#TheRadicalFund

Many thanks to the @brennancenter.org for compelling conversation about #TheRadicalFund this week. Esp nice to reconnect with former student Lauren Miller Karalunas @yalelawschool-yls.bsky.social

If only there were a story about someone with $1 million giving it away . . . . #TheRadicalFund

In Detroit for the ASLH conference? I'm at the Fraser Center Wayne State at 4 pm this afternoon to talk about the archives that brought the story of #TheRadicalFund to life. @reutherlibrary.bsky.social labor.wayne.edu/event-flyers...

Interview with John Fabian Witt, author of The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America A recording from John Fabian Witt and Julian Zelizer's live video

Smart questions from @zelizer.bsky.social in this conversation earlier today. Did the right co-opt progressives’ most generative 20th c tactics? #TheRadicalFund

open.substack.com/pub/johnfabi...

Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio is Mamdani’s closing message—and practiced at the Garland Fund’s law firm. Of course. #TheRadicalFund is all around us. @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Oh my, the 2020s bidding hard to look like the 1920s. First Billie Eilish, now Gatsby and the Roaring 20s at Mar-a-Lago #TheRadicalFund @simonandschuster.bsky.social

Radical Constitutional Change - Virginia Law Review At defining points in American history, there have been radical constitutional changes, defined as massive shifts in constitutional understandings, doctrines, and practices. Apparently settled princip...

Radical constitutional change is in the air; now Sai Prakash &
@casssunstein.bsky.social are in the mix with a fascinating account of social movements and elites. But what if elites are also a social movement to be explained? #TheRadicalFund
virginialawreview.org/articles/rad...

Pub day character! Charles Garland: Handsome heir to Wall Street fortune, critic of inheritance, and founder of utopian farming communes. His money incubated social movements during liberalism's lean years, even as his own life spiraled out of control. @SimonandSchuster.bsky.social #TheRadicalFund

Will SCOTUS Allow Conversion Therapy for Minors? | Crooked Media

Talking with @leahlitman.bsky.social and @kateshaw.bsky.social on @strictscrutiny.bsky.social about #TheRadicalFund was fun. Like a fantasy novel, says Litman--but it's history, replies Shaw! Dear reader, you will have to decide for yourself. @simonandschuster.bsky.social crooked.com/podcast/will...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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