-Off !” section, sometimes dozens being printed in a single issue. Smith wanted the Ally to show the “isolated” GI that “he is not alone” and that “even on his post or in the field in Vietnam, there are other GIs who think like he does.”33 Nothing accomplished this better than “Sound-Off !” In the published letters, soldiers found echoes of their own grievances, confirmation that they were linked to a wider circle of troops like them. “It makes me feel better to see other servicemen feel the same as I do,” wrote one soldier from the stockade.34 Letters were also instructive; ones that

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mentioned distribution, for instance, sparked the idea in other readers who could then request copies. The morsels of information in each letter, alongside the paper’s reportage, added up to create a sense of a larger network of GIs who were antiwar, identified with the counterculture, hated abusive commanders, and committed small-scale—sometimes quiet, sometimes bold— acts of dissent.35 Many readers were clearly invested in the Ally. They scrounged up donations to send, took on distribution responsibilities, and wrote appreciative letters. They did this because, in contrast to the military’s official publications, the paper spoke “the truth,” as some called it. The Ally allowed troops to “hear it straight,” wrote a soldier in Da Nang, “and not the way our government’s rag ‘Stars and Stripes’ brings us their censored shit to keep our morale up.”36 Another servicemember in Vietnam thought it was “fantastic” because it “presents the feelings of the GI’s,” which were “rarely” published, 37 while another soldier appreciated its “accurate summary of the conditions which prevail in the military,” and declared that he “wanted to become a part of the movement to break this green machine, as it has attempted to break so many men.” He requested the “honor” of distributing twenty-five copies to his comrades.38 Because soldiers like these disseminated and discussed “the truth” contained in the Ally, the paper helped build dissident solidarities among GIs. Processing the Ally could be a social endeavor. Letters might be signed by multiple soldiers; many donations were group collections. Some troops, in possession of a given issue, felt they carried a vital find, a piece of the truth to which they wanted to introduce their friends. Individual copies of the Ally were treated like hot commodities, and single issues endured wear and tear as they went through many hands. A Vietnam veteran stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, needed “10–15 copies” because “one [issue] just can’t hold up under continuous use.”39 A GI in Da Nang tried to get “5 to 10 readers per copy” since issues of the Ally were “still quite rare” at his station.40 The Ally claimed a readership well beyond its subscription numbers because single issues like these were passed around to multiple GIs within units. Another soldier stationed at Fort Bliss gave further evidence of the collective nature through which the Ally could be consumed. “The other day a couple of us guys were sitting around bitching about the army,” he explained, when “my buddy whipped out an issue of your paper that he had found.” He thought the Ally was “fantastic” (in fact, there were “not enough adjectives to adequately describe it”) and knew of friends who would “really groove on your publication.” He hoped to get it “really circulating on our post.”41 Letters like these indicate that GIs engaged in numerous rap sessions where they critically discussed the war, the military, and the prospect of dissent.

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Since readers saw the Ally as a platform for a community of dissatisfied soldiers like themselves, many unloaded their own grievances in letters that ranged from the serious and emotional to the comical and lighthearted. These letters are windows into the real-time feelings and experiences of Vietnam-era dissident troops, and three broad themes stand out that constitute strands of the shared experiences among Ally readers. The first is a visceral resentment toward military authorities, who were often called “lifers” and “pigs,” and more generally toward the class divisions in the war effort. The second is a strong identification with the counterculture—its values, expressions, iconography, and drug use. Many Ally readers self-identified as “Heads,” slang for pot users. The third is a kind of injured patriotism, an anger at the war, the military, and political leaders who troops felt had betrayed their vision of America and caused them difficulties in their personal lives. Sometimes all three of these themes interacted with each other as soldiers worked out their critiques in their letters, accompanied by anecdotes to illustrate their points. The content of the Ally spoke to these concerns, and its articles and letters provided validation for troops’ grievances. It was a paper in which many GIs could see their own experiences corroborated, their own desires seconded. But more than just grist for gripes, the Ally also offered soldiers who felt wronged by commanders a way to let off steam and achieve symbolic revenge. The GI press provided an “invaluable catharsis for the frustrations of military life,” wrote the Columbia Journalism Review. The papers were “sounding boards” through which GIs could “embarrass” and “[get] back at the untouchables” and “[call] their enemies’ attention to transgressions, real or imagined.” 42 Indeed, the Ally gave GIs a platform in which they could share their unadulterated grievances toward their commanders with the entire global readership. One GI, for instance, hoped the Ally would print his rant against the military hierarchy so that “[m]aybe a lifer will read it and see how wrong he is,” while another soldier had “only one wish—that all the lifers should get a copy too.”43 One soldier in Vietnam requested that the Ally print the names of five “lifers” he included. “I hope it will shock them,” he stated.44 An Ally reader may have felt stifled or humiliated by his commanders, but when he imagined them reading his published letter, it was a sweet form of retribution. The Ally was a vehicle through which some troops could feel recognition in a world in which little existed. In addition to this sense of recognition, the pages of the Ally allowed dissident GIs who were dispersed across the globe to feel as though they were connected to a broader movement of troop dissent. Unlike protesters at home, soldiers convinced of the cause could not so easily join a local subset of the larger movement. One vital function of the GI press was to provide narratives and symbols that allowed isolated soldier-readers to see themselves as part of a

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bigger protest effort. Within the context of military life that prevented stable movement-building, something like the Ally could knit together stories of soldier dissent that stretched from Vietnam to West Germany, Japan to the US mainland, and allow readers to fit themselves into this framework. Insofar as troops disseminated the GI antiwar press or engaged in protest that responded to local conditions where they were stationed, they could also envision this activity as plugged into a worldwide endeavor, one piece of a larger whole. Protest and Resistance Within the context of military life, writing to the Ally and distributing copies may have been forms of dissent within themselves. But there were more direct and concerted efforts at GI protest. The history of the Ally reveals episodes of small-scale resistance throughout the late Vietnam-era armed forces. Antiwar troops wrote about their attempts to foment dissent where they were stationed, and many of these letters made their way into the Ally’s pages for readers to learn from. Soldiers told of protests, petitions, sabotage, drug-using escapades, and even fragging attempts. Real-time documentation by local participants of Vietnam-era GI dissent is hard to come by, especially if it occurred outside of the United States, but the records of the Ally offer a compelling glimpse into this largely hidden world. Letters to the Ally show a pattern of protest activity that took diverse forms throughout the late Vietnam-era military. A soldier stationed at “Pig Headquarters, Long Binh” described a Memorial Day event in which “several of the ‘lower EM’ [Enlisted Men] decided to have a war protest parade in the company area.” Because the “folks at home have the privilege of parading in their hard hats and T-shirts,” he explained, “we felt it was appropriate to express sentiments against the war in the same manner.” (The protest resulted in eight nonjudicial punishments for “disturbing the peace,” the irony of which was not lost on the GIs).45 Another servicemember stationed at Fort Stewart reported the antics of a disciplinarian major who had gone on “an article 15 spree” over minor dress code violations. One soldier in the company “finally got fed up with his shit” and “started a petition charging [the major] with undo harassment.”46 In the Philippines, soldiers “passed out 200 copies of the Ally in ten minutes” (“the response was overwhelming”) and were trying to organize a demonstration.47 Similar stories, which constantly trickled into the PO boxes of the Ally and other papers, reveal otherwise hidden installments of the Vietnamera GI movement as it actually occurred on the ground. Along with reports of episodic resistance, soldiers across the world described their attempts to establish new and enduring local hubs for the GI movement at their posts. One soldier at the naval station in Rota, Spain, declared that he and his compatriots were “trying to put together a movement, of our own, to

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try and change things from within.”48 A group of GIs at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, launched an antiwar “Community House” to aid troops on base.49 A servicemember stationed at Portsmouth, Virginia, was “trying to organize people at the Navy and Air Force bases here.” He was told about the Ally “by a friend” and wanted a subscription to aid his endeavor. 50 Organizing initiatives also followed soldiers when they transferred, which created unexpected footholds for the GI movement. An airman, writing on behalf of a larger group, told the Ally that they “[c]ame in contact with your fine paper while producing one of our own at Barksdale AFB” in Shreveport, Louisiana. Recently transferred to K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan, he hoped to start a new paper and sought aid from the Ally.51 Efforts like all these were unpredictable and often short-lived, but they reveal a story of bottom-up undertakings by troops across the globe to join the wider GI movement that they had heard about through word-of-mouth and read about in the underground press. In contrast to the cultural story line that posits soldiers’ burning hostility to the civilian antiwar movement, some GIs wrote letters that professed their solidarity with protesters back home. “The guys in Phu Bai will support the December 24th MORATORIUM,” declared a 1969 Christmas card to the Ally.52 The Phu Bai troops were not alone in their sentiments. A marine who initiated a petition in support of the “Xmas Moratorium” informed the Ally in February 1970 that “59 Marines and 1 Corpsman” had signed it and that “we have more planned in the coming months.”53 According to the New York Times, at least 125 troops at Long Binh signed a petition “to express our support for the Vietnam war Moratorium.” Some wore black armbands in solidarity with the stateside protests.54 Assertions like these show that, while some troops surely resented the antiwar movement back home, many also identified with it and felt it spoke to their own concerns. In fact, some soldiers were openly bitter toward the critics of the antiwar movement. “They ought to send over some of those people who are for the war,” one grunt at Firebase Dragonhead, Vietnam, told Newsweek. “Send some of those brave politicians and hardhats and see if they like it so much.”55 Some reports of disobedience were less ideological and grew out of immediate conditions of desperation and anger. One marine, writing from Quang Tri, was “going back to the brig for being U.A. [ Unauthorized Absence] again.” He was avoiding combat, he explained, because he needed to stay alive to support his disabled, desperately poor mother back home. “I have explained to these damn lifers that I just want out of the field,” he wrote. “If I die for this dumb ass war my family will be lost. It would kill my mom. . . . All this at home plus these miserable lifers getting us killed really tears me up.”56 Many other letters, similar in tone, expressed this kind of resentment toward a range of perceived infringements upon the livelihoods of GIs, from drug busts to undue harassment, meaningless work assignments to dangerous orders. Like the marine

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from Quang Tri, they told of reluctant acts of defiance that weren’t overtly political but rather a form of what Fred Gardner, the founder of the GI coffeehouse movement, called “vague survival politics” to endure the war and return home with their bodies and minds in one piece.57 Not all GIs sent cheery reports to the Ally. Some told of the obstacles they faced in their organizing efforts. Many soldiers may have sympathized with the GI movement but were nevertheless too indifferent or afraid to directly take part. One servicemember at Hulbert Field Air Force Base, Florida, may have had “hip” guys in his barracks, but they were too “apathetic and scared of reprisals” to do much.58 Another GI felt that drug use pacified and depoliticized his fellow troops. The “attitude of the people . . . against the Army” at his base was “great,” and “very few people” took “shit from the lifers,” but drugs nevertheless served as an alternative to more direct resistance. “Everyone hates the Army, smokes dope want [sic] peace, end the war,” he said, “[b]ut very seldom do I hear a conversation on Vietnam.” Moreover, sympathy for the peace movement could seem shallow and contradictory. “Everyone sticks up a peace sign,” he complained, “but five minutes later there [sic] talking about killing someone” and “how many ‘gooks’ they killed.”59 Letters like these provide insight into why, despite the collapse in morale and deep antiwar feelings among many lower-ranking troops during the Vietnam War, active participation in the GI movement remained relatively miniscule when compared to the sheer number of enlisted soldiers. Various obstacles—apathy, cynicism, fear, escapism through drugs, low levels of political sophistication, contradictory sentiments, or a desire to just quietly wait out one’s service—hindered the rise of a larger GI movement. l After the Vietnam War ended, Smith pondered why the Ally developed such a strong relationship with its readers. The GIs it reached, he recalled, felt “isolated,” “abused,” and “mistreated.” The Ally recognized this. It said, “[T]hat’s right . . . you’re getting screwed over.” With that, “a bond was formed. We became their ally. And that’s what we wanted to be, their allies.”60 And for nearly four years, the Ally did its best to serve as a tribune for thousands of antiwar soldiers. But as the Vietnam War drew down and the GI movement ebbed, so did the Ally cease publication as a GI paper. Its last issue aimed toward military personnel was minted in 1972.61 On its own, the Ally stands as a powerful case study of the print culture of the GI underground press. It had a long run and a wide readership, and thoroughly integrated its soldier-readers into nearly every aspect of its production and circulation. Papers like the Ally were key vehicles for building soldier dissent and giving it coherence in the form of a shared story, imagery, and a

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sense of global community. These papers allowed GIs to feel as though they were meaningfully participating in a larger antiwar movement, and they were important for turning local and decentralized dissatisfaction into “the GI movement.” Perhaps most of all, the Ally was able to connect with its readers because it recognized their plight and spoke to their beliefs and experiences. The histories of the Ally and the GI underground press are windows into the world, still quite hidden, of soldier dissent and disobedience that swept the late Vietnam-era military, perhaps the most significant front of the wider antiwar movement. The story of the Ally also provides general insights into the relationship between protest and print forms, especially with regard to print protest that exists within contexts that militate against more structured and predictable operations. In particular, three aspects of the history of the Ally stand out. First, the interactive production of the paper and the manner in which editors incorporated the views of readers from afar into the pages of the Ally were instrumental to its popularity and success. Soldiers who read the Ally may have been scattered across the world with few resources of their own, but they were able to contribute to the paper’s content through their feedback. This recognition of their feelings and experiences gave GIs a sense of ownership over the paper that provided a unifying voice across geographical distance that in turn motivated local distribution efforts. Second, within the confines of military life, soldiers’ circulation of the Ally became an expression of protest in itself. Dissemination of papers like the Ally didn’t just spread the word about GI protest: it was a constitutive act of the GI movement. Dissent and distribution merged, the latter serving as a vehicle for the former. Third, the bottom-up efforts by soldier-readers to initiate local hubs for dissemination enabled the Ally to flourish within a context that prevented a stable, centrally-directed distribution circuit. The transience of military life and stifling of the spread of dissident papers by authorities was overcome by a circulation system characterized by the erratic yet consistent rise of new loci for distribution. These three aspects of the Ally—interactive production, distribution as dissent, decentralized hubs for circulation—overlapped with and reinforced one another and taken together they shed light on how print protest can grow and survive within difficult environments. Finally, the story of the GI underground press deepens our understanding of the relationship between the US military and protest movements during the Vietnam era. Cultural memory in the United States about the Vietnam War and the 1960s tends to posit a “soldiers versus protesters” narrative that imagines the military and society as existing in separate and even hostile universes. But the history of Vietnam-era soldier dissent points to a more complicated reality. The armed forces were not immune to the social and political tensions of the 1960s. The protest of that era spilled into the military as a layer of soldiers

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brought the mass movements of their day into the ranks. While some troops surely resented the demonstrators at home, others forged themselves into constituents of the wider antiwar movement and opened a new and dynamic front for it within the armed forces. The oppositional press that flourished in places like Berkeley and New York also circulated within the military. Myths of spitting demonstrators and “baby killer” chants aside, antiwar civilians by and large sympathized with the plight of soldiers, and they helped many GIs to carve out a place for themselves within the peace movement.62 The memory of this vibrant history of GI dissent and the extent to which protest sentiment stretched into the military has been all but lost on a post-Vietnam America. The stories of the GI underground press and papers like the Ally help us to remember it. Notes 1. Eighty-Sixth Maintenance Battalion to the Ally, 20 June 1970, Box 2, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society (hereafter cited as WHS). 2. I acknowledge that the term “ordinary troops” is vague. The military is, after all, a diverse institution with different branches and a wide range of ranks and assignments. But I think the term captures the spirit of how the Ally viewed its intended audience: lower-ranking servicemembers who didn’t have much of a voice to express dissatisfied feelings toward military life, authority, and the war. This brings up another point: in this article I often use terms like “GIs,” “soldiers,” “troops,” “dissent,” and “antiwar” that are also imprecise. In part, the ambiguity grows out of my sources, particularly soldiers’ letters. The information that the letters reveal about the demographics and worldviews of their writers is limited, and some generalization and speculation is necessary. “Soldier,” for instance, could conceivably mean anything from a mail clerk to a combatant. “Antiwar” could mean opposition to war among those who were also dubious about the domestic antiwar movement. I’ve foregone diving into the complexity and gradations of these labels here. I’ve chosen to use my limited space in this volume to document and elaborate on my larger points about the existence of a vibrant GI antiwar press and its military readership, the dynamics of its interaction with personnel, and how this history sheds light on intersections between the 1960s protest movements and the military that conventional narratives typically overlook. 3. Hollywood, the media, and politicians have played the major role in upholding the “protesters versus soldiers” narrative and its various facets, the most pervasive of which is the trope of returning veterans being spit upon and called baby killers by ungrateful antiwar demonstrators. Though this “spit upon myth” has been debunked by Jerry Lembcke, it has a deep hold within American culture and has profoundly shaped popular memory about the Vietnam War in the United States. See Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, 2000). Historians in recent years have begun to paint a more complex and nuanced relationship between society and the military during the Vietnam era. However, there is still a paucity of scholarship on the history of active-duty GI dissent during the Vietnam

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War. Moreover, this story has not been sufficiently integrated into broader historical narratives that surround the antiwar movement, the Vietnam-era military, or the wider conglomeration of protest upsurge commonly known as “The Sixties.” The most authoritative study of the topic is David Cortright’s Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War, originally published in 1975 (New York: Anchor Press) and reissued in 2005 (Chicago: Haymarket Books). Over two decades later, Richard Moser’s The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent during the Vietnam Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996) theorized about both GI and veteran dissent against the backdrop of the American culture. Since then, several other works that touch on various aspects of Vietnam-era GI protest have been published. These include James Lewes’s Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003) and a handful of books that touch on African American GI dissent. (It should be noted that I am here referring specifically to scholarship on the history of dissent by enlisted servicemembers during service and within a military context. More works exist on the Vietnamera antiwar veterans’ movement led by Vietnam Veterans against the War.) 4. “The Peace GIs,” Newsweek, April 21, 1969, 36–37. 5. Estimates on the number of GI underground papers vary widely, and there is no sure way of knowing how many different papers surfaced since some were very local and short-lived. Estimates also depend on how broadly or narrowly one defines a GI paper. Lawrence B. Radine claims there were 245 GI papers (see Taming of the Troops: Social Control in the United States Army [ Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977]). Radine cites the US government’s numbers. 6. Bob and Dick to Donna Mickelson, October 1968, Box 1, Folder 11, USSF Collection, WHS. 7. Letter from A1C, Da Nang, Vietnam GI, June 1968, 2; Letter from Sgt., Lackland AFB, Vietnam GI, June 1968, 2. Author’s personal collection. 8. Joe Pilati, “The Underground GI Press,” Commonweal, September 19, 1968, 559–61. 9. James P. Danky, “The Oppositional Press,” in The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America, ed. David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, vol. 5 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 272–73. 10. Much has been written, both real-time journalistic accounts and later scholarly studies, about the crisis of the late Vietnam-era military. A few places to start are with Col. Robert D. Heinl Jr., “The Collapse of the Armed Forces,” Armed Forces Journal, June 7, 1971; Cincinnatus, Self-Destruction: The Disintegration and Decay of the United States Army during the Vietnam Era (New York: Norton, 1981); Haynes Johnson and George C. Wilson, Army in Anguish (New York: Pocket Books, 1972); and Edward King, The Death of the Army: A Pre-Mortem (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972). 11. The list of GI groups and civilian and legal aid groups is too exhaustive to list here, but a few examples of antiwar soldier organizations were GIs United against the War in Vietnam, GIs for Peace, the American Servicemen’s Union, and the Movement for a Democratic Military. These groups had presences at Fort Jackson, Fort Bragg, Fort Bliss, Fort Sill, Camp Pendleton, and other bases. Civilian and legal aid groups included the GI Civil Liberties Defense Committee, the Pacific Counseling Service, the United States Servicemen’s Fund, and many others.

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12. One example of the government’s alarm over the GI movement is seen in a series of hearings devoted to the topic of subversion within the armed forces. See United States, Investigation of Attempts to Subvert the United States Armed Services, Hearings, 92nd Cong. Parts 1–3 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1972). 13. My analysis of the Vietnam-era GI movement draws heavily on primary source collections. Secondary literature on the GI movement includes David Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt (2005); and Moser, The New Winter. 14. The following quote is just one example of how a soldier became interested in the GI movement by way of reading the Ally. The soldier wrote: “After reading one of your issues, I was highly impressed with your accurate summary of the conditions which prevail in the military. I would like to become a part of the movement to break this green machine, as it has attempted to break so many men.” The author requested the “honor” of distributing twenty-five copies of the paper to “the kind of people who would treasure it as a source of hope and inspiration.” LMG to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 15. Clark Smith to Lucie Stern Foundation, 1 August 1970, Box 1, Folder 9, Clark Smith Collection, WHS; and Clark Smith to Professor Ray Kelsey, 28 December 1968, Box 1, Folder 2, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 16. David Cortright discusses the role of the Bay Area in the rise of the GI movement. See Cortright, Soldiers in Revolt (2005), 58. Also see Steve Rees and Peter Booth Wiley, “Up Against the Bulkhead: A Photo Essay with Text,” in Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco, 1968–1978, ed. Chris Carlsson and Lisa Ruth Elliott (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Foundation Books, 2011), 108–20. 17. “Motivation of the Publisher,” p. 6, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of the Ally, in Berkeley, California,” accessed in April 2010, Douglas Pike Collection, Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive, www.vietnam.ttu.edu. 18. Undated flyer: “Help the Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support the Ally,” Box 1, Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. The Ally’s editorial thrust also reflected larger strategic divisions within the nascent GI movement. Smith wanted to produce something different from the Bay Area’s other prominent GI paper, the Bond. Run by the radical American Servicemen’s Union, the Bond pushed an “ultra-radical” Marxist analysis, and Smith believed “its rhetoric was just too militantly left” for most GIs. The Ally would stress “GI civil rights” and present a style and substance more palatable to the ordinary servicemember. The Bond, however, became roughly as popular as the Ally. That such a range of political dispositions connected with soldiers attests to the deep antiwar sentiment that flooded the ranks of the Vietnam-era military. See “Motivation of the Publisher,” pp. 1–5, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of the Ally, in Berkeley, California.” 19. “Motivation of the Publisher,” p. 6, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of the Ally, in Berkeley, California.” 20. Undated flyer: “Help the Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support the Ally.” 21. Letter from [name withheld] L/Cpl, USMC, the Ally, June 1968, No. 5, 4; Letter from [name withheld], “Vietnam,” the Ally, June 1968, No. 5, 8, Underground GI Newspaper Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University.

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22. The Ally History, Box 1, Folder 7, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. This number is probably an exaggeration. The 100,000 figure was based on the speculation that individual issues often passed through many hands (which was true) and that, therefore, a print run of 20,000 would reach several times that amount. However, the 100,000 figure seems like a big stretch since not all issues got into soldiers’ hands, and the issues that did get to GIs were not necessarily circulated to multiple troops. Moreover, the 100,000 figure was used when Smith was trying to obtain grant funds for the paper, so he had an obvious interest in playing up the readership numbers. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the Ally reached thousands of troops over its lifespan and that its readership was wide for a dissident military paper. 23. “The Peace GI’s,” Newsweek, April 21, 1969, 36–37. 24. The Ally alone claimed to have a thousand distributors on the inside. Even if this were an exaggeration, letters indicate that the Ally had, at least, distributors numbering in the hundreds. If we take into account the existence of scores of other GI papers, we can reasonably estimate that the total number of distributors of the underground press was in the low thousands. Clark Smith to Lucie Stern Foundation, 1 August 1970, Box 1, Folder 9, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 25. SRM, SCK, and FJH to the Ally, 3 January 1971, Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. I have used here, and from herein will only use, the initials of the names of letter writers who have signed their full names. And for those writers who have included only their first names, I will use only first names. I am using just initials and first names for reasons of protecting the privacy of letter writers. 26. JC in Phu Bai to the Ally, 11 September 1971, Box 2, Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 27. Sp4 KM to the Ally, 5 December [no year], Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 28. Letter signed “Love, Peace and FTA” to the Ally, 5 May 1970, Box 2, Folder 5, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 29. TS to the Ally, 16 March 1971, Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 30. Mike to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 31. RDH to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 32. “Objectives of the Newspaper,” p. 7, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of the Ally, in Berkeley, California.” 33. Undated flyer: “Help the Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support the Ally.” 34. RM to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 35. Undated flyer: “Help the Anti-War GIs Help Themselves: Support the Ally.” 36. Rick, Da Nang, to the Ally, n.d., Box 3, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 37. IS to the Ally, n.d, Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 38. [Name illegible] to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 4, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 39. Sp4 RVN to the Ally, n.d., Box 3, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 40. George, Da Nang, to the Ally, 2 November 1969, Box 2, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 41. LR to the Ally, 5 February 1970, Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 42. Murray Polner, “The Underground GI Press,” Columbia Journalism Review 9, no. 3 (Fall 1970): 54–57.

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43. Sp5 DF to the Ally, in the Ally, June 1968, p. 8, Tamiment; Joe to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 44. Butch to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 45. Sp4 “Getting Short and Getting Out” to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 46. BS to the Ally, 19 May 1971, Box 2, Folder 2, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 47. Sgt. TL to the Ally, 9 October 1968, Box 2, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 48. JCM to the Ally, 5 June 1972, Box 2, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 49. DR to the Ally, 13 May 1971, Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 50. MG Qm3 to the Ally, n.d., Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 51. Rudi to the Ally, 23 November 1970, Box 2, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 52. Christmas card, undated, Cover: “Mung Le Giang Sinh. Merry Christmas,” Box 1, Folder 17, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 53. SR to the Ally, 7 February 1970, Box 2, Folder 6, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 54. James A. Sterba, “A War Critic in Vietnam,” New York Times, November 14, 1969, 21. Solidarity efforts with the Moratorium protests by some soldiers in Vietnam are further confirmed by the archival collections of the Vietnam Moratorium Committee. See Vietnam Moratorium Committee Records, Box 1, Folder 7, WHS, for correspondence between antiwar GIs and the Moratorium Committee that concerns joint undertakings, particularly the effort to publish a Moratorium newspaper ad signed by activeduty troops in Vietnam. 55. Kevin Buckley, “You Can Have Your Own Little Castle,” Newsweek, January 11, 1971; also see Hal Wingo, “From GIs in Vietnam, Unexpected Cheers,” Life, October 24, 1969, 36, found in Box 9, Folder 4, Steve Rees Collection, WHS. 56. Pvt. [illegible] B. to the Ally, n.d., Box 3, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 57. Fred Gardner, “War and GI Morale,” New York Times, November 21, 1970, 31. 58. A1C HJR to the Ally, n.d., Box 3, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 59. Billy to Clark Smith, 12 August 1970, Box 3, Folder 3, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 60. “Objectives of the Newspaper,” p. 9, in “The Writer Interviewed, Clark Smith, Publisher of the Ally, in Berkeley, California.” 61. There was an attempt to revive the Ally in January 1974, when at least one issue was released (the first issue since October 1972). It seems that this effort was short-lived and irregular, and the paper’s content no longer covered predominantly military and soldier issues. As for Clark Smith, his experience with the Ally shaped his later activities as he went on to a long career dedicated to veterans’ issues. Over the next two decades, he compiled dozens of oral interviews with combat veterans, published an oral history book about the experiences of African American troops, and participated extensively in activism around Agent Orange and troops’ exposure to toxic chemicals during their service. See Box 1, Folder 1, Clark Smith Collection, WHS. 62. Jerry Lembcke has convincingly analyzed the rise and function of the myth that antiwar protesters spat upon returning Vietnam veterans. See Lembcke, The Spitting Image.

The Clowning of Richard Nixon in the Underground Press Micah Robbins

Richard Milhous Nixon’s abuse of power cast a dark shadow over his short-

lived second term, and by April 1974, his brazen obstruction of justice mobilized thousands of outraged citizens to march on Washington for the first mass protest since his second inauguration. The New York Times reported that 6,500 “spirited but good natured” protesters converged on the nation’s capital, “accompanied by rock music, streakers and the fragrance of marijuana,” to demand the “speedy impeachment” of a president who had long been the target of popular dissent.1 Nixon had spent his second term staunchly resisting the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the Watergate crimes. In a last-ditch effort to suppress the sordid details captured on subpoenaed White House audio tapes, Nixon finally released redacted transcripts of his conversations just three days after the April protest—more than twelve hundred pages that presented the American public with a verbal record of a foul-mouthed national leader with a set of personal and political scores to settle.2 This paranoid, vindictive Nixon was in crucial ways at odds with the various personae he attempted to construct over the course of his long political career, thus confirming what many Americans suspected all along: Richard Nixon was no stable entity. The 6,500 people who gathered in Washington to demand his impeachment understood this, and—in an act of real political clarity—five protesters demonstrated the urgency of exposing Nixon’s crimes by shedding their clothes, donning cheap Nixon masks, and streaking through Washington’s crowded streets. These five naked “Tricky Dicks” participated in an aggressive, often obscene, mode of satire that circulated widely among the countercultural New Left, most notably in the pages of the underground press. The long Sixties—a 203

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period marked by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education on one end, and the 1975 fall of Saigon on the other—witnessed the resurgence of a vibrant, politically engaged journalism that challenged mainstream views of American hegemony.3 Publications like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Fifth Estate, to name just a few of the hundreds of underground newspapers that circulated throughout the period, established an alternative media that presented readers with starkly contrarian editorial views, thus returning to the unconstrained, activist tactics of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century press.4 Disposing of the so-called objectivity that lent the nation’s mainstream media its aura of authoritative truth-value, the underground press opted instead for a heady mix of fiery polemics, muckraking investigative reports, participant accounts of various protests movements, and edgy underground comix.5 While these newspapers were often overtly militant, they also leveled biting satirical attacks on mainstream social mores and public figures alike. Radical press-workers deployed defamatory satire in an attempt to counteract the public-relations techniques national leaders used to manipulate their public images and, by extension, public opinion. They did so most memorably in their relentless assault on Richard Nixon.6 Drawing on a range of irreverent tactics, alternative journalists and cartoonists advanced a sustained satirical attack on Nixon’s disingenuous, manipulative public personae. By targeting a US president with open defamation, these satirists engaged in direct political resistance to the mass-media spectacle that allows power to diffuse itself through the public-relations apparatus, and they did so by seizing on the power of print to mock, deride, and indeed libel Nixon in an effort to further galvanize a radical movement for social change. Nixon well understood that for a modern politician, “concern for image must rank with concern for substance,” and also that heads of state “must try to master the art of manipulating the media not only to win in politics but in order to further the programs and causes they believe in.”7 Nixon proved remarkably adept at such manipulation. In repeated attempts to create a “new Nixon,” he concentrated within his public personae what Marxist theorist Guy Debord calls “the seemingly lived, the object of identification with apparent life without depth.” Debord argues that the primacy of image in mid-twentieth-century global politics indicates a distinct socioeconomic shift in which “everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation,” and that when such mediation succeeds in dominating the public sphere, “the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.”8 Nixon seems to have intuitively grasped this principle. He realized that his ability to govern in an age of mass media depended on his ability to project a series of images in which the American people could identify their values, aspirations, and experiences. These included Nixon the vigilant anti-Communist, Nixon the champion of law and order and “peace with

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honor,” Nixon the progressive foreign policy expert, and, ironically, Nixon the victim of a hostile press. He donned these various personae like masks, a fact his critics picked up on with comic gusto, as when the five masked streakers mocked Nixon as a manipulative national leader finally stripped bare before the American people. As historian David Greenberg notes in his excellent study of Nixon’s many political metamorphoses, “the Nixon mask is powerful because it’s redundant—the mask of a man who seems to be wearing a mask already.”9 Satirical Nixon masks exemplify how Nixon’s political career was ultimately corroded by the very forces he helped to shape. Indeed, Nixon’s critics often seized on his plasticity in order to discredit him as a media-savvy charlatan who performed a series of politically expedient personae designed to secure his career and disguise his abuse of power. When Adlai Stevenson lamented, “This is a man of many masks, but who can say they have seen his real face?” he gave voice to an anxiety many Americans experienced throughout Nixon’s long career in public office.10 Though his repeated reinventions helped Nixon establish himself as a near-permanent fixture of Cold War American politics, they also subjected him to pointed accusations of inauthenticity. In fact, a troublesome sense of insincerity proved to be one of the principle challenges to his ability to maintain a good reputation. Here again Greenberg reminds us that although “no postwar politician did more to educate Americans to the primacy of images in politics” than Richard Nixon, he remains, perhaps, more than any twentieth-century politician, “exceptionally implicated in questions of authenticity.”11 These questions became all the more urgent as his career advanced and the public became increasingly aware of his efforts to manipulate the media and limit public access to government information. His detractors’ frequent criticism of the many public Nixons posited a menacing counterpersona that subtly undermined his efforts over the course of his career in national politics: a sweaty, scowling, heavy-jowled, and malevolent man from whom one should be wary of when buying a used car. A crook. A liar. A “Tricky Dick.” Humor played a significant role in establishing and validating this alternative Nixon. Stephen J. Whitfield argues that “it is doubtful whether any postwar American politician, or even any chief executive in our history, ever evoked so much mirth—much of it angry—as [ Nixon]. Perhaps no other figure in our two centuries of experimentation in self-government tickled so extensively and so intensely the funny bones of the electorate.”12 Nixon was indeed dogged by the likes of political cartoonist Herblock, who relentlessly highlighted his sinister features in the popular press, and Mort Sahl, who popularized the question, “Would you buy a used car from this man?” He had to contend with popular impressionist David Frye, who issued a number of defamatory recordings portraying Nixon engaged in illicit behaviors such as smoking marijuana.13 Gore Vidal’s 1972 play An Evening with Richard Nixon represents Nixon as a

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morally ambiguous hypocrite willing to engage in a range of illegal activities so long as they paid political dividends. 14 Drawn almost entirely from the historical record, the play aims to “arouse ridicule and disgust” at Nixon’s “shadiness” and the hypocritical “pieties that seemed to have marked his career.”15 Like Vidal, the documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio used the historical record—in this case documentary film footage—to cast Nixon as an oafish fool in Millhouse: A White Comedy (1971). De Antonio edits the film in such a way as to present Nixon in only his worst moments, thus emphasizing the ugly qualities of his public personae.16 Despite their relatively mild tone, these humorists should be understood as functioning alongside more aggressive satirists like Robert Coover, Philip Roth, and Ishmael Reed in fouling Nixon’s public image.17 And there are many of these satirists. After all, diffusing such humor throughout the culture is important work because it targets the artificial, media-induced character of institutional power and political authority. As Mikhail Bakhtin notes, those who exercise authority in a society often “do not recognize their own ridiculous faces” as they continue in the presumed stability of their role ignorant of the fact that “their spectators have been laughing for a long time.” The crowd’s laughter destabilizes authority, actively sapping truthvalue from institutionalized power and rendering the sovereign “a comic monster that the laughing crowd rends to pieces.”18 Such comic iconoclasm is nowhere more evident than in the underground press. Whereas the establishment press maintained a measure of decorum even when issuing pointed critiques of Nixon and his policies, the underground press allowed their repulsion for the president to exceed normative and indeed legal standards of critical representation. Compare, for instance, two images that highlight Nixon’s manipulation of the media. The first illustration, Herblock’s “Here He Comes Now,” appeared in the Washington Post.19 In it a heavy-browed, ill-shaven Nixon is about to be greeted by supporters as he climbs out of a sewer. The image is a humorous critique of the negative media blitzkrieg Nixon launched against his opponents during his vice presidential campaign, a strategy then Democratic Chairman Steven Mitchell referred to as a “gutter campaign.”20 The illustration is scatological and insulting (Nixon is rumored to have canceled his subscription to the paper after seeing the image), but it fits firmly within the tradition of political cartoons that deploy mild potty humor to enhance their points. The second image, “Rosemerica’s Baby,” is a doublepage spread by Dick Guindon. It appeared in the underground satirical publication the Realist and composes part of a comic strip entitled “How Nixon Actually Got into Power.”21 Guindon portrays a recognizable, though thoroughly grotesque, Nixon—part human, part beast, and even part television, which satirically advertises a combination of corporate interests and repressive government agencies—hovering over a sleeping Lady Liberty, his distorted grublike penis extended between her legs (figure 19). The point the image makes about

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Figure 19.  Dick Guindon, “Rosemerica’s Baby,” Realist.

the relationship between Nixon’s power and the mass media is even clearer than Herblock’s, but its viciousness belies a more urgent critique than that seen anywhere in the establishment press. Nixon is a monstrous rapist of liberty—a serious charge indeed!—and the image bluntly travesties the popular media as a virtual Nixon appendage. The Realist’s brand of aggressive iconoclasm circulated through the underground press with surprising regularity. Throughout the long Sixties, Nixon became the common butt of an ongoing dirty joke. Underground satires drew on scatological, genital, and even cannibalistic tropes in order to tarnish the pretensions of official dignity and authority that Nixon enjoyed, in part at least, through the mainstream press’s “professional” coverage of his various campaigns and administrations. They boldly stepped way beyond the establishment press’s “Fit to Print” rubric and developed an alternative political discourse that borrowed its tone and character from newly radicalized college campuses and countercultural bohemian scenes, springing up in the fixed-rent neighborhoods of America’s major cities. Take, for example, a particularly witty display of disdain for Nixon’s politics: A few years after the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign assured voters that he was “The One,” his radical detractors in Berkeley, California, produced and distributed bumper stickers insisting that “Nixon’s Father Should Have Pulled Out Early!”22 This bumper sticker is effective because it posits a prevalent public opinion—that Nixon should have accelerated the drawdown of US military involvement in Vietnam—at the

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same time that it gives voice to the New Left’s utter disdain for Nixon. It also appeals to a strain of sexual humor designed to satirically debase him; the bumper sticker suggests that Nixon’s spring 1912 conception in Yorba Linda is more offensive than the sticky by-product of coitus interruptus. By the early 1970s, Nixon had become, in the eyes of the radical Left, worse than a come stain, and the disgust they felt toward him and his policies exceeded the norms of polite political discourse modeled by the establishment press. The outrage young radicals manifested when they attached this satirical sticker to vehicles in the Bay Area cannot be separated from the policies that jeopardized their educations, potential livelihoods, indeed their very lives. Foremost among these policies was the draft that actively conscripted nearly two million young men into the armed services between 1965 and 1973. The draft was perhaps the policy that most galvanized young radicals during Nixon’s tenure in the White House, and the urgency of the response to what many young people rightly perceived as a state-sponsored death sentence translated into vituperative depictions of the man behind the policy. For example, the Alternative Features Service, an underground syndication network that distributed underground press materials from Berkeley, California, to various campus and community newspapers throughout the country, circulated a grotesque illustration of Nixon as a cannibalistic toy clown. The image portrays an ill-shaven Nixon springing from a windup jack-in-the-box, his eyes crossed toward an enormous phallic nose that protrudes from his maniacal face. He wears a crown, his heavy jowls painted with clown makeup; stars and stripes festoon one side of the box, while the other boldly advertises the president as a “Dick in the Box.” A queue of anonymous figures holding 1-A forms files into a door on the flag-side of the box before emerging from the opposite side dressed in battle fatigues and shouldering rifles with bayonets fixed. The cartoon’s caption reads: “May I Take Your Body, Please.”23 The image derides Nixon as a malevolent ruler lurking over the lives of America’s youth—an omnipresent, grotesque war-machine à la Allen Ginsberg’s Moloch in “Howl”—and thus participates in a common trope that figures Nixon as a cannibalistic force nourishing its power on the bodies of innocent young men forced to fight in Vietnam. The anonymous illustrator denies Nixon’s attempt to present his policies as crucial to the defense of freedom and decency, positing instead an image of Nixon as demonic clown. While the illustration portrays Nixon as a buffoon and a tool, its central thrust is the imperial president’s vampiric bloodlust. Muhammad Khan I furthers this effort to refigure Nixon as a monstrous threat to America’s youth in an article published in the September 1969 issue of the Berkeley Barb. As in “Dick in the Box,” Khan’s satirically titled polemic “Draft Shaft from Dick” figures a Nixon driven by an appetite for the bodies of young, military-age men. Khan focuses specifically on Nixon’s hunger for the genitalia of potential draftees, as when he proclaims, “President Nixon wants

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your cock, cats. The whole fucking system of the military is geared to cut it off at the short hairs and deliver it on the platter of your soul to Tricky Dick.” After concluding that military service “renders most G.I.’s [sic] incapable of a tender relationship with a woman, especially a sexual relationship,” Khan proceeds to assign guilt for such a system to Nixon’s personal quest for power: “If Nixon can surround himself with emasculated soldiers and have the illusion of aarrgghh, Kreegah, Bundolo Tarzan strength, the energy of ALL their flaccid phalluses goes to none other than he himself.” Khan situates this satire in the larger context of military-industrial capitalism and its conditioning of passive citizens when, earlier in the article, he writes: “Nixon figures that if he can wipe out the psyches of the young men early, before they have a chance to go to college and listen to the dirty hippy-pinko-jewish-nigger plot, he will have a ready batch of docile idiots to harness to the industrial machinery.”24 This sentiment is echoed in a second article from the same issue of the Berkeley Barb entitled “Old Gory,” which again conflates passivity and castration: “Children learn to obey and recognize the dictates of society. They are castrated, and all trained to use all the life within them conforming to societal needs.”25 These societal needs are defined as military service, industrial labor, and consumerism, the very forces that undergirded US socioeconomic life during the Cold War. “Old Gory,” which includes a prominent photograph of Nixon, concludes with the provocative command: “So now, kids, when you pledge allegiance to the flag every morning, you will know why: that is Big Daddy’s foreskin hanging limply from its staff.”26 The image of school children pledging allegiance to a star-spangled foreskin is illustrated on the newspaper’s front cover, a full-page graphic that accurately renders Nixon “holding up an eight-foot salamander [i.e., an enormous penis] on top of which flies the American flag.”27 Standing at attention beneath the flag are a well-dressed woman, a military officer, and a young child.28 As was the case with so many of the long Sixties’ most provocative protests, the Berkeley Barb’s satirical representations of Nixon provoked the censors—a striking testament to the law’s complicity in normative political discourse. The Berkeley DA’s office seized the issue, arrested its editors, and charged them with distributing obscene materials. The editors countered with a lead article in the following issue entitled “You Can’t Kill with an Erection.” Mindful of the Supreme Court’s benchmark decision that a publication is only obscene if all of its parts are “utterly without redeeming social value” and clearly designed to arouse “prurient interest,” the op-ed argues that obscenity charges against the newspaper are ridiculous because the presence of an erection does not make the entire body obscene.29 In characteristic fashion, the editors illustrate the point on the issue’s front cover. The cartoon portrays an anthropomorphic copy of the Berkeley Barb sitting in a courtroom witness box beside a judge drawn in the shape of a gavel. The Berkeley Barb, clutching a bug-eyed prosecutor by the back of the neck, says: “This Little D.A. had an

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erection. Therefore, I accuse him of being entirely obscene.” The judge, echoing the sentiment expressed in both “Draft Shaft from Dick” and “Old Gory” regarding the relationship between castration and obedience, replies: “Yes, cut it off and make a decent law abiding citizen out of him.”30 Although the Berkeley Barb tended to portray Nixon as an insidious, castrating, and cannibalistic monster, some underground satirists imagined ways in which they could figuratively emasculate Nixon, thus turning the homophobia cold warriors so frequently used to slander leftists back against the conservative political establishment. For example, the Alternative Features Service distributed a packet containing a satirical article by Bill Smillie entitled “Obscene Tattoo Fingers Nixon’s Draft.” In it, Smillie recounts his experiences of trying to avoid conscription. He registered as a conscientious objector, fled to Europe, intentionally overdosed on LSD, and even masturbated in public. But he finds these tactics wanting, concluding that he “needed something with lasting vulgarity” in order to permanently free himself from the draft lottery. Smillie’s solution: an obscene tattoo. The article indicates that, according to the Armed Forces Procurement Standards, a potential draftee with a “tattoo on any part of the body, which in the opinion of the examining physician, is obscene or so extensive on exposed parts of the body as to be considered unsightly, is administratively disqualified.” Thrilled that such a loophole may save him from Vietnam, Smillie proceeds to narrate his experience having the phrase “UP NIXON’S DRAFT! under [the image of ] a BAD middle finger” tattooed on his body. The ruse works! The commanding officer at his induction center finds the tattoo disgusting and disqualifies him from service. The article, which concludes by suggesting other draftees can improve on Smillie’s technique by having “Up Nixon’s Draft HOLE” tattooed on themselves before induction, includes an illustration by Janet Yoshii of the obscene tattoo.31 Yoshii’s illustration figures the middle finger as a sex organ: squiggly lines emanating from the digit indicate a foul odor, and three squirts of semenlike fluid spurt from its tip. The image implies that the finger has indeed penetrated Nixon, suggesting that the person who wears it will figuratively fuck him by dodging the draft.32 Such figurative clowning realized its dangerousness in moments like the arrest of three undergraduate students at the University of Hartford for violating Connecticut’s obscene literature statute and a breach of the peace provision of the state’s libel law. The provision criminalized the publication of “offensive, indecent or abusive matter concerning any person.” The person abused in this case was none other than President-elect Nixon. The prosecution argued that the students had criminally libeled Nixon when, in the November 13, 1968, issue of the university’s student newspaper, the News-Liberated Press, they published a cartoon by the young artist John Zanzel “depicting a clenched fist, with the middle finger upraised, looking like a penis.”33 The image bore the caption: “Richard M. Nixon.” The similarity between this image and Yoshii’s Alternative

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Features Service illustration is striking. Both mock Nixon with an obscene gesture that doubles as a penis. They advance an obscene caricature of a notoriously straitlaced, prudish public figure that takes full advantage of his misfortune at having a name like “Dick.” Finally, both images figuratively queer Nixon, thus anticipating Robert Grossman’s vicious parody of the infamous photograph of Sammy Davis Jr. embracing Nixon from behind at the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. Grossman’s illustration, appearing on the October 1974 cover of the Realist and hilariously entitled “The Odd Couple,” portrays Nixon with his pants pulled down and his posterior pressed against Davis’s groin.34 The suggestion of homosexual intercourse is clear, and the image joins Yoshii’s “obscene tattoo” illustration and Zanzel’s Nixon-asfuck-finger illustration in attaching the idea of sexual violation to Nixon’s presidency. Although the prosecution eventually dropped the obscenity charges against Zanzel and the News-Liberated Press’s student editor Jack Hardy after the US Attorney’s office refused to prosecute the students for circulating obscene materials through the mail, it sustained the libel charge against Hardy, who soon became the only person in the twentieth century to be convicted of libeling a US president.35 It’s worth noting that the figurative queering/buggering of Nixon was not limited to underground newspapers alone; it extended through a range of nationally distributed satirical and pornographic magazines. Publications like the pornographic Screw and the satirical National Lampoon depicted Nixon as willfully engaging in a range of homosexual activity. The December 1973 cover of Screw, drawn by Edward Sorel, shows a cartoonish J. Edgar Hoover listening to Nixon’s secret White House recordings. What he hears shocks him as a voice moans, “Oh! Oh! That feels so good . . . Deeper, Bebe, deeper . . . Ohhhh! OH! BEBE! YOU’RE SO BIG!” “Bebe”—Nixon’s longtime friend Charles Rebozo—replies, “Thank you, Mr. President,” thus identifying the initial speaker as President Nixon.36 Sorel’s satire on Nixon’s White House as a site of closeted homoerotic activity was reiterated in the February 1974 issue of National Lampoon in a two-page comic strip entitled “K-Y Comics Presents: Dixie Nixon and the Boys in the Bund!” The comic portrays Nixon and his cabinet as a troupe of transvestite, sadomasochistic swingers who frolic through the White House in an orgiastic series of sexual escapades. Nixon, who variously refers to his cabinet as his “GORGEOUS GAYSTAPO,” his “REICHSFAG,” and his “A.S.S.,” repeatedly retreats into the Oval Office with presidential aid Jeb Magruder for erotic rendezvous. From behind closed doors, Nixon’s voice moans “JEB! JEB! OOOOHHHH, JEB!” echoing the refrain issued in the Sorel illustration.37 Both Screw and National Lampoon engage in gross stereotypes designed to travesty a notoriously straitlaced administration as a horde of lascivious, screaming perverts who use their political power to satisfy closeted sexual desires.

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There is a marked sense in which these satires participated in—and fell victim to—the very tactics they found so reprehensible when deployed by reactionary politicians like Richard Nixon. There was an apparent lack of sensitivity to the fact that mocking the Nixon administration as the “GORGEOUS GAYSTAPO” was akin to slandering a marginalized community of gay men who proved themselves vital to the long-term efficacy of the countercultural New Left. Yet it remains one of satire’s chief tactics to assume the ugly voice of whatever mentality it seeks to destroy, and many of these satires used homophobic attitudes ironically to target the Nixon administration’s moral hypocrisy. For example, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Paul Krassner published a piece he called “A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’s Memoirs” in Larry Flynt’s pornographic magazine Chic. Krassner begins the imagined memoirs by having Nixon defend himself against charges of homosexuality. He asserts that there is a malicious “tradition of accusing those who fight Communism of being homosexual. This smear tactic was used against Whittaker Chambers; against Senator Joseph McCarthy; against J. Edgar Hoover.”38 Ironic though Nixon’s argument may be—these men were, of course, notorious for drawing an arbitrary connection between homosexuality and communism—it contains an element of truth. As Andrea Friedman demonstrates in her essay “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics,” some prominent cold warriors were indeed accused of homosexuality in an effort to draw their moral authority into question.39 Though such accusations participate in the exclusionary construction of a normative sexuality, Krassner’s satire is designed to mock Nixon’s hypocritical reliance on conservative social mores rather than reaffirm such standards. Krassner has his Nixon, paranoid about falling victim to similar accusations, insist that he and his close confidant Charles “Bebe” Rebozo made a habit of hiring “a couple of beautiful $200-anight girls. Or, as they would be called nowadays, $200-a-night women,” to perform sexual favors, thus ensuring his heteronormativity. But by the satire’s conclusion, Nixon can no longer contain his appetite for homosexual contact. Agonizing over Watergate’s political and legal consequences, Nixon tells his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman that he can help alleviate the crisis by “sucking my cock.” To Nixon’s surprise, Haldeman drops to his knees and dutifully obeys his commander in chief. As the scene develops, Nixon muses: “As for my motivation, here was an exercise, not of homosexuality but of power. I realized that if I could order the Pentagon to bomb Cambodia, it was of no great consequence that I was now merely permitting my chief of staff to perform fellatio on me.”40 Krassner presents a delusional, out-of-control Nixon, a man drunk on power and eager to humiliate those under his authority. Like the Nixon we see in the Berkeley Barb, Krassner’s parody aims to expose the hypocritical, deviant angle of a national leader who, despite his political humiliations while in office, would maintain throughout his life a position as elder statesman within the Republican Party and, by extension, the nation itself.

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It’s important to remember that these incendiary satires flirted with state violence. The legal and extralegal networks of suppression that proliferated during the Cold War are well documented, and literary critics and legal historians have worked to explore the extent to which obscenity law, for example, was used to enforce normative values and behavior. Yet the value of defamation as a strategy for disrupting antidemocratic forces, especially the overtly absurd but powerfully offensive libels of the sort deployed by underground satirists, has been almost entirely ignored by literary and cultural critics alike. Though libel suits generally fall under tort law, it would be naive to ignore the politicolegal establishment’s willingness to mobilize its repressive arm to punish those it views as seditious. The conviction of Jack Hardy for publishing the Nixon-asmiddle-finger cartoon illustrates the point. The court’s attitude in this case, summed up in Judge Ewing’s assertion that the editor’s “malice” was proven by the simple “fact [the image] was published” at all, is commensurate with that expressed by Congressman Joe Pool, a notorious red-baiter and ranking member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), when he cautioned the American people against the dangers of underground press publications. Pool argued that the rhetoric deployed in the underground press was, in his estimation, the equivalent of “Molotov cocktails thrown at respectability and decency.” Identifying their principle tactic as “slander and libel,” Pool insisted that such publications “encourage depravity and irresponsibility, and they nurture a breakdown in the continued capacity of the government to conduct an orderly and constitutional society.”41 Such a breakdown was indeed one of the desired ends of the satires I’ve surveyed thus far. Many of these publications deployed slander and libel in hopes of destabilizing Nixon’s capacity to govern. Radical satirists understood the political power of image in an age of mass media, and they did their best to degrade Nixon’s public persona and defame his reputation, if only among the sizable number of cultural outsiders and progressive activists who formed the core readership of the underground press. But the significance of their assault on Nixon’s reputation goes beyond a complaint against a single individual. Their degradation of Nixon serves to remind their readers that reputation is not a private concern, but is in fact a construction of public discourse that reflects as much on the values of the public as it does on the “truth” of any individual person. These satires struggled to restore the power over image-making to a radically democratic mass movement. The power of the image is power itself, and those who control image-making, control what is perceived as real or valuable or just. The popular meaning and essence of a figure like Nixon must, therefore, be understood via signifying activity that continually constructs and reconstructs what the public understands to be Richard Nixon. So when the Associated Press distributed the ironic image of Sammy Davis Jr. embracing a clearly uncomfortable Nixon from behind during the 1972 Republican Convention, they irrevocably changed how the American people perceived their

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president. And when the Realist satirized the photograph by having Davis bugger Nixon from behind, it too participated in a process of constructing Nixon’s public persona, though it did so by targeting him as an object of derision—a public clown. These aggressive assaults on Nixon’s personae functioned in close proximity to violence, both symbolic and objective. Violence enters into such a project because derisive laughter worked to destabilize Nixon’s symbolic being, burdening him with the repeated challenge of defending and/or rehabilitating his image within the political field. In this sense, the ongoing accretion of perverse, grotesque, and degrading signifiers that coalesced around Nixon’s name accomplished something actual in the world—if only by energizing the nation’s large, politically active youth movement. Each new libel was an attempt to violently jar Nixon’s being in the symbolic order, reimagining him in terms of perversion and ethical monstrousness. In this respect the libelous satires published in the underground press offer examples of what Slavoj ˇZiˇzek describes as the “performative efficiency” of language. Rather than simply interpreting an ontological reality, language performs an “interpretation that determines the very being and social existence of the interpreted subjects.”42 Performative determination is always a dissimulation of violence. As Debord makes clear in Society of the Spectacle, such dissimulation in the age of mass media normally assumes a top-down, unilateral, totalitarian function. It forcefully manages sociosymbolic identity and advances an ideological program with which individual subjects must either synchronize their lives or enter into a dangerous, resistant relationship. The satirists in the underground press resisted, and they did so, as Steven Weisenburger notes of post–World War II satirists in general, by advancing an aggressive discourse dedicated to “exposing modalities of terror and of doing violence to cultural forms that are overtly or covertly dedicated to terror.”43 It is no coincidence then that libel is often referred to as “character assassination,” for degrading an individual’s reputation enacts a symbolic assault that cleaves to more overt forms of violence. Indeed, the genital/anal satire directed against Nixon circulated in close proximity to more militant calls to violence. This proximity illustrates the symbiotic relationship between defamatory satire and the performative militancy that characterized much of the long Sixties. Consider, for example, the headline in the December 12–16, 1969, issue of the Berkeley Barb: “Fuck Him in His Motherfucking Ass.”44 The article borrows its title from a public comment made by Roland Young, a DJ fired from the broadcast affiliate KSAN for suggesting that everyone send a telegram to the White House repeating a threatening comment that landed Black Panther Chief of Staff David Hilliard in prison. Hilliard uttered his statement—“Fuck Nixon, that motherfucker . . . we’ll kill him! We’ll kill any motherfucker that stands in the way of our freedom!”—in response to the government’s attempt

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to disrupt the Black Panthers’ various community-building projects in the San Francisco Bay Area. State and federal authorities took threats like Hilliard’s very seriously. As the Cold War advanced into the latter part of the twentieth century, domestic politics in the United States had become increasingly turbulent, and instances of extralegal political violence dramatically increased. In fact, a government panel determined that the nation had descended into a “crisis of violence” since Nixon’s inauguration in early 1969, and the White House, fearing the militant Left would launch “terrorist attacks on . . . members of the Cabinet, the Vice President, and the President himself,” operated in a “permanent sense of crisis.”45 So when, during a rally in which radicals chanted “Free the Panthers, Off the Pigs,” Young commandeered a sound truck and delivered a speech that concluded with the statement, “Fuck Nixon, that Motherfucker. Fuck him in the ass,” he spoke into a political atmosphere charged with a palpable sense of aggressive tension and fear weaned on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and other influential sociopolitical figures of the period. Both Hilliard’s and Young’s statements contributed to a cultural terrain in which hyperbolic expressions and instances of real violence were making themselves felt with increased frequency. The “crisis of violence” permeated the New Left’s consciousness throughout the long Sixties and found expression in a variety of satirical actions that registered the increasingly contentious cultural milieu. For example, in the weeks following the 1968 presidential election, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe) organized a series of antiwar activities in Washington, DC, designed to correspond with Nixon’s first inaugural. The demonstrations drew tens of thousands of protesters to the capital in what has come to be known as the first Counter-Inaugural. On the night of Nixon’s swearing-in, approximately 10,000 dissidents gathered in the rain and mud for the Counter-Inaugural Ball, an outdoor event featuring live music, dancing, and a light show. At the conclusion of the festivities, two men climbed atop a truck and enacted a mock inauguration. One man, wearing a dark robe and holding a copy of Reader’s Digest, administered the oath of office to another who had ingeniously donned a pig mask. The inauguration of a pig-man not only clowned Nixon by dragging the pomp and ceremony of his official inauguration into the figurative mud, it also extended a powerful satire developed most hilariously by the Youth International Party (Yippies) when, during the massive protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Phil Ochs announced the official candidacy of Pigasus the Immortal, a pink hog for which the Yippies hilariously demanded all the privileges extended to legitimate presidential candidates, including Secret Service protection and access to foreign policy briefings. When the Yippies announced Pigasus’s candidacy for president outside the Chicago

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Civic Center, the Chicago police moved in and arrested seven people (and Pigasus himself !) for “disorderly conduct,” bringing to a violent conclusion a satirical display of disenchantment with the American political system. The inauguration of a pig-man in Washington, DC, would come to a similarly violent end when, just as the new Counter-President turned to greet his constituents, a third actor gunned down the presidential pig in a comic yet horrifying mock assassination. As with some of the more radical anti-Nixon satires, the simulated violence performed at the conclusion of the Counter-Inaugural was designed to simultaneously tickle and disgust its audience, yet it did so in a manner that foregrounded its relationship to actual violence. The symbolic assassination of the presidential pig and the potential for physical violence against Nixon illustrate the deadly seriousness of what may seem, at first glance, to be nothing more than juvenile clowning around.46 The state’s attempt to limit the public’s ability to manipulate individual reputations, especially the reputations of state representatives, reveals its commitment to controlling the limits of political discourse. It also reveals the deep hypocrisy of a culture that presumes to protect the reputations of certain political, economic, and ethnic groups while subjecting others to widespread contempt. In one of his many defenses of the rhetoric deployed in the underground press, Allen Ginsberg challenged the hypocritical characterization of the New Left as “inflammatory,” arguing that leftist discourse must be placed within “the context of equally inflammatory ideology displayed in, say, Reader’s Digest with its historically inflammatory cold war fury or odd language about ‘dope fiends’; or New York Daily News which in editorials has proposed atombombing China counting 200 million persons at their own estimate as reasonable; or for that matter the New York Times whose business-as-usual reportage in this era of planetary ecological crisis occasionally inflames my own heart to fantasies of arson.”47 Ginsberg’s statement homes in on how mainstream media outlets actively assaulted the reputations of those they deemed deviant or hostile to conventional American values. Elected representatives such as Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Joe Pool took full advantage of the establishment media to apply such terms to the emancipatory avant-garde during the Cold War. Agnew in particular worked relentlessly to disparage Nixon’s detractors, and he soon earned a reputation as Nixon’s attack dog. Indeed, in a November 1969 issue of the underground Druid Free Press, the paper’s dissident editors published an illustration entitled “I Trained Him Myself !” which portrays Nixon holding Agnew on a leash as he runs on all fours like a dog toward a mass of antiwar protesters. Spewing from his mouth are “derogatory” labels such as “Anarchists,” “Reds,” “Intellectuals,” and “Impudent Snobs.”48 Such attacks and mischaracterizations, themselves arguably libelous, are what radical satirists had to contend with, and they were honest and direct about their intent to damn the good names of those, like President Nixon, behind a decades-long attempt to demonize and discredit leftist politics in the United States.

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Ginsberg’s statement well represents how the satirists surveyed in this essay understood their art as an aggressive and indeed violent mode of disrupting antidemocratic forces. Their libels constitute a significant moment in popular American political history. They revived a mode of satire and used it to complicate, strengthen, and embolden a resistant political movement, and they did so through a radical print culture that boldly challenged the conservative political discourse disseminated by establishment media. Underground press workers seized on exuberant, provocative, and openly obscene language and turned it to overt political ends. In the hands of these radicals, obscene speech became a weapon against repressive social mores, exploitative economics, white supremacy, and imperial foreign policy; and they had to fight against powerful politicolegal forces to ensure their right to use the language they deemed appropriate when commenting on the troubling issues that confronted American society during the Cold War. In his well-documented study of legal and extralegal censorship of the underground press, Geoffrey Rips writes: “Obscenity laws gave the police a tool that appealed to citizens disturbed by turbulent changes in the sexual mores of a large youthful population. While underground papers were describing napalming, bombing and defoliation in Vietnam and Cambodia as government-sponsored obscenities, police agents were prosecuting alternative journalists for printing four-letter words, ‘lewd’ pictures, or depicting people making love. When the underground press transgressed conventional ideas of public decency, the government exploited the possibilities of clouding the issue of free expression.”49 Yet despite this legal backlash, the underground press would persist in expanding the boundaries of First Amendment speech rights, pushing obscenity in ever more provocative and legally tenuous directions. They did so, in part, by developing the bold tactic of clowning concrete, explicitly defined public figures such as Richard Nixon with wildly obscene, satirical invective—libelous representations that opened a new front in the fight for liberated political speech. Notes 1. “Thousands Demonstrate to Speed Impeachment,” New York Times, April 28, 1974. 2. For more on Nixon’s attempt to obstruct justice during the Watergate scandal, see Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974); Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (New York: Knopf, 1990) and Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Free Press, 1997); Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991); and Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Random House, 1994). 3. For a more detailed explanation of “the long Sixties,” see Jeremy Varon, Michael S. Foley, and John McMillian, “Time Is an Ocean: The Past and the Future of the Sixties,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture 1, no. 1 (2008): 1–7.

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4. Rodger Streitmatter makes a similar point, placing the underground press in a clearly delineated print tradition going back to the early nineteenth-century labor movement in his wide-ranging Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). 5. For more on the underground press, see Laurence Leamer, The Paper Revolutionaries: The Rise of the Underground Press (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972); David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981); Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Geoffrey Rips, The Campaign against the Underground Press, ed. Anne Janowitz and Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1981); John McMillian, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Sean Stewart, ed., On the Ground: An Illustrated Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011). 6. While my work focuses on satirical representations of Richard Nixon, many satirists aimed their barbs at Lyndon Johnson as well. This is true of the underground press, which regularly satirized Nixon’s predecessor, but we also see notable antiJohnson satires in Barbara Garson’s 1967 play MacBird! and Paul Krassner’s 1967 short story “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book,” a wildly satirical fiction that concludes with Johnson sexually penetrating the throat of Kennedy’s corpse on board Air Force One. See Barbara Garson, MacBird! (New York: Grove, 1967), and Paul Krassner, “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book,” Realist 74 (1967): 1 and 18. 7. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 354. 8. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967, trans. Anonymous (Detroit: Black & Red Press, 1970), 31, 6, and 11, respectively. 9. David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), xvi. 10. Harrison E. Salisbury, “Stevenson Says Nixon Is a ‘Man of Many Masks,’” New York Times, October 18, 1956. 11. Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, xxvi. 12. Stephen J. Whitfield, “Nixon as a Comic Figure,” American Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1985): 114. 13. See, for example, David Frye, I Am the President/Radio Free Nixon, Collector’s Choice, 2006, 2 compact discs, originally released in 1970 and 1971. 14. Gore Vidal, An Evening with Richard Nixon (New York: Random House, 1972). 15. Whitfield, “Nixon as a Comic Figure,” 120. 16. See Emile de Antonio, Millhouse: A White Comedy, 1971, DVD (Finland: Turin Film Productions, 1988). 17. For American literature’s most vicious satires on Richard Nixon, see Robert Coover, The Public Burning (New York: Viking, 1977); Philip Roth, Our Gang (New York: Random House, 1971); and Ishmael Reed, “D Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful,” 19 Necromancers from Now: An Anthology of Original American Writing for the 1970s, ed. Ishmael Reed (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 293–309. 18. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 1968, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1984), 213.

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19. Herbert Block, “Here He Comes Now,” Washington Post, October 29, 1952. 20. Quoted in Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 58. 21. Dick Guindon, “Rosemerica’s Baby,” Realist 93 (1972): 24–25. 22. “Nixon’s Father Should Have Pulled Out Early,” sticker, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 23. “May I Take Your Body, Please,” Alternative Features Service, October 15, 1971, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 24. Muhammad Khan I, “Draft Shaft from Dick,” Berkeley Barb, September 5–11, 1969. 25. TK, “Old Gory,” Berkeley Barb, September 5–11, 1969. 26. Ibid. 27. TK, “You Can’t Kill with an Erection,” Berkeley Barb, September 26–October 2, 1969. 28. See “Old Gory” (cover illustration), Berkeley Barb, September 5–11, 1969. 29. To justify obscenity charges, “three elements must coalesce: it must be established that (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards . . . and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value.” If any of these is missing, a work is not legally obscene. See A Book Named “John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” v. Attorney Gen. of Mass., 383 U.S. 413 (1966). 30. “This Little D.A. Had an Erection” (cover illustration), Berkeley Barb, September 26–October 2, 1969. 31. Bill Smillie, “Obscene Tattoo Fingers Nixon’s Draft,” Alternative Features Service, October 17, 1971, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 32. Janet Yoshii, “Up Nixon’s Draft” (illustration), Alternative Features Service, October 17, 1971, Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. 33. Robert LaMagdeleine, “Libel Case Decision Due on Uof H Editor,” Hartford Courant, December 5, 1969. 34. Robert Grossman, “The Odd Couple,” Realist 94 (1972): front cover. 35. For more on the Hardy case, see also “Cartoon on Nixon Is Held Obscene; 3 Students Seized,” New York Times, November 24, 1968; “Libel Trial Opens for 3 at Uof H,” Hartford Courant, December 3, 1968; and “Student Convicted in Nixon Libel Case,” New York Times, December 6, 1969. 36. Edward Sorel, “Oh! Oh! That Feels So Good . . .” (illustration), Screw: The Sex Review, December 1973, front cover. 37. Tony Hendra and Ralph Reese, “Dixie Nixon and the Boys in the Bund!” National Lampoon, February 1974. 38. Paul Krassner, “A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’s Memoirs,” Chic, November 1976. 39. Andrea Friedman, “The Smearing of Joe McCarthy: The Lavender Scare, Gossip, and Cold War Politics,” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1105–29. 40. Krassner, “Sneak Preview.” 41. Robert E. Baskin, “Underground Press a Tool of ‘Traitors,’ Pool Asserts,” Dallas Morning News, November 7, 1967. 42. Slavoj ˇZiˇzek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador, 2008), 72.

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43. Steven Weisenburger, Fables of Subversion: Satire and the American Novel, 1930–1980 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 5. 44. “Fuck Him in His Motherfucking Ass,” Berkeley Barb, December 12–16, 1969. 45. Report of the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest (Washington, DC: GPO, 1970), 1 and 38; and Jeb Magruder and Daniel Patrick Moynihan quoted in Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 82. 46. For more on the Counter-Inaugural, see Fred Halstead, Out Now! A Participant’s Account of the American Movement against the Vietnam War (New York: Monad, 1978), 441–44. 47. Allen Ginsberg quoted in John McMillian, Smoking Typewriters, 9–10. 48. “I Trained Him Myself !” Druid Free Press, November 12–19, 1969. 49. Rips, The Campaign against the Underground Press, 84.

Off / On Our Backs the feminist press in the “sex wars” of the 1980s Joyce M. Latham

For the “second wave” United States feminist movement—the period of the

late 1960s through the 1980s—the print medium was essential to the broad transmission of ideas, images, creativity, and discussion across geographic and philosophical boundaries. Publications emerged to challenge the status quo, developed identities based on political positions, and then themselves triggered challenges to this new status quo from the margins. The newspaper off our backs, originally a twelve-page tabloid first issued by a women’s collective in February 1970, represents an example of this transition from intransigent newcomer to the target of radical dissent and criticism. From its inception, off our backs created a stir, provoking controversy and, inevitably, inviting criticism and challenges from other segments of the women’s movement. In due course, other women’s publications, such as On Our Backs: Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian, emerged to expand the scope of acceptable discourse concerning women’s issues and took issue with some positions of off our backs. For the women who launched On Our Backs, the challenge to acceptable discourse turned on the questions of sex, sexual identity, and gender presentation. First published in 1984, On Our Backs was intentionally designed to support lesbians’ explorations of various sex roles, erotic activities, and lifestyles. During the period between the launch of off our backs and On Our Backs, the feminist-based antipornography movement stimulated a “sex war” that engaged activists, academics, legal

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scholars, sex workers, legislators, and publishers in a wide-ranging debate about acceptable sexual lifestyles and their representation in print and media. The pivotal confrontation, in what became a broad and heated debate over pornography, occurred at the Scholar and Feminist IX Conference held in 1982 at Barnard College, New York. The confrontation begun at Barnard spilled over into the pages of off our backs, setting the stage for the emergence of On Our Backs. The stimulus to this debate lay deep in the attitudes and rhetoric of the New Left of the 1960s, which challenged established positions on civil rights, war and militarism, and imperialism. As the New Left evolved, it generated its own constellation of publishing venues, serving “as the central nervous system in the body politic of the adversary culture.” The creation of an alternative media supported the transmission of the “ideas, values, and visions that make up the shared language that radicals and dissidents use to communicate with each other and engage the dominant culture.”1 But the predominantly male leadership of the New Left rejected the concept of women as equal partners in advancing social change and marginalized women’s issues. As a result, sexism was not included in the shared language of the alternative media. Initially, women attempted to operate within the leftist frameworks, but their advocacy for their concerns were met with derision and anger. These struggles, and women’s emerging consciousness generally, led to an explosion in print media. In 1969 there was only one national feminist newspaper, It Ain’t Me Babe.2 A year later, more than five hundred feminist periodicals, newsletters, and magazines were being published in the United States. They varied widely in style, reach, rate of publication, focus, and intention; but, like the alternative media of the New Left, they “played a crucial role in organizing women, providing a forum for debate on philosophical and political issues, and sustaining interest and courage.”3 As a physical medium, these publications provided a bridge that linked women’s personal consciousness-raising groups begun in the 1960s with the politically engaged activists of the 1970s and the more personally focused activists of the 1980s. In effect, they made the feminist community visible to itself. The visibility of women to women, shaping their own discourse around their own priorities in defiance of a male status quo, helped to advance a feminist agenda that, while mutable, maintained value for women’s lives at its core. While feminism itself emerged from women’s disappointment in a non­ egalitarian New Left that refused to grant validity to women’s issues, feminism was not a single cohesive analysis; it generated a range of perspectives on women’s concerns that spilled over into the 1970s and 1980s, and continues to influence the contemporary social discourse. These perspectives shaped a range of strategies to empower women in confronting a dominant patriarchal culture, and each strategy stimulated an activist group to advance its particular

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agenda. Within the women’s movement itself, the print media allowed each new emergent status quo to be challenged from the margins. Sexuality has long been one of the most controversial issues within the women’s movement, beginning with the early lesbian/heterosexual divisions. As cultural feminism hardened into an advocacy of separatism, that model became more prescriptive about politically correct identities. By the early 1980s, the women’s movement was deep in a supercharged debate about acceptable sex practices and lifestyles—not only between men and women, but between men and men, and most pointedly, women and women. “The time has come to think about sex,” the cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin announced in 1982. She spoke at Barnard College’s prestigious Scholar and Feminist Conference, “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” the ninth in a series of annual conferences on issues of cutting-edge significance to the women’s movement. Her choice of the word “think” was well considered. As Rubin explained, while “feminism has always been vitally interested in sex, . . . there have been two strains of thought on the subject: . . . one tendency has criticized the restrictions on women’s sexual behavior and denounced the high costs on women for being sexually active. . . . The second tendency has considered sexual liberalization to be inherently a mere extension of male privilege.”4 The conflicts between these two strains of feminism became explosive in the mid-1970s and persisted into the 1980s, a period social theorist Lisa Duggan termed the “sex wars.” By the early 1980s, the more restrictive strain was dominating the debate with a highly visible antipornography movement. There was serious concern that the antipornographers, with their script of “politically correct” behavior for feminists, would win the feminist “sex wars.” However, pushback from a coalition of lesbian activists, academics, writers, and sex workers eventually defused the antipornography movement and provided support for the emergence of a “sex positive discourse.” Like Rubin, the gender scholar Alice Echols also identifies two elements that influenced the discourses around sex: radical feminists and cultural feminists. She suggests that “radical feminists embraced a dualistic approach to sexuality—one which acknowledged both the danger and the pleasure associated with sexual exploration.” Cultural feminism anchored itself in the concerns over sexual danger, and determined that “the struggle against male supremacy begins with women exorcizing the male within us and maximizing our femaleness.”5 The cultural focus expanded to advocate the pursuit of a matrifocal society as an alternative to patriarchy. Two publications are key in understanding the role of alternative print publications in the women’s movement and in explicating the oppositional perspectives around sexual representation in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The first such publication is off our backs, a feminist newspaper founded in 1970 in direct response to the sexism of the antiwar movement. It was

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published until 2008, and was termed by some “the New York Times of the women’s movement.”6 The other publication, the magazine On Our Backs, was founded in San Francisco in 1984 and published until 2006, in direct opposition to the credo and underlying philosophy of off our backs. off our backs was based in Washington, DC. Founding member Marleen Wicks reported that the title of the paper “reflected three things: We wanted to be off our backs in terms of being fucked. We wanted to be off our backs in terms of being the backbone of American or every society or culture with no power. And we wanted the flak we would get from everyone about being strong to roll off our backs.”7 Women had identified a need for a new information network, one engaging with their issues. Marilyn S. Webb, an activist steeped in the Vietnam antiwar movement and a reporter for the Guardian—“the organ of the New Left”—wrote that, as “radical as it supposedly was, . . . [the Guardian] had an unconscious blackout on feminist news.”8 While women initially tried to operate within the leftist framework, their efforts and advocacy of women’s issues were largely mocked and dismissed. These struggles peaked in January 1969 with yet another attempt by feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone and Guardian reporter Marilyn S. Webb to bring women’s issues yet again into the alternative political frame at a demonstration organized by Mobilization against the War, at Richard M. Nixon’s inauguration as president. The virulent male response to efforts by Firestone and Webb to introduce women’s issues led directly to decisions by women to begin organizing in their own interests. “The New Left and antiwar men were not necessarily our friends,” Webb wrote,9 and she turned to activist women within the Washington area, including Marlene Wicks, Charlotte Bunch, Coletta Reid, Heidi and Nan Steffens, Norma Lesser, and Nancy Ferro. Recognizing the need for a platform to advance women’s concerns and enable women’s engagement with those concerns, these women decided to publish a paper of their own.10 At the time of their decision, there was only one other national feminist newspaper, It Ain’t Me Babe, although others like Rat and Ain’t I a Woman soon followed.11 By 1970 the explosion of new print was everywhere— from small newsletters and tabloids filled with news less likely to appear elsewhere to new academic journals that often bridged the gap between activisim and the academy—and many more were to be seen. Wicks, an off cofounder, traced the roots of the newspaper to the summer of 1968, when she and her friend Margie Stamberg raised $400 for what was originally intended to be a GI coffeehouse. That plan was tabled in favor of a more women-centered activity, stimulated by conferences among women who would become notable feminist advocates and theorists, among them Fire­ stone, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar (Ortiz), Judith Brown, Ti-Grace Atkinson, and Kate Millett.12 The broad and varied perspectives represented by these women were strong indicators of the internal struggles yet to come over issues of sex and gender representation. But, in the initial years, the

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Institute for Policy Studies, with women’s rights theorist Charlotte Bunch as a fellow, allocated resources to the fledgling radical feminists to support the pursuit of women’s issues in the Washington, DC, area. Indeed the institute “surpassed other left, anti-poverty, and civil rights organizations in terms of its tangible contribution to getting the Washington women’s movement off the ground.”13 The newspaper was initially assembled in the basement of a house in Washington, DC, rented by Heidi and Nan Steffens. Paper staffers earned no salary. Webb’s $400 was used to print and distribute the first issue on February 27, 1970, and the mailing was based on Webb’s address book of leftist antiwar and feminist consciousness-raising contacts. The first issue was twelve pages, in a tabloid format, priced at 25 cents. The editorial announced “off our backs appears now at a stage when the existing institutions and channels for communication have ceased to meet the growing needs of the women’s struggle.”14 The issue contained articles addressing abortion, medical problems with birth control pills, and how to use a diaphragm as an alternative to the Pill.15 Webb contributed an article on the celebration of International Women’s Day; Bunch reported on a regional women’s conference in the southeast. Enough subscriptions came in to support another issue, and the paper was launched.16 off our backs has been described as “militant, internationalist, non-profit, collectively operated, and written almost entirely by non-professionals.”17 It ran until 2008, initially as a quasi-monthly publication (during its first year the collective published nine issues). Although the schedule could be irregular, off our backs later became a monthly. Its stated mission was “to provide news and information about women’s lives and feminist activism; to educate the public about the status of women around the world; to serve as a forum for feminist ideas and theory; to be an information resource on feminist, women’s, and lesbian culture; to seek social justice and equality for women worldwide.”18 The goal of the collective was to create a paper to drive social change. As a collective, the hierarchy for the operations of the paper was informal, but the informality allowed the development of disruptive internal tensions.19 An intense two-week, live-in retreat for collective members in 1970 led to a “new understanding of feminism . . . [that] harked back to pre-patriarchal days, . . . and it viewed sexism as the first real division between classes of people, later followed by racism and classism.”20 The group also developed interests incorporating “feminist spirituality, ideas about the basic female desire for the preservation of nature, of the species, and of the environment.”21 These were foundational concepts in the development of Echols’s theory of “cultural feminism.” The retreat did not, however, resolve developing tensions among the members of the collective. Despite her founder’s role, Marilyn S. Webb was asked to leave by other members in the fall of 1970; she moved to Vermont where she launched the women’s studies program at Goddard College.

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The early years of the paper focused on issues related to women’s control of their own bodies, with birth control and abortion each a frequent topic. Special issues addressed such topics as women and the media, class, the church, Emma Goldman, and women working.22 The issue of lesbianism emerged early in the collective, and in 1970 five women left off to establish the collective that published the short-lived, lesbian-feminist newspaper the Furies. Marlene Wicks, another founder, similarly departed in early 1971, also to join the Furies. Such upheavals, small and large, are common to newly founded publications, but they impacted the political identity of off, and as the collective began the third volume of the paper, members found it necessary to explain their editorial position relative to feminist politics. They asserted that they were not committed to any particular politics, but were more concerned with their ability to “view critically” what they were covering so they could avoid proselytizing for a particular viewpoint. The paper did not, at that time, consider itself “an organizing tool for any one tendency in the women’s movement.”23 However, that policy was later to shift in the face of high-profile antipornography activism within the women’s movement. In volume 2, off our backs first analyzed rape as a political issue and also explored the need for rape crisis centers and all-women antirape squads. Various authors provided coverage on battered women’s shelters, and in 1976, the first article debating various sex practices and critical of sadomasochism (S&M) was published; the publication also ran a critique of transsexuals.24 But, as the editors themselves report, it was 1980 before “the debate between anti-pornography/ critique-of-sexuality feminists and sexual libertarian ‘if it feels good do it’ feminists was starting to heat up.”25 The July issue of off our backs ran a report on a workshop hosted by Women against Sexist Violence in the Media (a group based out of Pittsburgh) and presented by two representatives of Women against Pornography (a group based out of New York). The presenters announced that S&M was a growing movement within the lesbian community and that “one of the leaders, Pat Califia [of the S&M club Samois in San Francisco] . . . has a slave.”26 Califia provided an extensive response, explaining the S&M lifestyle and the atmosphere of Samois as “a collectively run, tight, courageous, and very supportive group of women.” She also stated that “the lesbian community has become less and less tolerant of sexual variation as a result of the pernicious nonsense generated by the anti-pornography movement.”27 She called on the feminist press to turn a more critical eye on the antipornography movement, warning that every women’s press would be vulnerable to suppression if the movement succeeded. However, off editor Alice Henry followed in November with a critique of Sapphistry: A Lesbian Sex Manual authored by Califia and illustrated by Tee Corinne. Henry suggested that “it may be a mistake to pretend that [S&M ] acts ordinarily associated with hatred and violence—tying people up, whipping

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them, slapping them, humiliating them—are useful ways of expressing love.” This assertion drew a strong reader response, and her calling Califia “a nut” not only belittled the value of Califia’s attempts to reframe the discourses around sex28 but also affected perceptions of the editorial stance of off our backs. Legal scholar Nan D. Hunter situates the feminist “sex wars” within a tenyear “bell curve” period, from the founding of Women against Violence against Women in 1976 to the defeat of the Indianapolis Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance in the American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut case in 1985.29 The ordinance had been drafted by Catharine MacKinnon—also a legal scholar— and antipornography activist Andrea Dworkin, with the support and counsel of local Republican legislators. With the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980, the radical Right had the political standing to drive a more culturally restrictive agenda in the United States, stimulating what some have called the “culture wars.” Within the lesbian community, the focus was not only pornography, but other lifestyle issues as well. The characteristics of the concepts framing “pornography,” and attempts to define it, were critical to the debates. The second wave women’s movement had exposed various ways in which male social structures controlled women, including individual acts of physical violence such as battery, rape, and harassment in its various forms30—all formerly “hidden” crimes. off our backs was directly involved in the exposure of those crimes. As pornography became more visible as a result of a string of liberalizing Supreme Court decisions that began with the court’s finding in Roth v. United States (1957),31 some feminists broadened their critique to include the proliferation of sexually explicit imagery that they felt fed the impulse to commit violent crimes against women. What began as grassroots challenges to representations of violence against women grew, in a very short time, into attempts to reshape the moral order within American culture generally by redefining pornography.32 The antipornographers’ definition of pornography as violence33 turned on their critique of the existing patriarchal culture,34 and came to stand for “all misogyny, all discrimination, all exploitation of women,”35 whether by men or women, which served to “perpetuate male supremacy.”36 While the antipornography activists did raise significant questions important to the development of feminist theory about “the role of representation in shaping lived conditions and the possibility of agency in a male-shaped system,”37 their analysis became grounded in an essentialist frame of gender as a biologically fixed binary, which characterized all men as “inherently violent, lustful and oppressive” and women as naturally “emotional, caring and nurturing.”38 The critique extended beyond the mainstream heterosexual culture to attack those lesbians who did not adopt the politically correct stance of the antipornographers; namely, women involved in the underground bar culture, in “butch/ femme” relationships, in marginal communities exploring sexual practices

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such as bondage and discipline (B&D) and sadomasochism (S&M), as well as those exploring the use of “sex toys” in sexual relationships. Sadomasochism was a particular flashpoint, since the antipornography analysis equated consensual S&M with violence. The initial confrontations were between Samois, a lesbian S&M group in San Francisco, and various antipornography groups, particularly Women against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM). The antagonism was mutual. WAVPM challenged the “parties” hosted by Samois, and Samois critiqued the slide shows of the antipornography group. As Duggan explains, “These early confrontations then migrated from the West Coast throughout the U.S., from culturally marginal organizations to more mainstream ones, from feminist venues to legislatures, courtrooms and national media.”39 The debates also invaded academia. The Scholar and Feminist Conference IX, “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” was held at Barnard College in New York City on April 24, 1982. The Barnard Center for Research on Women (then known as the Women’s Center) was the host organization for the annual conference series, which had begun in 1974, funded in part by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. A particular theme was addressed each year, for example “Connecting Theory, Practice, and Value” (1977) and “The Dynamics of Control” (1981). The series ran for thirty years, until 2005, when it resituated itself as an open-source, online journal. The draft of the concept paper announcing the 1982 conference was spearheaded by conference organizer Carole S. Vance, a member of the Barnard faculty; the paper presented major themes of “women’s sexual pleasure, choice and autonomy” in what was viewed as a critical era with the rise of the political Right and the reification of traditional sexual arrangements.40 The conference planning group produced what they termed a “Diary of a Conference on Sexuality” for distribution to conference attendees. The “Diary” was a seventy-twopage handbook that contained “minutes and bibliographies from planning committee discussions; personal statements from committee members; the conference concept paper; and abstracts and suggested readings from workshops.”41 However, just days before the conference was to convene, the “Diary” was seized by the college administration because of protests from antipornography groups. The Barnard administration had been informed by members of antipornography groups that conference organizers had invited “anti-feminists” promoting “patriarchal values” to participate in the conference. As the program for the conference indicates, sexual nonconformists, or “sex radicals” as they were termed, were indeed included in a broad-based program designed to engage questions not only of pornography, but also of “sexual safety versus sexual adventure; the significance of sexual styles . . . male and female sexual nature; and politically correct and incorrect sexual positions.”42 The program included workshops on political organizing around sex, the gay/straight split, teen

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romance, the sexuality of children, perfect bodies, and eroticism and taboo, among other topics. The speakers included women who were at that point new to their careers, but who went on to become influential scholars and writers, such as the writers Dorothy Allison, Cherríe Moraga, and Sharon Olds; the archivist Joan Nestle of the Lesbian Herstory Archives; the scholars Alice Echols, Gayle Rubin, and Ann Snitow; and activist Amber Hollibaugh.43 The Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and against Sadomasochism,44 a front group for the New York–based Women against Pornography (WAP), led by Dorchen Leidholdt, organized the protest against the conference. Their phone calls to the college administration led to the seizure of the conference planning “Diary” and its eventual disassociation from Barnard, as well as the loss of external funding for future conferences.45 However, it was the leaflet entitled “We Protest” that the antipornographers distributed outside the gates of the college the day of the conference that discredited the protesters themselves. The leaflet identified four groups that the protesters maliciously criticized: the abortion-rights group No More Nice Girls; Samois; New York’s Lesbian Sex Mafia; and those advocating butch/femme roles. The leaflet argued that such organizations “support and produce pornography, promote sex roles and sadomasochism, and have joined the straight and gay pedophile organizations in lobbying for an end to laws that protect children from sexual abuse by adults.”46 The leaflet also named names,47 and subjected feminist activists to personal and professional attack. Four members of the off our backs newspaper collective attended the Barnard conference: Carol Ann Douglas, Fran Moira, Alice Henry, and Tacie Dejanikus. Their reports appeared in the June 1982 issue of the paper. Except for Dejanikus, who maintained a more strictly neutral analysis, the political commitments of the reporters strongly influenced what they understood from the content of the conference. Henry, Douglas, and Moira stated that their primary concern was the lack of representation for the antipornography analysis, and their belief that without such a perspective, the conference was out of balance. This echoed the same complaint articulated by Dorchen Leidholdt, and the rationale for the anticonference protests and leaflet. The antipornography activists saw themselves as oppressed and believed that the organizers of the conference had “stifled ideas in the name of freedom of expression,” thereby generating a “travesty” of open debate. While the off collective understood that “the language of social movements is not the language of scholarly discourse,”48 they did not appear to understand that scholarly discourse was not the language of activist engagement. When off reporter Douglas wrote that the positions presented at the conference “were not the positions of sexual radicals. . . . I think they were sexually conservative positions,”49 she mistakenly created a false dichotomy that did not exist in the conference itself.50 In fact, the two sides were using different languages.

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The use of heightened rhetoric to undermine scholarly discourse was repeated in several articles and commentaries reporting on the Barnard conference. Claudette Charbonneau, who commented from the perspective of an unaffiliated attendee, framed the conference as “a promotion of sado-masochism, although sometimes muted and therefore hard for the uninitiated to catch.” Her characterization of the presentations that investigated concepts of pleasure and danger as “intellectual confusion” reflected the standpoint of activist commitment. In effect, Charbonneau cast academic discourse as Orwellian doublespeak.51 Fran Moira, an off news reporter, covered the “Politically Correct, Politically Incorrect Sexuality” workshop, observing, “As was the case with the conference as a whole, no one representing anti-porn feminists had been invited to participate in the workshop.” She criticized literature scholar Ann Snitow’s statement that the intent of the workshop was to show “how sex can be politicized in a destructive way” as a frame for what “would and would not be tolerated” in the ensuing discussion.52 Moira also quoted lesbian activist Amber Hollibaugh, who gave the closing presentation (“Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Pleasure”) as calling every woman in the room a “sexual rebel of some stripe,” which generated applause. While Hollibaugh claimed women’s rights to control their own bodies, their own desires, and their own strategies for presentation, she also called for an inclusive philosophy. Moira quotes Hollibaugh as saying, “You cannot leave out some part of the truth about sex. Every time we stop a woman from exploring her sexuality or make a judgment about someone else’s sexual practice before we know what it means, we limit our own sexuality.” Yet Moira accused Hollibaugh of leaving out “lesbians who are neither butch nor femme nor sadist nor masochist, not to mention celibate women and women who do not label their sexuality”— women, perhaps, like herself. Resorting to inflammatory language, Moira concluded that Hollibaugh’s vision “would allow today’s children to assume their positions as beaters and the beaten without shame.”53 The emotionally charged critiques by the off our backs reporters reflected the extreme language of the antipornography activists. Debate over these various confrontations at the conference continued in the July issue of off our backs, in which women who presented at the conference, including Hollibaugh, the scholar Frances Doughty, and writer Shirley Walton, corrected the reporting of the journalists, and the newspaper dutifully printed the corrections. Gayle Rubin also wrote: “In spite of an appearance of objectivity, the bias of the collective is clear in this coverage.”54 Most striking, perhaps, was the postconference petition, presented in off our backs, calling for an open dialogue on sexuality and expressing an endorsement of the Barnard conference for “its attempt to explore new territory.” Among the signatories were those who presented at the conference and others such as writers Elly Bulkin, Minnie

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Bruce Pratt, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delaney, Linda Hoaglund, and Jewelle Gomez; social activist Gary Delgado; scholars Susan Harding, Judith Walkowitz, and Donna Haraway; as well as gay rights activist Phyllis Lyon, with purportedly others still signing.55 Conference organizer Vance wrote in the preface to the collection of Barnard conference papers in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, that the antipornographers’ “We Protest” leaflet gave birth to a “phantom conference” that was supposedly focused on three key topics: sadomasochism, pornography, and butch/femme roles. She believed that accounts of the “phantom conference” were circulated in hostile publications such as off our backs, whose reportage “ignored most conference papers, workshops and speakers, representing the conference only in terms of the sensational charges of the protesters.” 56 What was more, with the seizure of the conference “Diary,” no counternarrative was available. Vance argued that the conference signaled the beginning of the “sex wars.” While “beginning” is an overstatement, the events around the Barnard conference stimulated a broader engagement with the conflict as well as an uneasiness and confusion about the very nature of the discourse. The position of the editors of off our backs relative to the conference stimulated yet more protest within the movement. Despite the significance of the debates, however, the history of off our backs—as written by the editors57—skirts entirely the controversial reportage on the conference.58 The alignment of the editorial staff with the antipornography activists who disrupted the conference on sexuality not only violated their stated policy to “view critically” positions taken within the movement, but also generated deep divisions within the lesbian community. While the editorial team did revise their approach, the debate within the pages of the newspaper both concentrated and exposed the depth of the conflict. Effectively, it spotlighted the need for an alternative medium to explore the questions raised by the Barnard conference addressing positive female sexual expression. Before long, the magazine On Our Backs emerged specifically to engage the varieties of sexual lifestyles for women. On Our Backs (ON ), founded in San Francisco, was one of the many print periodicals created to expand the scope of acceptable discourse concerning women’s issues. Its title was intentionally designed, in the words of Susie Bright, to tweak “the prudery of puritanical feminist publications like off our backs.”59 Myrna Elana, Debi Sundahl, and Nan Kinney launched On Our Backs in the spring of 1984, and the publication continued, technically, until 2006. The editors’ agenda, to produce “dyke porn” for women, responded to a perceived need. As Kinney explained, “What started as a very personal sexual exploration soon became political. We’d go to the women’s bookstore in search of anything about lesbian sexuality and found nothing. It was as if lesbians weren’t sexual. But, we knew there were plenty of lesbians [who were] into exploring

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sexuality. The problem was that the anti-porn lesbians controlled the general lesbian culture, including the press.”60 Kinney and her lover, Debi Sundahl, had themselves abandoned antipornography work in Minnesota to move to San Francisco, and joined Samois,61 the lesbian sex club with a history of conflict with the WAVPM. They were looking for a more sex-friendly environment.62 Sundahl and Mryna Elana, early founders of the magazine, had previously offered a girl-on-girl sex routine at the Lusty Lady, a peep show in North Beach. Furthermore, incoming editor Susie Bright had worked the counter at the women-oriented sex shop Good Vibrations in San Francisco. With the connections all three had made, they generated advertising income for the initial issues of ON. They also raised funds by sponsoring “Lesbian Only” strip shows, selling subscriptions to the members of the Samois mailing list, and hawking copies at the Gay Day Parade. Women working in the sex trade, “women with nothing to lose,” as Bright identified them, launched the publication.63 Sundahl hoped that On Our Backs would “contribute to a climate where women will feel freer to express themselves sexually.”64 ON had a series of editors over the years, including Tristan Taormino, Diana Cage, Diane Anderson-Minshall, and Shar Rednou, but Susie Bright was basically the first. Her tenure ran for more than six years, from the second issue in 1984 until 1991 and shaped the initial tone of the publication. Bright was born in 1958, and despite an early Catholic education, she early on explored Marxism and grassroots feminism. As a teenager, she was a labor organizer, and she also worked with fellow high school students producing a left-wing newsletter known as the Red Tide. She joined, and was expelled from, the International Socialists. As she relates in her memoir, Big Sex, Little Death, she became sexually active in her teens. Her job as a clerk in the Good Vibrations sex shop allowed her to read every sex book in the store. All these experiences situated her perfectly when the opportunity arose to participate in the launch of On Our Backs. Of the magazine’s provocative title, Bright wrote: “I knew exactly why they were making fun of the feminist newspaper off our backs. . . . This particular paper had been condemning all the discussion about SM, butch/ femme, kinky sex—saying this was ‘wrong’ and ‘anti-feminist.’ ”65 When she responded to Myrna Elana’s invitation to apply for a job at the new magazine, she listed her skills: “paste-up, sell ads, write copy—anything you need to get it together.”66 On Our Backs was based in San Francisco and had a circulation of 12,000 at the height of its popularity.67 It was published by Blush Productions, a partnership of Bright, Sundahl, and Kinney. The publication schedule was irregular: it began as a quarterly, was then bimonthly, and monthly, before fading away after a change in ownership. From the beginning, the magazine challenged the ideology and proscriptions of the antipornography movement. “The premise

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of On Our Backs was going to be that lesbians were not celibates-in-waiting-forthe-revolution. . . . We were alive to sex and adventure and being every kind of queer we could be.”68 The originators of the magazine intentionally identified it with pornography—by women, for women—challenging the antipornographers’ main argument that pornography was created only by men. For Kinney, “dyke porn, or real lesbian porn, is created for the lesbian viewer who wants to watch women like herself having sex that she might actually have with her lover.”69 The antipornography activists believed any representation of women as submissive or lustful, or engaging in role-playing, was a representation of a male image of female identity. The details of this broad concept included bans on vaginal or oral penetrations by objects—such as dildos—as well as fistfucking, bondage, group sex, spanking, or any other kind of “discipline.” As Rubin explains, the antipornographers allowed only “monogamous lesbianism that occurs within long-term, intimate relationships and which does not involve playing with polarized sex roles”70—meaning, for example, butch/femme relationships. As Bright explains, the editors of off our backs and their followers advocated “purging anything aggressive, vicarious, and non-oval-shaped from its erotic vocabulary.”71 On Our Backs, however, was aimed at the adventurous lesbian who celebrated those very proscriptions from the sexual conservatives: articles and graphics on rimming, role-playing, leather, latex, dildos, and lubricants. The editors assumed the role of sex educators, demonstrating their support for the butch/femme community in their very first issue, which contained a spread entitled “Bulldagger of the Month,” featuring Honey Lee Cottrell. Cottrell later joined the staff as a photographer. In the 1970s she had worked with Tee Corinne, illustrator for Pat Califia, creating lesbian erotic photography—for a then very small audience. Her “Bulldagger of the Month” image was a self-portrait, characterized by her very intense gaze at the reader. In the same issue, Joan Nestle contributed a story called “The Gift of Taking,” and Jewelle Gomez wrote a story called “A Piece of Time;” Bright wrote a “Toys for Us” column about the use of vibrators. This maiden issue of On Our Backs created a minor sensation, as well as a good deal of controversy. Clearly, the magazine faced significant obstacles if it was to flourish and grow. For one thing, as Kinney noted, women-owned bookstores were not hospitable to the publication. The Toronto Women’s Bookstore expressed concern that “new material that is best described as lesbian pro-sadomasochistic has arrived at our store. After reviewing this material carefully, we found it to be anti-feminist, anti-woman, anti-Semitic, and racist.”72 Naiad Press publisher Barbara Grier informed Kinney and Bright that “everyone we know thinks y’all should be assassinated.”73 The hoped-for support from the “economic and political capital of lesbian feminism” did not emerge,

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and the editors regularly received hate mail.74 As a woman-owned business in the 1980s, dealing in controversial material, the magazine had trouble securing funding and finding printers and an insurance company that would provide fire insurance.75 Their initial support came from the gay men’s publishing industry. John Preston, of Drummer magazine, was among the first to offer encouragement. “No one else is taking on the status quo like you. I thought the gay liberation movement was fucking dead. You make my secret leather feminist heart go pitter-patter. You are just the Molotov cocktail we’ve all needed.”76 The men of the gay underground provided the addresses of printers and video duplication services that didn’t discriminate on the basis of content, allowing ON to publish as well as to expand their media offerings. From Bright’s perspective, the men provided support because “we cared both about beautiful photography and poetry and about brutal sexual honesty.”77 off our backs reviewer Denise Kulp “cruised” On Our Backs and wrote: “As a ‘virgin lesbian’ I know that I really wanted to know exactly ‘what lesbians do’ and I looked for answers in books. I wanted to find the answers in a context in which I usually thought about sex, which for me was a romantic fantasy/story I told myself.”78 Although Kulp found some of the content in ON valuable in addressing some of these issues, she ultimately reiterated the call for a lesbian “erotica” that was not “pornography.” WAP’s Dorchen Leidholdt, who had spearheaded the protest against the Barnard conference, responded to Kulp’s criticism by raising questions that she felt the reviewer had failed to pursue: “Who are the women used in these pictures and why are they there? It is estimated that 70 percent of the women in pornography and prostitution were repeatedly sexually abused as children. What makes us think that women used in lesbian pornography are any different? . . . Doesn’t the lesbian porn industry, like the straight porn industry, capitalize on our socialization and valuation under male supremacy? Doesn’t it help keep our condition alive? Doesn’t lesbian pornography steal lesbianism from women and turn it into another weapon for men?”79 Leidholdt discounted any potential for individual agency among those who explored alternative sex roles. The images in the magazine stirred the most controversy, but much of the content for On Our Backs was submitted by readers of the magazine. For example, a woman identifying herself as a bank teller from Sacramento sent in a very modest, but “come on,” image of herself, saying that she hoped to see women like her represented in the publication.80 Bright emphasizes that almost all of the models were amateurs who controlled the shoots themselves, which was very different from commercial photography.81 For the female editors and photographers, ON was about sexual storytelling, and they wanted their readers to speak for themselves. They employed a photo-essay format; the models

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selected their costumes, drafted the scenarios, and consulted on the shots. Kitty Tsui, a “cover girl” in 1988, wrote about her decision to pose for then staff photographer Jill Posener: “I wanted to challenge the stereotype of Asian women as shy, passive, docile, demure. I wanted to show an image of an Asian woman who is strong, assertive, powerful and beautiful. One who is proud of her body. Proud to be an Asian American. And proud to be a lesbian.”82 On Our Backs made lesbians visible in a way they had not been seen before. While not everyone was pleased with the exposure, Blush Productions enjoyed some success before being sold. The publication appears to have peaked in 1991, when the staff expanded to include directors of circulation, photography, and publicity as well as desktop publishing editors.83 By then Bright had left to raise her daughter,84 and Kinney to launch Fatale Media, a lesbian film production company. But by 1993, the magazine was losing money. At an editorial retreat called to address the future of the magazine, cofounder Sundahl— brought back as an adviser—observed that Bright, even with her focus on the sexual politics of the time, had still made On Our Backs fun. Staff members indicated that they were personally still committed to a publication reflecting a commitment to social change and a woman’s right to her own sexuality, but would also consider a publication considering whether to engage a broader gay agenda. In 1993, the staff considered re-packaging ON as a lesbian Playboy, despite their characterization of Playboy as “white, soft core . . . [with] only skinny blond women w/ big boobs.”85 The reframing indicates how far the publication had moved from its roots. By 1994, the magazine was in severe decline. Melissa Murphy bought the enterprise, and released one issue. H.A.F. publications then purchased it, but it languished there, and it disappeared permanently in 2006. But the magazine had broken new ground and engaged a broader group of women in sexual self-identification. Kinney began producing lesbian pornographic films at Fatale Media, which is still active. Many of their media productions employ the same philosophy as On Our Backs: education and demonstration of erotic play. One of their most popular titles is “Bend Over Boyfriend,” an introduction to anal eroticism for heterosexual couples, while titles such as “How to Fuck in High Heels” promotes the same practices for women. Bright launched a writing-and-editing career that includes such titles as Love and Lust: A Sex Journal, The Best American Erotica, How to Write a Dirty Story, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World, and the classic photographic study nothing but the girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image with photographer Jill Posener.86 off our backs continued publishing until 2008. When the debates concerning the Indianapolis antipornography legislation developed in 1984, their editorial approach was more transparent than it had been at the time of the Barnard conference. Their collective statement indicated that “while everyone at off our backs agrees on the need to fight pornography, we have strong disagreements”

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concerning, for example, the legal strategy of antipornography leaders Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, issues of censorship, and even whether pornography should be a central focus of feminist activism.87 The “sex wars” did fade in 1986, when the Supreme Court confirmed the unconstitutionality of attempts by antipornographers to legislate acceptable sexual representation, dealing a death blow to the conservative attempts to refashion sexual mores and American culture through the suppression of pornography.88 As Bright looked back on the history of On Our Backs, she herself summarized the impact of the magazine: “We made sex fun and smart for women, something that was entirely in female self-interest. It went way beyond homosexuality—it was really feminist sex liberation.”89 Bright is certainly correct, but, even more, the women on the covers of On Our Backs were the ones who actually pioneered a new moral order for America. Their demand to be seen according to their own vision of who they were expanded the boundaries of inclusivity and advanced the dissolution of the essentialist gender binary, allowing the expansion of a gendered continuum that legally and culturally continues to influence the twenty-first century. They changed visions of sexual identity for women and for men. It is indeed an ongoing adventure. Notes 1. David Armstrong, A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America, with a foreword by Ben H. Bagdikian (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1981), 16. 2. Marilyn S. Webb, “oob and the Feminist Dream,” in Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, Part 1, Voices from the Underground, ed. Ken Wachsberger (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 190. 3. Amy Erdman Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 24. 4. Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (London: Pandora, 1992), 301. 5. Alice Echols, “The Taming of the Id,” in Pleasure and Danger, 50–72. While Echols did come to suggest the taxonomy of “cultural, radical, liberal and socialist feminism” was not useful in “making sense of today’s women’s movement,” she acknowledged that the concept of “cultural feminism” is “commonplace,” in “Feminism, Sexual Freedom, and Identity Politics,” Shaky Ground: The Sixties and Its Aftershocks (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 96. 6. Armstrong, Trumpet to Arms, 230. 7. Carole Ann Douglas and Fran Moira, “off our backs: The First Four Decades,” in Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press, Part 1, Voices from the Underground, ed. Ken Wachsberger (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 158. 8. Webb, “oob and the Feminist Dream,” 188–89. 9. Ibid., 188.

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10. Ibid., 189. 11. Ibid., 190. 12. Ibid., 187. 13. See Anne M. Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, D.C.; Part 3 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 65–66, for a more detailed discussion of the relationship between the DC Women’s Liberation Movement and the Institute for Policy Studies. Webb was associated with the institute through her husband. 14. Editorial, off our backs (Washington, DC), February 27, 1970, the off our backs Collective 1, no. 1, 2. 15. Douglas and Moira, “off our backs: The First Four Decades,” 157. 16. Webb, “oob and the Feminist Dream,” 190. 17. Armstrong, Trumpet to Arms, 225. 18. Statement from first issue, “Mission,” off our backs: The Feminist Newsjournal 1, no. 1 (February 1970), http://www.offourbacks.org/Mission.htm. 19. Webb, “oob and the Feminist Dream,” 192. Webb suggests that the tensions were exacerbated by government provocateurs. 20. Ibid., 191. 21. Ibid. 22. Douglas and Moira, “off our backs: The First Four Decades,” 159. 23. Ibid., 165. 24. Ibid., 172. 25. Ibid., 179. 26. off our backs (hereafter shortened to off ), July 1980, 9. Since these events, Pat Califia has transitioned to Patrick Califia. However, I am employing the pronoun representative of Califia’s identity at the time. 27. off, October 1980, 25. 28. off, November 1980, 16. 29. Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006), 16–17; the “sex wars” were also known as the “porn wars.” Nadine Strossen, in Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights (New York: Scribner, 1995), also discusses the reach of the “sex panic,” 20–23. 30. Ann Snitow, “Retrenchment versus Transformation: The Politics of the Antipornography Movement,” in Women against Censorship, ed. Varga Burstyn (Toronto, ON: Douglas & McIntyre, 1985), 112. 31. The case Roth v. United States (354 U.S. 476) was the first case to involve the Supreme Court in an extended discussion of the constitutionality of obscenity laws. 32. This is foundational to Carolyn Bronstein’s analysis in Battling Pornography: “When we look at the initial campaigns . . . it is clear that they were based on the radical feminist critique of socially constructed gender differences that falsely divided the sexes into something akin to separate species” (Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Antipornography Movement, 1976–1986 [ New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 11). Ellen Willis also observed that the antipornography focus had shifted “from rational, feminist criticism of specific targets to generalized, demagogic, moral outrage” (“Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography,” in Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography and Censorship [ East Haven, CT: LongRiver Books, 1986], 59).

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33. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, argued that “following the influential theorists like Susan Griffin, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon, members of Women against Pornography came to view pornography itself as an act of male violence,” 315. 34. Paula Webster, “Pornography and Pleasure,” in Caught Looking, 30. Webster commented directly that the antipornography movement “was a movement to chastise men for their vices.” 35. Lisa Duggan, “Censorship in the Name of Feminism,” in Caught Looking, 68. 36. Andrea Dworkin, “Pornography and Grief,” in Feminism and Pornography, ed. Drucilla Cornell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 42. 37. Nicola Pitchford, “Reading Feminism’s Pornography Conflict,” in Sexual Positives? The Cultural Politics of Dissident Sexualities (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 6. 38. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 315. 39. Duggan, “Censorship in the Name of Feminism,” 6. 40. Vance, “Concept Paper,” in Pleasure and Danger, 443. 41. Vance, “Epilogue,” in Pleasure and Danger, 432. 42. Vance, “Concept Paper,” in Pleasure and Danger, 443. 43. Other speakers included the following: the academic coordinator Carole S. Vance, Kate Millett, Paula Webster, Ellen Carol DuBois, Linda Gordon, Hortense J. Spillers, Meryl Altman, Mary S. Calderone, Muriel Dimen, Oliva M. Espin, Roberta Galler, Faye Ginsburg, Bette Gordon, Brett Harvey, Barbara Kruger, Carol Munter, Esther Newton, Shirley Walton, Patricia Murphy Robinson, Kaja Silverman, and hattie gossett. 44. The coalition reportedly included New York Radical Feminists, which was no longer functioning; Women against Violence against Women, which was in disarray; and Women against Pornography, which was on-site (Vance, “Epilogue,” in Pleasure and Danger, 433). 45. Bronstein, Battling Pornography, 303. 46. off, June 1982, 5. 47. Within the gay community, “outing” people—revealing their sexual preference without their permission—was a major violation of gay ethics. 48. Penelope Feator, “Women and the Law: Reaching Definitions and Making Demands,” off our backs (Washington, DC), June 1982, 6–7. 49. She is arguing that sexual openness is a mainstream value, and that the call for curtailment of sexually explicit content is a more radical position. 50. Carole Ann Douglas, “Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” off our backs (Washington, DC), June 30, 1982, 2. 51. Claudette Charbonneau, “Sexual Confusion at Barnard,” off, June 1982, 25, 29. 52. Fran Moira, “Politically Correct, Politically Incorrect Sexuality,” off, June 1982, 22–23. 53. Fran Moira, “Barnard Finale,” off, June 1982, 24. 54. Gayle Rubin, “Misquotes and Misperceptions,” off, June 1982, 24. 55. “Post-conference Petition,” off our backs, July 1982, 26. 56. Carole S. Vance, “More Danger, More Pleasure: A Decade after the Barnard Sexuality Conference,” in Pleasure and Danger, xxi–xxii. 57. Douglas and Moira, “off our backs: The First Four Decades,” 157–84.

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58. off our backs is available digitally through JSTOR; a full run of the paper is also available at the Golda Meir Library at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. 59. Susie Bright, Big Sex, Little Death: A Memoir (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2011), 229. 60. Cory Silverberg, “Nan Kinney: Uncovering a Pornographic Lesbian Sensibility; An Interview with Lesbian Pornographer Nan Kinney,” About.com Guide, updated October 14, 2007, http://sexuality.about.com/od/eroticentertainment/a/nan_kinney.htm. 61. Samois was established by Pat Califia and Gayle Rubin and operated from 1978 to 1983. As Faderman explains, “the group that worked the hardest to break down conventional female sexual attitudes was those lesbians who rallied around the label of sadomasochists, not merely as an expression of private sexual taste, but as a public stance.” Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press), 260. According to Bright, Samois also threw the best parties in town (personal communication, June 24, 2012). 62. On Our Backs Archives, Box 8, “Notes from the Retreat,” John Hay Library (Special Collections), Brown University. 63. Bright, Big Sex, 254. 64. Chris Bearchell, “At Last!” The Body Politic (Canada), no. 108 (November 1984): 37. 65. Andrea Juno, interview with Susie Bright, Angry Women (San Francisco, CA: Re/Search Publications, 1991), 217. 66. Bright, Big Sex, 230. 67. The publishing schedule of the magazine varied, but internal records indicate that the schedule moved to bimonthly in 1989. On Our Backs Archives, Box 8, “Notes from the Retreat.” The handwritten notes indicate that “Deb” put the top circulation at 12,000. Editor Heather Findlay later claimed a circulation of 40,000 in correspondence with the Howard Stern Show ( January 25, 1994), Box 8, but it is unclear how she was counting. 68. Bright, Big Sex, 229. 69. SLUTgrrls, “Interview: Nan Kinney,” January 4, 2010, downloaded from http://www.blogher.com/interview-nan-kinney. 70. Rubin, “Misquotes and Misperceptions,” 301. 71. Susie Bright, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World (Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1990), 13. 72. “Letter to the Body Politic,” The Body Politic, November 1984, 37. 73. Bright, Big Sex, 265. As Bright explains, Greer herself did not care. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid., 259. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 278. 78. Denise Kulp, “Cruising On Our Backs,” off, July 31, 1985, 13. “Cruising” is the practice of looking for sexual partners. 79. Dorchen Leidholdt, “A Small Group,” off, November 30, 1985, 26. 80. Bright, Big Sex, 254. 81. Juno, interview with Susie Bright, Angry Women, 219. 82. Karla Jay, Lesbian Erotics (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 71. The cover “Dawn Wan in Flames” triggered a protest from a Seattle-based group, Dykes

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against Pornography, who slashed the covers of the magazine in an independent bookstore and spray-painted “Fuck On Our Backs” on the sidewalk. ON Archives, Box 14. 83. ON Archives, Box 8, “Notes from the Retreat.” 84. Bright, Big Sex, 298–313. 85. ON Archives, Box 8, “Notes from the Retreat.” 86. Susie Bright, Love and Lust: A Sex Journal (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2011); The Best American Erotica (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993–2008); How to Write a Dirty Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); Susie Bright, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World (Pittsburgh, PA: Cleis Press, 1988); and Susie Bright and Jill Posener, nothing but the girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image (London, UK: Cassell, 1996), with photographer Jill Posener. 87. “off our backs Collective Statement,” off, June 1985, 9. 88. See American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, 771 F.2d 323 (7th Cir. 1985) for the decision. Hudnut is considered one of the classic freedom of speech cases. Judge Easterbrook, writing the decision for the court, noted that the antipornography legislation was unconstitutional as “the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message [or] its ideas.” The Supreme Court allowed the Circuit Court decision to stand. 89. Susie Bright, “A History of On Our Backs: Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian; The Original: 1984–1990,” susiebright.blogs.com (blog), 2009, http://susiebright.blogs.com /History_of_OOB.pdf.

contributors James L. Baughman is Fetzer-Bascom Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Baughman has written extensively on the history of American journalism and broadcasting. His most recent book is Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948–1961. James P. Danky is the cofounder and past director of the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture where he remains active. The author/editor of more than thirty books, Danky is on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin– Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Emilie Hardman is the metadata and special projects coordinator for Houghton Library, Harvard College Library’s primary rare books and manuscripts repository. She is particularly interested in the material culture created in and disseminated through politically charged subcultural spaces. Andrew D. Hoyt is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Minnesota, where he studies the role of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury anarchists in the Atlantic labor diaspora. His dissertation focuses on the Italian language newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva and analyzes the way the newspaper’s content, as well as the physical process of producing, distributing, and consuming its propaganda, helped anarchists to build and sustain their transnational social movement. This work employs new digital humanities technologies and sits at the intersection of several interdisciplinary fields of scholarship, including the study of migration, print culture, radicalism, and social networks. Nicolás Kanellos is the Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Literature at the University of Houston. He is founding publisher of the nation’s oldest and most esteemed Hispanic publishing house, Arte Público Press, and the director of a major national research program, Recovering the US Hispanic 241

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Literary Heritage, whose objective is to identify, preserve, study, and make accessible tens of thousands of Hispanic documents of those regions that have become the United States from the colonial period to 1960. Joyce M. Latham is an associate professor at the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she serves as the coordinator of the Public Library Concentration. Her research is focused on institutions and policies that challenge and support individuals’ pursuits of their right to know what they want to know. Laura J. Miller is an associate professor of sociology at Brandeis University. She is the author of Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption and of a book in progress on the intersection between natural foods as a business and as a social movement. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research and teaching focus on US intellectual and cultural history in transnational perspective. She is the author of American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas. Micah Robbins is an assistant professor of English at the American University in Dubai. His research focuses on the intersections between satirical fiction and the underground press during the Cold War, particularly as they relate to the struggle for expanded First Amendment speech rights. He is currently revising his book manuscript, “Total Assault on the Culture! Cold War American Satire and the Fight for Free Speech Rights.” Trevor Joy Sangrey is an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and a lecturer in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Sangrey earned a doctoral degree in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California–Santa Cruz, with a dissertation on Communist Party USA pamphlets on the 1928 Resolution on the Negro Question, more commonly known as the Black Nation Thesis. Sangrey teaches and has published on print culture, race, sexuality, and trans studies. Derek Seidman is an assistant professor of history at D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York. His teaching and research focus on the social and political history of the twentieth-century United States, with an emphasis on protest movements. He is currently working on a book about GI dissent during the Vietnam War.

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Adam Thomas is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of California–Irvine. His research addresses connections between the production of racial ambiguity in the post-emancipation British Caribbean and United States. He has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of California Center for New Racial Studies. Carol L. Tilley is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign. Her research, much of which focuses on comics and print culture, has appeared in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Children’s Literature in Education, and the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Daniel Vaca is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University and a historian of religion and culture in the United States. His research explores the history of the evangelical book industry, addressing the relationship between religious life, economic activity, and media in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

index Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations. Abate, Carlo, 32–58 passim Abate, Louis, 169, 175 Abingdon-Cokesbury, 152 abolitionist press, 5 Acciarito, Pietro, 50, 52 advertising, 4, 63, 71, 91, 116, 138, 150–51, 232 African American press, 24n2 African American rapist stereotype, 13, 14, 27n21 African Americans, 11–31 passim, 85–107. See also slavery African American women, 13, 29n43, 87, 97, 106n57 African Blood Brotherhood, 87 Agnew, Spiro, 207, 216 ALA. See American Library Association (ALA) Alabama, 13, 88, 92, 104n23, 190 Alba Roja, 82n54 Alcott, William A., 115 Aldecoa, Carmen, 67 Allen, Isabelle, 88 Allen, James S., 88, 89–90, 100; The American Negro, 90, 92, 97, 102 Ally, 183, 184, 187–202 Alpha, 69 Alternative Features Service, 208, 210 alternative press. See abolitionist press; anarchist newspapers; feminist press; gay men’s press; New Left press;

“oppositional press”; underground press American Bar Association, 86 American Booksellers Association, 154 American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut, 227, 240n88 American Communism and Black Americans (Foner and Allen), 90 American Library Association (ALA), 145 The American Negro (Allen), 90, 92, 97, 102 American Servicemen’s Union, 199n11, 200n18 American Vegan Society, 124 Amis, B. D., 105n34 anarchism, x, 37, 59 anarchist bookstores. See bookstores: anarchist anarchist newspapers, 32–58 passim, 61 anarchist periodicals, Spanish-language. See Spanish-language anarchist periodicals Anarchist Voices (Avrich), 57n79, 80n36 anonymity, journalistic, 21–22, 30n65, 41, 128, 208. See also pseudonyms, journalistic anticarpetbagger print movement, 11–31 anticomics campaign, 161–79 passim antipornography legislation, 227, 235–36, 240n88 antipornography movement, feminist, 221–36 passim, 237n32, 238n34

245

246

Index

anti-Semitism, 143, 233 antiwar press, GI. See GI underground press Appadurai, Arjun, 113 Arango, Doroteo, 75 Araujo, Antonio de, 70–71, 83n60, 83n65 Archivo Social, 62 Arendt, Hannah, 26n7 Argentina, ix, 36, 69, 79n24, 83n65 Arizona, 75, 82n54, 125 Arkansas Gazette. See Daily Arkansas Gazette Armed Services Editions, 141–42 Armstrong, Helen, 169 arrest and imprisonment of editors, 22, 69, 70, 71, 75, 81n48, 82n54 art, printmaking. See prints and printmakers assassins and assassinations, 39, 48–50 passim, 70, 74, 79n15, 80n36, 84n69, 215; fear of, 81n48, 215; mock, 216 Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, 163 attentats. See assassins and assassinations Atwell, Robert, 151 El Audaz, 65 Aurora (Laredo), 72 La Aurora (New York), 67, 76 Austin, Linda M., 57n90 Avilés, Juan, 63, 74, 78–79n15 Avrich, Paul: Anarchist Voices, 57n79, 80n36 awards and contests, book industry. See book awards and contests Ayer, William Ward, 156n9 Azuara, A. V., 75 Back to Eden Cookbook, 113 Bakunin, Mikhail, 39, 60 La Bandera Roja, 71 Barcelona, 57n95, 62, 64, 65, 71, 78n13 Bark+ Grass, 127 Barnard College Scholar and Feminist Conference IX. See Scholar and Feminist Conference IX, Barnard College, 1982 Baró, José Miguel, 46–47, 48 Barre, Vermont, 35, 36, 38, 52, 55n50, 61 Barrera Bassols, Jacinto, 73, 79n22

Barton, Bruce: The Book Nobody Knows, 137, 142 Bates, Ruby, 92 Battle Creek Sanitarium, 116, 118 Battling Pornography (Bronstein), 237n32, 238n33 Baumgardner, Ron, 168, 175 Beaird, Pat, 142 Before the Sun Goes Down (Howard), 151–52 Bell, Sallie Lee: Until the Day Break, 152, 153 Bender, Lauretta, 165 Berkeley, California, 184, 188, 207, 208 Berkeley Barb, 186, 188, 209–10, 214 best-sellers, 129, 144, 152, 153, 154 Bible, 137–38, 146–47, 151, 153, 154 bigamy charges, 14 black Americans. See African Americans Black Codes, 15, 95, 96 Black Nation Thesis, 85–92 passim, 96–103 passim, 104n16 Black Panthers, 214–15 black rapist stereotype. See African American rapist stereotype black women. See African American women Blight, David W., 18, 20 Blum, Edward J., 18 El Boletín del Torcedor, 68, 76 Boletín Obrero, 67 Bond, 200n18 Bonsal, Stephen, 64 book awards and contests, 150–53 book burning, 169, 172 Bookchin, Murray, 60 book clubs, 141, 142–43 booklists, 137, 140–49 passim, 152, 153 The Book Nobody Knows (Barton), 137, 142 Book-of-the-Month Club, 141, 142–43 book publishing, mainstream, 119–24 passim, 128–29, 144, 151, 152 book publishing, religious. See religious book publishing book reprinting. See reprinting of books books, best-selling. See best-sellers books, paperback. See paperback books bookstores: anarchist, 64, 71, 74; Christian,

Index 153, 154; vandalism in, 239n82; women’s, 231, 233 Boston, 5, 55n50, 84n72. See also Fraternidad (Boston) boycotts, distributors’. See distributors’ boycotts Boyer, Paul S., viii Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451, 172 Brazo y Cerebro, 74, 76 Bresci, Gaetano, 39, 56n60 Briggs, Cyril, 87 Bright, Susie, 231, 232, 235, 236 Britain. See Great Britain Brodherson, David, 34 Bronstein, Carolyn: Battling Pornography, 237n32, 238n33 Brown, Edward Espe: Tassajara Cooking, 120, 121 Brown, John Mason, 163 Brown, Vincent, 29n42 bumper stickers, 207–8 Bunch, Charlotte, 224, 225 Burgchardt, Carl, 89, 90 butch/femme, 227–33 passim Butler, Benjamin, 22, 31n66 Calado, Antonio, 68 Califia, Pat, 226–27, 233, 239n61 Campiglia, Josephine, 168, 172, 175 Canada, 69, 74, 90 Canalejas, José, 80n36 Cananea, Mexico, miners’ strike, 1906, 70 Canby, Henry Seidel, 142–43 Capetillo, Luisa, 68–69, 81n41 Capp, Al, 163 Cárdenas, Isidra T. de, 72 Cárdenas Martínez, León, 73, 83n65, 83n67 Carmona, Paula, 71 Carmona, Rómulo, 71, 72, 73, 83n60, 83n65, 83n67 Carnell, Edward J.: An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 150–51, 152–53 The Carpetbagger (Read), 16, 23 “carpetbagger” (word), 16 carpetbaggers, 11–31

247

cartoons, political. See political cartoons and cartoonists Casa del Obrero Internacional, Los Angeles, 72 Cashwell, Dick, 168, 173, 175 Castilla Morales, José, 66 Catalonia, 46, 62, 65, 78n13 Catholic Church and Catholics, 139, 143, 144, 232 Caught Looking (Willis), 237n32 Cavert, Samuel McCrea, 142 censorship, 22, 24, 31n66, 70, 169, 178n43, 192, 209; Mexico, 69. See also book burning; self-censorship Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, vii–ix, xv Centro Internacional (New York City), 65, 79n26 Centro Obrero, Tampa, 68 Cerebro y Fuerza, 71, 73, 76 chain gangs, 15, 28n23, 92, 94–96, 95 Charbonneau, Claudette, 230 Charleston (SC) Courier, 17, 19 Cherin, Barry, 170, 171, 175 Chic, 212 Chicago, 75, 215–16. See also Haymarket Martyrs Chicago Times, 14 children’s letters, 161, 162–63, 166–73 Christian book publishing, evangelical. See evangelical book publishing Christian Booksellers Association, 154 Christian bookstores. See bookstores: Christian Christianity Today, 146 cigar rollers, 38, 40, 63, 67–69 passim, 80n36 Cipriani, Amilcare, 39, 46, 47, 49 The Clansman (Dixon), 23 Claridad Proletaria, 75, 76 Classics Illustrated, 167, 170 Clemens, Elisabeth S., 157n11 Clendenen, Richard, 164, 165 Club Liberal de Cananea, 70 CNT. See Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) (Spain)

248

Index

Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and against Sadomasochism, 229 Cohen, Robert, 173 Cold War, 205, 209–17 passim Cole, Timothy, 43 Colombia, 72 Columbia Journalism Review, 193 comic books, 161–79 Comics Code Authority (CCA), 166 Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA), 166 Comintern. See Communist International (Comintern) Comité Pro-Revolución Española, 74 Common Sense (Paine), 3 Commonweal, 186 The Communist, 88 Communist International (Comintern), 87, 90, 98, 99, 104n11, 106n49 communist newspapers, 75, 85, 88, 89, 90, 98 communist pamphlets, 85–107 Communist Party of Great Britain, 90, 91 Communist Party USA (CPUSA), 85–107 passim. See also International Labor Defense condensed literature, 164, 170 Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) (Spain), 62 Confederation of Hispanic Societies. See Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas conformism, 4, 5, 114, 174 Congress, US. See US Congress conscription, military. See military draft constitutional amendments. See First Amendment; Thirteenth Amendment convict labor. See chain gangs cookbooks, 111–36 passim cookzines, 125–28 Cooper, Lenna Frances, 116 copperhead press, 14, 20 Corinne, Tee, 226, 233 Corona, José, 75 corporal punishment, 17–18 La Corregidora, 71–72

Corretjer, Juan Antonio, 75 corruption, political, 20–21 Cottrell, Honey Lee, 233 Council on Books in Wartime, 141–42 counterculture, seventies. See seventies counterculture Counter-Inaugural, 1968, 215, 216 Cousins, Norman, 163 CPUSA. See Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Crawford, Lyn, 167, 172–73, 175 Crist, Judith, 163 Cronaca Sovversiva, 32–58 passim, 61, 65 Crusader, 87 Cuba, 62, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72 cultural centers, 63, 65, 78n13 Cultura Obrera, 61, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 74, 76 Cultura Proletaria, 64–65, 69, 76 Daily Arkansas Gazette, 15 Daily National Intelligencer, 14 Daily Worker, 88, 90, 91, 98 Danky, James P., 6, 19, 24n2, 86, 186 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 211, 213–14 Dayan, Colin, 15 DC Comics, 165 De Antonio, Emile: Millhouse, 206 Dear Mrs. Roosevelt (Cohen), 173 El Debate, 69 Debord, Guy, 204, 214 Dejanikus, Tacie, 229 Del Valle, Adrián, 65–66, 68, 79n30, 80n31 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 3–5 El Demócrata (Albuquerque), 71 demonstrations. See protests and demonstrations deportation, 37, 55n47, 61, 63, 70, 72, 80n36, 81–82nn49–50 El Despertar, 63, 65, 76, 78n14 Detroit Free Press, 216 Díaz, Porfirio, 69, 70, 81n48 dictators, 66, 69 distributors’ boycotts, 91 Dixon, Thomas: The Clansman, 23 Doctrina Anarquista-Socialista, 63, 76

Index Dorsey, Hugh, 86 Douglas, Carol Ann, 229 Downey, Greg, vii draft resistance. See military draft: resist­ ance to drug use, 168, 186, 193–96 passim. See also marijuana DuBois, W. E. B., 15, 86 Duggan, Lisa, 223, 228 Dworkin, Andrea, 227, 236, 238n33 Dykes against Pornography, 239–40n82 Ealham, Chris, 57n95 EC Comics. See Entertaining Comics (EC) Echols, Alice, 223, 225, 229, 236n5 ecumenism, religious, 139, 148 Edo, Joachín, 65 education: of Christians, 147; of freed people, 27n22; Italy, 40; pamphlets’ role in, 86–87, 90, 91–92, 97. See also Modern School movement Eerdmans, William, Sr., 148–49 Eerdmans Publishing Company. See William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Elana, Myrna, 231, 232 elections, presidential. See presidential elections Elliott, Harley, 168–72 passim, 175 El Paso, Texas, 70, 71, 72, 81n48 England, 30n65, 78n10, 114, 124 engraving, wood. See wood engraving and engravings Entertaining Comics (EC), 164, 165, 166, 170–71, 174 Eramo, Giovanni, 57n79 El Esclavo, 63, 67–68, 76, 80n37 Escuela Francisco Ferrer, Ybor City, Florida, 63 Escuela Moderna. See Modern School movement España Libre, 66, 67, 69, 76, 80n32 Espionage Act of 1917, 70 Estella, Mary: Natural Foods Cookbook, 124 Esteve, Pedro, 61–68 passim, 74–75, 78n10, 78n15, 79n22, 80n37, 84n69

249

ethnic cookbooks, 123 “evangelical” (word), 139 evangelical book publishing, 137–60 Evasion, 128 An Evening with Richard Nixon (Vidal), 205–6 Every-Day Dishes (Kellogg), 116 executions, 44–46 passim, 46, 78n13 Exman, Eugene, 144 Faderman, Lillian, 239n61 Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury), 172 fanzines, 165, 176–77n13 fascists and fascism, 61, 64, 66, 67, 102, 140, 143, 172 Fatale Media, 235 La Federación (Tampa), 67, 76 El Federal, 67 Federal Council of Churches, 139, 156n9 feminist press, 221–40 feminists and feminism, 72–73, 126, 127, 221–40 Ferguson, Kathy E., 37 Ferrer School, Ybor City, Florida. See Escuela Francisco Ferrer, Ybor City, Florida Ferrer y Guardia, Francisco, 39, 45–46, 47, 74, 78n13 Feu-Lopez, Montserrat, 66, 80n32 fiction, 23–24, 70, 150–53 passim, 170. See also comic books fiction, productive. See “productive fiction” films, 183, 198n3, 206, 235 financial profit. See profit in publishing Firestone, Shulamith, 224 First Amendment, 21, 217, 240n88 Fischer, Kristen, 18 Flinders, Carol, 120 Flores Magón, Enrique, 73 Flores Magón, Ricardo, 64, 68–75 passim, 82n54, 83n60, 83n67 Florida, 38, 40, 61–63 passim, 67–69 Flynn, Clarence, 170, 175 Foner, Eric: Reconstruction, 26n11, 28n29 Foner, Philip S., 90 A Fool’s Errand (Tourgée), 11, 13, 16, 20, 23–24

250

Index

forced labor of prisoners. See chain gangs Fort Bliss, Texas, 190, 192, 199n11 Fort Sill, Oklahoma, 195, 199n11 Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 137, 140, 142 Foster, William Z., 89, 96 Foster and Ford for Food and Freedom, 96 France, 4, 67, 74. See also Paris Commune Fraternidad (Boston), 72–73, 76, 83n62, 84n72 freedom of speech, 4, 217, 229, 240n88 freeganism, 128 “free love,” 59, 68, 74, 81n41 Friedman, Andrea, 212 Frye, David, 205 Fuerza Consciente, 73, 74, 76, 81n41 Fuller, Charles E., 151, 156n6 Fuller Theological Seminary, 146–47, 151 Funicello, Charles, 172, 175 Furies, 226 Gabaccia, Donna R., 118 Gaines, William, 164, 165, 170 Galleani, Luigi, 32–39 passim, 43, 55n47, 60–61, 63, 65 Gallifet, Gaston de, 43–44, 45 García, Marcelino, 64, 78n10 Gardner, Fred, 196 Garrison, William Lloyd, 5 Gaudio, Michael, 57n85 gay men’s press, 234 gender in cookbooks and cookzines, 112, 126–27, 131 gender in librarianship, 141 Georgia, 86, 88 German immigrants, xi, 16, 30n60, 38 Germany, 58n98, 143 GI coffeehouses, 185, 187, 196, 224 Gilmore, Glenda, 25n4, 87, 103n8 Gilmore, Kim, 28n23 GI movement organizations, 199n11 Ginsberg, Allen, 216, 217 GI underground press, 183–202 Goldman, Emma, 37, 62, 64, 226 Gomez, Jewelle, 231, 233 González, Herminio, 68, 69 González Malo, Jesús, 66–67 Good Vibrations, 232

Graham, Sylvester, 115 Great Britain, 90, 91, 114–15, 124. See also England Greenberg, David, 205 Grier, Barbara, 233 Grimsley, Mark, 19 Grossman, Robert, 211 Guardian (New York City), 224 Guerrero, Práxedis, 71, 74, 82n54 Guglielmo, Jennifer, 37 Guindon, Dick, 206–7, 207 Gutiérrez de Lara, Lázaro, 70, 81–82nn48–49 Gutiérrez de Mendoza, Juana, 72 Haldeman, H. R., 212 Hammer and Hoe (Kelley), 91 Hardy, Jack, 211, 213 Harlem, New York City, 87, 89, 92, 96, 163 Harper’s Weekly, 16, 17 Hart, John M.: Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931, 81n44 Haymarket Martyrs, xi, 38, 39 Haywood, Harry, 90 health, occupational. See occupational health Hedstrom, Matthew S., 141 Hegarty, John, 167, 170, 175 Henry, Alice, 229 Henry, Carl F. H., 146–54 passim; The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, 149 Herblock, 205, 206 Hernández, José, 65 Herndon, Angelo, 85, 86, 103n4 heterosexuality, 223, 227, 228, 235. See also homophobia in political satire Hilliard, David, 214–15 Hine, Thomas, 167 Hippycore Krew, 125 Hispanic anarchist movement, 59–84 Hispanic immigrants, 59–84 passim Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. See Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project

Index Hispanic women journalists. See women journalists, Hispanic Hodes, Martha, 12–13 Holden, William Woods, 22 Hollibaugh, Amber, 229, 230 Holtville, California, 75 homophobia in political satire, 210–14 passim homosexual press. See gay men’s press; lesbian newspapers; lesbian sex magazines Hoover, J. Edgar, 211, 212 Howard, Elizabeth M.: Before the Sun Goes Down, 151–52 Howard, Milton, 90 Howard, Walter, 93 How It All Vegan (Barnard and Kramer), 129 How to Cut Food Costs (Cooper), 116 Huelga General, 75, 76 Humanidad, 71 humor. See satire and satirists Hunter, Nan D., 227 Hurd, Frank J.: Ten Talents, 118–19 Hurd, Rosalie: Ten Talents, 118–19 Hutchins, Grace, 89 Hygienic Cook-Book ( Jones), 113 El Ideal (Brooklyn), 68 illiteracy. See literacy and illiteracy immigrant newspapers, 36. See also Italian immigrant press immigrants, German. See German immigrants immigrants, Hispanic. See Hispanic immigrants immigrants, Italian. See Italian immigrants immigrants, racialization of, 30n60 imprisonment of editors. See arrest and imprisonment of editors Indianapolis Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance, 227, 235 industrialization. See mechanization and industrialization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 40, 67, 72, 74–75, 80n36, 84n73

251

Inness, Sherrie A., 114 Inquietudes, 66, 76 Institute for Policy Studies, 224–25 intaglio printing, 33 “interactive production”: GI newspapers, 184, 189, 191–94, 197; On Our Backs, 234 El Internacional (Tampa), 66, 67, 68, 76 International Labor Defense, 86, 88, 89, 94 International Publishers, 89, 94, 95, 97, 104n20 An Introduction to Christian Apologetics (Carnell), 150–51 It Ain’t Me Babe, 222, 224 Italian immigrant press, 32–58, 61 Italian immigrants, 32–67 passim Italian-language anarchist newspapers, 32–58 passim, 61 Italy, 40, 41. See also Umberto I, King of Italy Ivins, William, 32 Jasper, James M., 155n3 Jews and Judaism, 142–43 Jones, Claudia, 106n57 Jones, Mattie M.: Hygienic Cook-Book, 113 Jupp, James, 91 Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee. See US Congress: Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency Katzen, Mollie: The Moosewood Cookbook, 120–21 Kefauver, Estes, 164, 174 Kelley, Robin D. G., 87, 88, 91, 98–99, 104n23 Kellogg, Ella E., 116, 117 Kellogg, John Harvey, 116 Kelly, Walt, x, 164 Khan, Muhammad, 208–9 King Umberto I. See Umberto I, King of Italy Kinney, Nan, 231, 232, 233, 235 Koopmans, Ruud, 156n5 Krassner, Paul, 212, 218n6. See also Realist Kropotkin, Peter, 39, 60

252

Index

Ku Klux Klan, 17, 19, 21, 22 Kulp, Denise, 234 Kunitz, Stanley J., 172 Labor Defender, 88 labor movement. See unions Ladies’ Physiological Institute, 115 Lamb, Charles, 144 Langa, Helen, 40 Laurel’s Kitchen (Robertson, Flinders, and Godfrey), 120, 121 law. See antipornography legislation; arrest and imprisonment of editors; libel; obscenity; trials; US Supreme Court Lawn Food Cook Book (Runyon), 124 Lawson, Elizabeth, 86, 88, 94, 105n34 Lawson family, 73 League of Struggle for Negro Rights, 89, 105n34 Leavenworth Prison, 70, 71, 75 lectores, 40, 63, 65, 67 legislation, antipornography. See antipornography legislation Leidholdt, Dorchen, 229, 234 Lembcke, Jerry, 198n3 Leneman, Leah: The Single Vegan, 124 Lenin, Vladimir, 89, 99 Leonardi, Susan J., 112 Leroy, Constant, 84n69 lesbian newspapers, 226 Lesbian Sex Mafia, 229 lesbian sex magazines, 221–22, 231–36 lesbian sexuality, 226–36 passim letters, children’s. See children’s letters letters to editors, 15, 21, 165; soldiers’, 184, 188–95 passim Levy, Harry, III, 168, 175 libel, 28n24, 204, 210–17 passim Liberación (Tampa), 68, 76 El Liberal (Del Rio, TX), 71, 76 Liberator (Boston), 5 Liberator (League of Struggle for Negro Rights), 105n34 Libertad y Trabajo, 71, 75 librarians, anticomics views of, 169 librarianship, 141, 174 Library of Congress, 143

Librería Mexicana “La Aurora,” 71 Lidia, Palmiro de. See Del Valle, Adrián Lindner, Robert M., 167 Linotype, 41, 57n79 Linton, William J., 42–43 literacy and illiteracy, x, 24n2, 40, 67, 91, 162 literature, condensed. See condensed literature Little Blue Books, 90 Lomas, Clara, 72 “long sixties,” 203–4 Los Angeles, 69–75 passim, 81n48, 82n54, 83n60 Los Angeles Times, 72 love, free. See “free love” Lowry, Donald, 168, 172, 175 loyalty oaths, 46 La Luz (Barcelona club), 65 lynching, 26–27n15, 92, 93, 94, 100 Lynn, Massachusetts, 36, 55n50, 57n79 MacKinnon, Catharine, 227, 236, 238n33 Madero, Francisco, 70, 79n15, 81n44 magazines, pornographic. See pornographic magazines Magruder, Jeb, 211 mail repression. See postal repression mainstream press, 20, 33, 72, 167, 206, 216; military, 186, 192. See also book publishing, mainstream; Newsweek; New York Times; Reconstruction-era press Malatesta, Errico, 65, 78n10, 79n30 Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, 104n16 marijuana, 163, 168, 193, 203, 205 Marine Firemen, Oilers, and Watertenders Union, 64, 74 Marshall, Peter, 55n40 Marston, Leslie R., 145–46 Marxism, 55n40, 120n20, 186, 216n18, 232 Masetti, Augusto, 41, 42 mass media, 204, 207, 213, 214. See also mainstream press McCarthy, Joseph, 212 McDowell, Kate, 174

Index McDuffie, Eric, 87–88 McGrath, Maria, 112 McLaughlin, Brian Arthur, 167, 168, 175 meat eating, 113, 114, 115, 118–22 passim mechanization and industrialization, 33, 35–36, 41, 42, 43. See also photomechanical processes Meridian (MS) Mercury, 19 Mexican Liberal Party. See Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) Mexican Revolution, 69–71, 79n22, 81–82nn48–49 Mexico, 72, 75, 83n60, 83n67 military draft, xiii–xiv, 208–10 passim; resistance to, xii–xiv, 188, 210 Mill, John Stuart, 7n19 Millett, Kate, 224, 238n43 Millhouse (De Antonio), 206 miners and mining, 55, 64, 70, 75, 82n54 miscegenation, 13, 14, 23, 27n22 Miqueli, R., 68, 80n39 Miqueli de González, Violeta, 68, 69 Mississippi, 14–15, 17, 18, 19 mob action. See lynching; vigilantism “Mobe.” See National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam Modern School movement, 40, 45, 63, 71, 74, 78n13, 83n60 Moira, Fran, 229, 230 Moncaleano, Blanca de, 72–73 Moncaleano, Juan Francisco, 71, 72, 73, 82n59, 83n60, 83n65, 83n67 Moody Bible Institute, 137, 147, 152 Moody Monthly, 151 Moody Press, 152 The Moosewood Cookbook (Katzen), 120–21 Morgan, Sarah, 19 Moro, Joseph, 57n79 Morris, William, 36 El Mosquito, 71, 77 La Mujer Moderna, 72 Mulholland, Brian E., 168, 171, 172, 175 Murphy, Charles, 166 NAACP, 86, 102, 103n9 NBC (National Broadcasting Company), 140

253

Naison, Mark, 87–88 Nast, Thomas, 16, 17, 30n60 Natchez Courier, 14–15 Nation, ix, x, 20 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. See NAACP National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), 137–47 passim, 153, 156n7 National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), 142–44 National Intelligencer. See Daily National Intelligencer National Lampoon, 211 National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, 215, 224 Natural Foods Cookbook (Estella), 124 Nature’s Own Book (Nicholson), 115 Navasky, Victor, ix–x Nearing, Helen: Simple Food for the Good Life, 120 The Negroes in a Soviet America (Ford and Allen), 100, 101, 102 Negro Liberation (Allen), 98 Nestle, Joan, 229, 233 Newark (OH) Advocate, 20 The New Cookery (Cooper), 116, 118 New England, 35–38 passim, 43, 52, 55n50, 57n79, 61. See also Boston The New Hydropathic Cook-Book (Trall), 115 New Jersey, 61–67 passim New Left press, 222, 224 New Orleans, 13–14 New Orleans Daily Picayune, 31n66 News-Liberated Press (Hartford, CT), 210–11 newspapers: abolitionist, 5; anarchist, 32– 58 passim, 61; antiwar, 183–202 passim; communist, 75, 85, 88, 89, 90, 98; feminist, 221–40 passim; illustrations in, 32–58 passim; immigrant, 36; Italian immigrant, 32–58, 61; lesbian, 226; mainstream, 152, 206, 216; New Left, 224; “oppositional,” 186, 188; Reconstruction era, 11–31 passim; student, 210–11; Tocqueville view, 3–4, 5; underground, 186, 204, 216. See also Berkeley Barb; New York Times; southern newspapers

254

Index

Newsweek, 185, 189, 195 The New Vegan Cookbook (Sass and Weaver), 128–19 New York, 62–69 passim, 73–75 passim, 78n13, 90, 115, 198. See also Harlem, New York City; Scholar and Feminist Conference IX, Barnard College, 1982 New York Daily News, 216 New York Times, xiii, 23, 143, 195, 216, 224 Nicholson, Asenath: Nature’s Own Book, 115 Nixon, Richard M., 203–20, 224 Noble Sorich, Ople, 168–69, 175 North, Sterling, 162 North Carolina, 22–23, 24 Northern press, pro-South. See copperhead press novels. See fiction Nueva Era, 69 El Nueva Ideal, 65 Nueva Vida, 66, 68, 69, 77 El Obrero (San Antonio), 72 El Obrero Industrial (Los Angeles), 75 El Obrero Industrial (Tampa), 67, 77, 84n73 obscenity, 203, 209–13 passim, 217, 219n29 occupational health, 35, 52 Ockenga, Harold, 139 off our backs, 221–40 passim Ohio, 20, 66 On Our Backs, 221–22, 231–36 “oppositional press,” 19, 186, 188 Ortiz de Domínguez, María Josefa, 71–72 Osborne, Jack, 170, 175 Padmore, George, 85 Page, Thomas Nelson: Red Rock, 23, 27n21 Paine, Thomas: Common Sense, 3 Pain Pills for Bleeding Hearts, 128 Painter, Nell Irvin, 25n4 pamphlets, 63, 75, 83n67, 85–107; comic books as, 161; definitions, 89, 91 paperback books, 141–42, 170, 178n36 paper rationing, 139 Pardinas, Manuel, 80n36 Paris Commune, 43, 44, 46

Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), 69–75 passim, 79n22, 81n44 partisan press, 4, 5 Passannante, Giovanni, 48–49, 51 Paterson, New Jersey, 61, 63 patriarchy, 72–73, 222, 223, 225, 227, 228 Patterson, Haywood, 92 Patterson, Orlando: Slavery and Social Death, 29n42 Pawley, Christine, vii, 174 Peaceable Kingdom Cookbook, 120 Peck, Harris, 165 Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, 44, 46 Pernicone, Nunzio, 37 photomechanical processes, 33–34, 35, 41, 42, 43 Pierce, George, 22 Pigney, Stephen, 34 Pimlott, Herbert, 90, 91 Pirani, Alberico, 79n26 Playboy, 235 Please Don’t Feed the Bears!, 125, 127 Pleasure and Danger (Vance), 231 PLM. See Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) Pluma Roja, 72, 73, 77 police, 45–46, 47, 85, 92–96 passim, 216, 217 La Políglota, 63 Political Affairs, 88 political cartoons and cartoonists, x, 205– 11 passim political correctness: Communist, 106n49; feminist, 223, 227, 228, 230 political corruption. See corruption, political Pool, Joe, 213, 216 pornographic magazines, 211, 212; lesbian, 221–22, 231–36 pornography, 227, 231, 234. See also antipornography movement portraiture, 38–52 passim, 56n58; lesbian, 234, 235 Posener, Jill, 235 postal repression, 70, 74, 85, 191 La Prensa (Buenos Aires), 69 La Prensa (San Antonio), 66

Index presidential elections, x, 92, 96, 97, 215, 227 press, abolitionist. See abolitionist press press, African American. See African American press press, copperhead. See copperhead press press, feminist. See feminist press press, gay men’s. See gay men’s press press, lesbian. See lesbian newspapers; lesbian sex magazines press, mainstream. See mainstream press press, New Left. See New Left press press, partisan. See partisan press press, Reconstruction-era. See Reconstruction-era press press, underground. See underground press press destruction, 63, 70, 80n37 Preston, John, 234 prints and printmakers, 32–58 passim prisoners, 28n23, 96. See also arrest and imprisonment of editors; chain gangs Proctor, Philip, 171, 175, 178n43 “productive fiction,” 99–103 passim El Productor, 62, 65 Profane Existence, 126 Profintern. See Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) profit in publishing, 148–49, 155 Propaganda, 62 propaganda of the deed. See assassins and assassinations Protestant book publishing, 138. See also evangelical book publishing Protestantism, liberal, 138–44 passim protests and demonstrations, 67, 194–95, 203, 215–16, 224 Proudhon, Pierre, 39, 60 pseudonyms, journalistic, 21–22, 41, 65, 66, 68, 75, 80n31, 88 Pueblos Hispanos, 75, 77 Puerto Rican immigrants, 62, 67, 68, 75, 80n39 The Pulpit Commentary (Spence and Exell), 149 punishment, corporal. See corporal punishment

255

punk movement, 125–28 Punto Rojo, 71 La Questione Sociale, 61, 63 racialization, 11–31 passim racism, xii, 20, 99–103 passim, 187, 225; socalled, 233 radical Republicans, 11, 13, 14, 29n52 radio, 66, 89, 104n23, 139–40, 156n6, 156n9, 163, 166 Raleigh Sentinel, 22–23, 24 Ramírez, Sara Estela, 71–72 rape, 13, 14, 27n15, 27n21, 92, 226, 227; in political cartoons, 206–7, 207 Read, Opie: The Carpetbagger, 16, 23 reader involvement in production. See “interactive production” Reader’s Digest, 164, 166, 215, 216 reading aloud to workers. See lectores Realist, 206–7, 207, 211, 214 El Rebelde, 65, 75, 77 Rebozo, Charles “Bebe,” 211, 212 Reconstruction (Foner), 26n11, 28n29 Reconstruction-era press, 11–31 Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, 61, 76–77 Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern), 89 Red Rock (Page), 23, 27n21 Reforma-Libertad-Justicia, 70, 71, 77 La Reforma Social, 71, 77 Refregier, Anton, 93, 94, 105n34 Regeneración, 64, 68–74 passim, 77, 82n54, 83n60, 83n65 Regeneración y Concordia, 72 El Regidor, 81 Reinsdorf, August, 39, 48, 50, 58n98 religion: vegetarianism and, 116, 118–19, 123, 124. See also Catholic Church and Catholics; evangelical book publishing; Protestantism, liberal Religious Book Club, 141, 142 religious book publishing, 138, 140–41, 144. See also evangelical book publishing Religious Book Week, 141, 142–44

256

Index

reprinting of books, 148–49 Republicans, radical. See radical Republicans Resolution on the Negro Question (CPUSA), 85, 87, 88, 99, 106n49 Revista Unica, 66, 77 Revolución (Los Angeles), 81n48, 82n54 revolution, 26n7. See also Mexican Revolution Revolutionary Workers League of the United States, 75 Rips, Geoffrey, 217 Rochester, Anna, 89 Rogin, Michael, 20 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Church and Catholics Roosevelt, Eleanor, 173 Rosen, Hannah, 29n43 Roth v. United States, 227, 237n31 Rubin, Gayle, 223, 229, 230, 233, 239n61 Runyon, Linda: Lawn Food Cook Book, 124 Ruskin, John, 43, 57n90 sadomasochism (S&M), 226–27, 228, 230 Sahl, Mort, 205 St. Imier Congress, 1872, 55n40 St. Louis, 20, 69, 71 Salinas, Marcelo, 80n36 Samois (S&M club), 226, 228, 229, 232, 239n61 San Antonio, 66, 69, 71, 72 San Francisco, 74, 82n54, 105n34, 188, 214–15, 232; lesbian publishing in, 224, 231, 232 Sapphistry (Califia), 226–27 Saslav, Isidor, 172 Sass, Lorna J.: The New Vegan Cookbook, 128–19 satire and satirists, x, 68, 178n43, 203–20 passim Saturday Review of Literature, 161, 162, 163 Savannah News, 17 Scalia, Linda Faye, 170, 175 Schocket, Eric, 90 Scholar and Feminist Conference IX, Barnard College, 1982, 222, 223, 228– 31, 235

Schools, Modern. See Modern School movement Schurz, Carl, 16, 30n60 Science in the Kitchen, 116, 117 Scottsboro Nine case, 86, 91–94, 96, 98, 102 Screw, 211 sculptors and sculpting, 35, 52–53 Sedition Act of 1918, 61 Seduction of the Innocent (Wertham), xiii, 162, 164, 170, 174 self-censorship, 4–5, 166 self-publishing, 68–69, 119, 120–21. See also zines Senate hearings on comic books, 162, 164–65, 174 Seventh-day Adventism, 116, 119, 124 seventies counterculture, 114, 119–21, 123, 124, 183–86 passim, 192, 193. See also underground press sexism, 222–25 passim sex magazines. See pornographic magazines sexual humor, 207–14 passim sexuality, 223, 226, 227, 228. See also heterosexuality; lesbian sexuality “sex wars,” 221–22, 223, 227, 231, 236 sex workers and sex work, 223, 232 Seymour, Whitney North, 86 Shakespeare, William, 170 Shapiro, Herbert, 90 Sharlet, Jeff, 185 Shaw, Matthew J., 34 silicosis, 35, 52 Simple Food for the Good Life (Nearing), 120 The Single Vegan (Leneman), 124 skin color, 13, 18, 24 slavery, 12–19 passim, 24, 28n23, 29n40, 29n42, 95, 101. See also abolitionist press Slavery and Social Death (Patterson), 29n42 Smillie, Bill, 210 Smith, C. J., 170, 175 Smith, Clark, 188–89, 191, 196, 202n61 Smith, Wilbur M., 137–54 passim, 156n6 Snitow, Ann, 299, 230 Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas, 66, 67 Solidaridad (New York City), 66, 77 Solidaridad (Chicago), 75, 77

Index Solomon, Mark, 87–88 Sorel, Edward, 211 Sorich, Ople Noble. See Noble Sorich, Ople South America, 38, 54n32. See also Argentina “Southerner” (word), 25n4 southern newspapers: communist, 85, 88, 89, 90, 98; Reconstruction era, 11–31 passim Southern Worker, 85, 88, 89, 90, 98 “Soviet America,” 100–101 Soviet Union, 87, 99 Soy, Not Oi!, 125, 126, 126 Spain, 45–46, 47, 57n95, 61–67 passim, 71, 74; assassinations and assassination plots, 79n15, 80n36, 84n69. See also Catalonia Spanish Civil War, 61, 62, 64, 66 Spanish-language anarchist periodicals, 59–84 Spivak, John L.: On the Chain Gang, 94–96, 95 Stalin, Joseph, 89, 99, 104n12 Stamberg, Margie, 224 Stars and Stripes, 186, 192 steelworkers, 65 Steffens, Heidi, 224, 225 Steffens, Nan, 224, 225 stereotypes: of African Americans, 13, 14, 23, 27n21; of anarchists, 37, 59 Stevens, Thaddeus, 23 Stevenson, Adlai, 205 Stewart, Bob “Bhob,” 168, 171, 172, 173, 175, 176–77n13 stone carvers and carving, 35, 52–53 strikes, 63, 64, 70, 75 Strong, Anna Louise, 89 student newspapers, 210–11 study circles, Italian American, 38, 52 Summers, Mark Wahlgren, 20 Sundahl, Debi, 231, 232 Supreme Court cases. See US Supreme Court Sutherland, John, 153 El Tabacalero, 67, 77 Taft, William Howard, 70, 81n48

257

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Walker Labor Archives, 104–5n25 Tampa, Florida, 66, 67–69, 74, 79n22, 80n36 Tassajara Cooking (Brown), 120, 121 tattoos, draft evasion use of, 210 teenagers’ comic book reading, 161–79 passim television, 139, 162, 164, 176n10 temperance movement and alcohol opposition, 6, 115 Tennessee, 28n27, 88 Ten Speed Press, 121 Ten Talents (Hurd), 118–19 Texas, 69–72 passim, 81n48 Theophano, Janet, 112 They Shall Not Die! Stop the Legal Lynching!, 93–94, 93 Third International. See Communist International (Comintern) Thirteenth Amendment, 15, 95 Thompson, E. P., 30 Time, 167 tobacco workers, 62, 67, 79n22, 84n73. See also cigar rollers Tocqueville, Alexis de, 3–5, 6 Tolstoy, Leo, 43, 44 Torino. See Turin, Italy Toronto, 69, 233 torture, 96, 189 Tourgée, Albion W.: A Fool’s Errand, 11, 13, 16, 20, 23–24 Trachtenberg, Alexander, 89 Trading with the Enemy Act, 70 Trall, R. T.: The New Hydropathic Cook-Book, 115 trials: in art, 45–46, 47; in political cartoons, 209–10. See also Scottsboro Nine case Tryon, Thomas: Wisdom’s Dictates, 114 Tsui, Kitty, 235 Tudor, Tommy, 170, 175 Tunnell, Ted, 18, 22, 25n3 Turcato, Davide, 54n32, 55n40 Turin, Italy, 37, 55n47 Turner, John K., 81n49 Turner, Josiah, 22–23, 24

258

Index

“tyranny of the majority” (Tocqueville), 4–5 Umberto I, King of Italy, 48–49, 50, 56n60 underground press, 186, 204–16 passim, 224. See also GI underground press The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Henry), 149 unions, 64, 67, 74, 68, 144. See also Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) United Evangelical Action, 146, 152 United Kingdom. See Great Britain Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 102, 103n9 University of Hartford, 210–11 Until the Day Break (Bell), 152, 153 US Congress, 143, 213; House Judiciary Committee, 203; Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, 162, 164–65, 167, 168, 174 US Constitution, amendments to. See First Amendment; Thirteenth Amendment USSR. See Soviet Union US Supreme Court, 86, 92, 227, 236, 240n88 US War Department, 143 vagrancy charges, 28n29, 95 Vance, Carole S., 228, 231, 238n43 vegan cookbooks and zines, 114, 123–29 veganism, 113, 123–24, 129 Vegan Society, 123, 124 Vegetable Diet (Alcott), 115 vegetarian cookbooks, 111–36 The Vegetarian Epicure (Thomas), 120, 121 Vesper, 72 Vidal, Gore: An Evening with Richard Nixon, 205–6 Vidal, Jaime, 64, 73–74, 84n69, 84n72 Vietnam GI, 185 Vietnam Moratorium Committee, 195, 202n54 Vietnam War, 183–202 passim vigilantism, 5, 19, 21, 26–27n15, 63, 80n37. See also Ku Klux Klan

Vilariño, José, 73–74 Villarreal, Andrea, 72 Villarreal, Teresa, 72 Vincennes Weekly Western Sun, 20 violence, sexual, 29n43, 228. See also rape violence in satire, 206–7, 214–17 passim Vocero de la Unión de Tabaqueros, 67 Voluntad, 74, 77 voluntary associations, 5–6 La Voz (New York City), 66 La Voz de la Mujer, 72, 77 La Voz del Esclavo, 68, 77 Walker, Gene, 170, 175 War Department. See US War Department Warmoth, Henry Clay, 31n66 war resisters, Italian, 41 wars. See Vietnam War; World War II Warshow, Paul, 174–75 Warshow, Robert, 174–75, 179n63 Washington, DC, 14, 215, 216, 224, 225 Washington Post, 152, 206 Watergate scandal, 203, 212 WAVPM. See Women against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM) Webb, Marilyn S., 224, 225, 237n13 Webster, Paula, 238n34 Wertham, Fredric, 162–65 passim, 174; children’s letters to, 162, 166–75 passim; Seduction of the Innocent, xiii, 162, 164, 170, 174 White, Maude, 106n57 Whitfield, Stephen J., 205 Wicks, Harry, 88 Wicks, Marlene, 224 Wiegman, Robyn, 26–27n15 Wigransky, David Pace, 161, 162, 163, 175 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 148–53 passim Willis, Ellen: Caught Looking, 237n32 Wisdom’s Dictates (Tryon), 114 Women against Pornography (WAP), 226, 229, 234, 238n33 Women against Sexist Violence in the Media, 226

Index Women against Violence against Women, 227 Women against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM), 228, 232 women journalists, Hispanic, 67, 68–69, 71–73, 74 women pamphleteers, 89 women’s bookstores. See bookstores: women’s women’s movement, 221–40 passim wood engraving and engravings, xi, 32–58 passim Worker Center, Tampa. See Centro Obrero, Tampa Workers’ Library Publishers, 89, 93

259

Working Women and the Elections, 97 World War II, 139, 141–42 Wright, Roy, 92 “Yankee schoolmarm” (term), 27n22 Ybor City, Florida, 38, 40, 61–63 passim, 67–69 Yippies, 215–16 Yoshii, Janet, 210–11 Young, Roland, 214–15 The Young House-Keeper (Alcott), 115 Zanzel, John, 210–11 zines, 125–28. See also fanzines ˇ izˇek, Slavoj, 214 Z Zondervan Publishing House, 152, 154

t h e h i s t o ry o f p r i n t a n d d i g i ta l c u l ­t u r e Se­r ies Ed­i­t ors James P. Danky Chris­tine Paw­ley Adam R. Nel­son Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print Edited by Rima D. Apple, Gregory J. Downey, and Stephen L. Vaughn Libraries as Agencies of Culture Edited by Thomas Augst and Wayne Wiegand Protest on the Page: Essays on Print and the Culture of Dissent since 1865 Edited by James L. Baughman, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, and James P. Danky Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age, Second Edition Paul S. Boyer Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America Edited by Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children’s Book Publishing, 1919–1939 Jacalyn Eddy Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876–1920 Lora Dee Garrison

Education and the Culture of Print in Modern America Edited by Adam R. Nelson and John L. Rudolph Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America Edited by Christine Pawley and Louise S. Robbins