John Fabian Witt

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

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

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

Great convos at @plawpu.bsky.social volume 3… Huge thanks to @johnfabianwitt.bsky.social for a fantastic discussion!

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

Really terrific — check it out!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free Speech Is the Antidote to Political Violence The zealous safeguarding of individual expression is a recent innovation. What sparked it? The need to curb violent societal upheaval.

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

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

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

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

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

Character countdown #25, Mary McDowell: The “angel of the stockyards” and settlement house founder in Chicago's brutal meat packing yards, McDowell was a progressive reformer, WW1 peace activist, and the oldest member of the Garland Fund board. #TheRadicalFund

Countdown no. 26, Thurgood Marshall: Justice on the SCOTUS and transformative civil rights lawyer, his first NAACP salary came from the Garland Fund when he jump-started the Fund's sputtering legal campaign. #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 27, Nathan Margold: Brooklyn-raised, Harvard-trained Jewish immigrant lawyer who crafted the first draft of a legal campaign against Jim Crow that focused not on rights but on administration and power. #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 28, Judah Magnes: New York rabbi, pacifist, and one of a dozen founding directors at the Garland Fund in 1922, Magnes became the first president of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Character countdown no. 29, Robert Morss Lovett: University of Chicago English prof & New Republic editor, Lovett tried to turn the Fund away from further support to the NAACP in 1925; he later fought accusations of Communist affiliation by HUAC and won at the Supreme Court.

Cast of characters no. 30, Alain Locke: Howard University philosopher & intellectual sparring partner of W. E. B. Du Bois, Locke helped put education for Black Americans on the Fund's agenda. #TheRadicalFund

Characters countdown no. 31, Walter Lippmann: the influential columnist served as advisor to the Garland Fund and member of its Publications Committee, where his ideas about democracy in mass society shaped the Fund's information strategies. #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 32: Freda Kirchwey, brilliant editor of The Nation magazine, Garland Fund director, and stalwart supporter of liberal causes; Kirchwey pressed for the campaign against Jim Crow to include whites-only unions. #TheRadicalFund

Character countdown 33: James Weldon Johnson, the Jacksonville-born polymath, oversaw Garland Fund grants to groups advocating on behalf of racial minorities, developing the Fund's arts & culture program--and crafting its attack on Jim Crow along the way. #TheRadicalFund

#TheRadicalFund character for today: A.J. Muste, minister turned labor organizer, crafted a new 1920s ethic of nonviolent protest at the Fund's Brookwood Labor College, renouncing the prewar left's morally disastrous violence and lighting a path for nonviolent labor and civil rights protests to come