Nation (New York, N.Y. : 1865)

The political and cultural review, the Nation , was founded in 1865 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin who also served as the first editor. In 1881 Godkin sold the magazine to the New York Evening Post, where he became editor of the Post and Wendell Phillips Garrison became editor of the Nation. It became a weekly edition of the Post until 1914.

Originally it was self-described as "A weekly journal of politics, literature, science and art." Under Godkin, the Nation railed against Reconstruction excesses, abuses of the civil service and corruption in the goverment. It is America's oldest such continuously published periodical still extant.

From the guide to the Nation, papers, 1865-1893., (Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University)

The Nation has been published continuously as a liberal weekly magazine of politics and culture since its founding in 1865 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin. A number of theses and books have explored the history of the magazine and its political and social impact; the most useful to date in the context of this collection is: Alpern, Sara, 1942- . Freda Kirchwey, a woman of the Nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Freda Kirchwey's editorship at the Nation is the focus of the bulk of this collection. She brought a "militant liberalism" to the magazine, inevitably experiencing a bumpy ride, nonetheless keeping the magazine afloat under dire financial circumstances while expanding activities associated with the magazine. The dates of the bulk of this collection encompass the effects of the Great Depression and New Deal, the rise of fascism, growing comprehension of the Holocaust, the domestic and international crises of World War II, the dawning of the atomic age, and the roots of the Cold War and McCarthyism, all topics documented in this collection. Kirchwey was also personally representative of a new social order, a woman possessing power, in public, with family, surviving personal tragedy and the stress inherent in producing a weekly magazine. During the 1930s and 1940s the magazine was perpetually fund raising and reorganizing, trying to survive one financial hardship after another, and then came the banning of the magazine from New York public schools and the attendant legal and social battles of the early 1950s.

Freda Kirchwey was born Mary Frederika Kirchwey in 1893 in Lake Placid, New York, and attended Barnard College. She married Princeton instructor Evans Clark (1888-1970) in 1915. The couple had three sons, the first two, Brewster and Jeffrey, dying in their first and seventh years respectively; son Michael served in the war and was an occasional contributor to the Nation. In 1928 Evans Clark became director of the Twentieth Century Fund, a liberal philanthropic and research organization from which he retired in 1953. Clark and the Twentieth Century Fund worked closely with the Nation in various ways, Clark's personal finances becoming entwined when Freda Kirchwey purchased the magazine in 1937.

Kirchwey joined the staff of the Nation's international relations section in 1918 at the age of 25. By 1922 she was managing editor and in 1928 became literary editor. Oswald Garrison Villard (1872-1949) was editor and owner of the Nation from 1918-1932. Kirchwey was absent from the magazine during 1930-1932, a time that included the death of her son. She returned and was made executive editor in 1933 following Oswald Garrison Villard's retirement as editor; he continued as contributing editor and publisher, finally severing all ties in 1940. In 1935 Villard sold the magazine to banker Maurice Wertheim, stipulating that Kirchwey would remain as editor. Kirchwey purchased the magazine in 1937 from publisher Wertheim. After a decade of struggle and fatigue keeping the magazine alive, Freda Kirchwey handed over the editorship to Carey McWilliams in 1955; McWilliams had secured labor expert George G. Kirstein as his new publisher. Kirchwey initially intended to continue writing for the Nation but contributed only a few pieces until her death in 1976.

The Nation Associates (New York, N.Y.) was created in 1943 as a non-profit membership corporation "to provide the media for free discussion of the large issues which it regards as basic to the preservation and the extension of the democratic way of life." It acquired the stock of the magazine and became its publisher, in part to distinguish between the magazine's welfare and Freda Kirchwey's personal finances. Its membership activities included an annual forum, public policy conferences, special issue-focused committees, and radio broadcasts, many of which were also fund raisers. Its director, Lillie Shultz, hired in 1944, became chief staff fund raiser.

From the guide to the The Nation, records, 1879-1974 (inclusive), 1920-1955 (bulk)., (Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University)