Oswald Garrison Villard
Encyclopedia
Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist
. He provided a rare direct link between the anti-imperialism
of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right
of the 1930s and 1940s.
, while his parents were living in Germany; he was the son of Henry Villard
, an American newspaper correspondent who was an immigrant from Germany, and Fanny Garrison Villard
, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
; she was a suffragist and one of the founders of the Women's Peace Movement. His father later invested in railroads, and bought The Nation
and the New York Evening Post.
Villard graduated from Harvard University
in 1893. In 1894, he began to write regularly for the New York Evening Post and The Nation, and said that he and his fellow staff members were
Villard was also a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League
which favored independence for the territories captured in the Spanish-American War
. To further the cause, he worked to organize "a third ticket" in 1900 to challenge William Jennings Bryan
and William McKinley
. He was joined in this effort by several key veterans of the 1896 National Democratic Party
. Not surprisingly, Villard made a personal appeal to ex-president Grover Cleveland
, a hero of the gold Democrats, urging him to be the candidate. Cleveland demurred, asserting that voters no longer cared what he had to say.
Villard was a pioneer, and today largely unsung, civil rights leader. In 1910, he donated space in the New York Evening Post for the "call" to the meeting which formally organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
. For many years, Villard served as the NAACP’s disbursing treasurer while Moorfield Storey
, another Cleveland Democrat, was its president. In 1916 he was elected president of the Symphony Society of New York
. In 1910 he published John Brown 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, a biography
of John Brown
. He wrote Germany Embattled (1915) and monograph
s on the early history of Wall Street
and on the German Imperial court. As a pacifist, Villard opposed the US entry into World War I
.
While Villard continued to champion civil liberties, civil rights, and anti-imperialism after World War I
, he had largely abandoned his previous belief in laissez-faire economics. During the 1930s, he welcomed the advent of New Deal and called for nationalization of major industries.
Always independent-minded, however, he bitterly dissented from the foreign policy of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
in the late 1930s. He was an early member of the America First Committee
which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. He broke completely with The Nation, which he had sold in 1935 because it supported American intervention. At the same time, he became increasingly repelled by the New Deal bureaucratic state, which he condemned as a precursor to American fascism. Also, he deplored the air raids carried out by the allies in the later years of World War II, saying:
After 1945, Villard made common cause with "old right" conservatives, such as Senator Robert A. Taft, Felix Morley
, and John T. Flynn
, against the Cold War
policies of Harry S. Truman
. He died in 1949.
His oldest son was Henry Hilgard Villard who was head of the economics department at the City College of New York and the first male president of Planned Parenthood of New York City. His youngest son was Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr.
, who was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University
. His daughter, Dorothy Villard Hammond, was a member of the American University at Cairo.
On February 21, 2009 the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Villard's civil rights work. http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/tx/2009/tx_2009_0221.htm
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. He provided a rare direct link between the anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism
Anti-imperialism, strictly speaking, is a term that may be applied to a movement opposed to any form of colonialism or imperialism. Anti-imperialism includes opposition to wars of conquest, particularly of non-contiguous territory or people with a different language or culture; it also includes...
of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right
Old Right (United States)
The Old Right was a conservative faction in the United States that opposed both New Deal domestic programs and U.S. entry into World War II. Many members of this faction were associated with the Republicans of the interwar years led by Robert Taft, but some were Democrats...
of the 1930s and 1940s.
Biography
He was born in WiesbadenWiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
, while his parents were living in Germany; he was the son of Henry Villard
Henry Villard
Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway....
, an American newspaper correspondent who was an immigrant from Germany, and Fanny Garrison Villard
Fanny Garrison Villard
300px|thumb|Fanny Garrison Villard at the International Woman Suffrage Congress, Budapest, 1913.Helen Frances “Fanny” Garrison Villard was a women's suffrage campaigner and a co-founder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People...
, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
; she was a suffragist and one of the founders of the Women's Peace Movement. His father later invested in railroads, and bought The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and the New York Evening Post.
Villard graduated from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1893. In 1894, he began to write regularly for the New York Evening Post and The Nation, and said that he and his fellow staff members were
". . . radical on peace and war and on the Negro question; radical in our insistence that the United States stay at home and not go to war abroad and impose its imperialistic will upon Latin-American republics, often with great slaughter. We were radical in our demand for free trade and our complete opposition to the whole protective system."
Villard was also a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League
American Anti-Imperialist League
The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898 to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area...
which favored independence for the territories captured in the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
. To further the cause, he worked to organize "a third ticket" in 1900 to challenge William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
and William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
. He was joined in this effort by several key veterans of the 1896 National Democratic Party
National Democratic Party (United States)
The National Democratic Party or Gold Democrats was a short-lived political party of Bourbon Democrats, who opposed the regular party nominee William Jennings Bryan in 1896. Most members were admirers of Grover Cleveland. They considered Bryan a dangerous man and charged that his "free silver"...
. Not surprisingly, Villard made a personal appeal to ex-president Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...
, a hero of the gold Democrats, urging him to be the candidate. Cleveland demurred, asserting that voters no longer cared what he had to say.
Villard was a pioneer, and today largely unsung, civil rights leader. In 1910, he donated space in the New York Evening Post for the "call" to the meeting which formally organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
. For many years, Villard served as the NAACP’s disbursing treasurer while Moorfield Storey
Moorfield Storey
Moorfield Storey was an American lawyer, publicist, and civil rights leader. According to Storey's biographer, William B...
, another Cleveland Democrat, was its president. In 1916 he was elected president of the Symphony Society of New York
New York Symphony Orchestra
The New York Symphony Orchestra was founded as the New York Symphony Society in New York City by Leopold Damrosch in 1878. For many years it was a fierce rival to the older Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York. It was supported by Andrew Carnegie who built Carnegie Hall expressly for the...
. In 1910 he published John Brown 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, a biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of John Brown
John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown was an American revolutionary abolitionist, who in the 1850s advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish slavery in the United States. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre during which five men were killed, in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas, and made his name in the...
. He wrote Germany Embattled (1915) and monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s on the early history of Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
and on the German Imperial court. As a pacifist, Villard opposed the US entry into World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
While Villard continued to champion civil liberties, civil rights, and anti-imperialism after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he had largely abandoned his previous belief in laissez-faire economics. During the 1930s, he welcomed the advent of New Deal and called for nationalization of major industries.
Always independent-minded, however, he bitterly dissented from the foreign policy of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
in the late 1930s. He was an early member of the America First Committee
America First Committee
The America First Committee was the foremost non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into World War II. Peaking at 800,000 members, it was likely the largest anti-war organization in American history. Started in 1940, it became defunct after the attack on Pearl Harbor in...
which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. He broke completely with The Nation, which he had sold in 1935 because it supported American intervention. At the same time, he became increasingly repelled by the New Deal bureaucratic state, which he condemned as a precursor to American fascism. Also, he deplored the air raids carried out by the allies in the later years of World War II, saying:
"What was criminal in Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw and London has now become heroic in Dresden and now Tokyo."
After 1945, Villard made common cause with "old right" conservatives, such as Senator Robert A. Taft, Felix Morley
Felix Morley
Felix Muskett Morley was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the United States.-Biography:Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania, his father being the mathematician Frank Morley. Like his brothers, Christopher and Frank, Felix was educated at Haverford College and enjoyed a Rhodes...
, and John T. Flynn
John T. Flynn
John Thomas Flynn was an American journalist best known for his opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to American entry into World War II.-Career:...
, against the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
policies of Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
. He died in 1949.
His oldest son was Henry Hilgard Villard who was head of the economics department at the City College of New York and the first male president of Planned Parenthood of New York City. His youngest son was Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr.
Oswald Garrison Villard, jr.
Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr. was a prominent professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.-Early life and education:Villard was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York, to a distinguished family...
, who was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. His daughter, Dorothy Villard Hammond, was a member of the American University at Cairo.
On February 21, 2009 the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Villard's civil rights work. http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/tx/2009/tx_2009_0221.htm