Carey McWilliams (journalist)
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Carey McWilliams (December 13, 1905 – June 27, 1980) was an American author, editor, and lawyer. He is best known for his writings about California politics and culture, including the condition of migrant
farm worker A farmworker, farmhand or agricultural worker is someone employed for labor in agriculture. In labor law, the term "farmworker" is sometimes used more narrowly, applying only to a hired worker involved in agricultural production, including harv ...
s and the
internment of Japanese Americans Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. From 1955 to 1975, he edited ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...
'' magazine.


Early years

McWilliams was born December 13, 1905 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He first came to California in 1922, after a collapse in the cattle market ruined his father's health and his family's finances. McWilliams attended the
University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...
from which he obtained a law degree in 1927.Francis X. Gannon, ''Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 1.'' Boston: Western Islands Publishers, 1969; pp. 452–454. From 1927 to 1938, McWilliams practiced law in Los Angeles at Black, Hammock & Black. Some of his cases, including his defense of striking Mexican citrus workers, prefigured his later writing. During the 1920s and early 1930s, McWilliams joined a loose network of mostly Southern California writers that included
Robinson Jeffers John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887 – January 20, 1962) was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers's poetry was written in narrative and epic form. However, he is also known for his short ...
,
John Fante John Fante (April 8, 1909 – May 8, 1983) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel ''Ask the Dust'' (1939) about the life of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in Depre ...
,
Louis Adamic Louis Adamic ( sl, Alojzij Adamič; March 23, 1898 – September 4, 1951) was a Slovene-American author and translator, mostly known for writing about and advocating for ethnic diversity of the United States. Background Louis Adamic ...
, and
Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...
. His literary career also benefited greatly from his relationships with Mary Austin and
H.L. Mencken Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...
. Mencken provided an outlet for McWilliams's early journalism and floated the idea for his first book, a 1929 biography of popular writer and sometime Californian
Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book '' The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by ...
.


Political activity

The Depression and the rise of European fascism in the 1930s radicalized McWilliams. He began working with left-wing political and legal organizations, including the
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and the
National Lawyers Guild The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 19 ...
. He also wrote for ''Pacific Weekly,'' ''Controversy,'' ''
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...
'', and other progressive magazines. He continued to represent workers in and around Los Angeles, helped organize unions and guilds, and served as a trial examiner for the new
National Labor Relations Board The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States with responsibilities for enforcing U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices. Under the Na ...
. His first bestseller, ''Factories in the Field'', appeared in 1939 and ranks among his most enduring works. Published within months of John Steinbeck's ''
The Grapes of Wrath ''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Priz ...
'', it examines the lives of migrant farm workers in California and condemns the politics and consequences of California agricultural land monopoly and large-scale agribusiness. Shortly before its publication, McWilliams accepted an offer from incoming Governor
Culbert Olson Culbert Levy Olson (November 7, 1876 – April 13, 1962) was an American lawyer and politician. A Democratic Party member, Olson was involved in Utah and California politics and was elected as the 29th governor of California from 1939 to 1943 ...
to head California's Division of Immigration and Housing. Over his four-year term (1938-1942), he focused on improving agricultural working conditions and wages, but his hopes for major reform deteriorated with the advent of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. During the 1940s, McWilliams lived in
Echo Park, California In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the lis ...
, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. He owned his home at 2041
Alvarado Street Alvarado Street is a north–south thoroughfare in Los Angeles, California in the United States. The street was named after California governor Juan Bautista Alvarado. Geography North of Glendale Boulevard, it starts off as a residential street ...
until the 1970s, well after he moved to New York in 1951. McWilliams left his government post in 1942, when incoming Governor Earl Warren promised campaign audiences that his first official act would be to fire him. McWilliams was a sharp critic of Warren, whom he described as "the personification of Smart Reaction," but he became an enthusiastic admirer after Warren joined the
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
the following decade. No such conversion occurred in his attitude toward another California politician,
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
, whom McWilliams described in 1950 as "a dapper little man with an astonishing capacity for petty malice." After leaving the state government, McWilliams continued to write prolifically. He turned his attention to issues of racial and ethnic equality, writing a series of important books (including ''Brothers Under the Skin'', ''Prejudice'', ''North from Mexico'', and ''A Mask for Privilege'') that dealt with the treatment of immigrant and minority groups. He also produced two regional portraits, ''Southern California Country: An Island on the Land'' (1946,
American Folkways series The American Folkways is a 28-volume series of books, initiated and principally edited by Erskine Caldwell, and published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce from 1941 to 1955. Each book focused on a different region, or "folkway", of the United States, inc ...
) and ''California: The Great Exception'' (1949), which many aficionados still regard as the finest interpretive histories of those areas. Decades after its publication, ''Southern California Country'' inspired
Robert Towne Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz;'' Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' by Peter Biskind page 30, 1999 Bloomsbury edition November 23, 1934) is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He started with writing films for Roger ...
's Oscar-winning original screenplay for ''Chinatown'' (1974).


Accusations of communist sympathies

''Witch Hunt'' (1950) was an early attempt to combat McCarthyism, which McWilliams considered a grave threat to civil liberties and healthy politics. Although he was never a member of the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
, he was a frequent target of anticommunist attacks. In the 1940s, he was called before the
Committee on Un-American Activities The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
in California.
FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
director
J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation  ...
placed him on the Custodial Detention List, making him a candidate for detention in case of national emergency even though McWilliams was serving in the state government at the time. His activism took many forms. In the early 1940s, he helped overturn the convictions of mostly Latino youths following the so-called
Sleepy Lagoon murder The "Sleepy Lagoon murder" was the name that Los Angeles newspapers used to describe the 1942 death of José Gallardo Díaz, who was discovered unconscious and dying near a swimming hole (known as the Sleepy Lagoon) with two stab wounds and a b ...
trial. He also helped cool the city's temperature during the
Zoot Suit Riots The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots that took place from June 3–8, 1943 in Los Angeles, California, United States, involving American servicemen stationed in Southern California and young Latino and Mexican American city residen ...
of 1943, when scuffles between servicemen and Latino youths spun out of control. Once out of government, he became an outspoken critic of the removal and internment of Japanese American citizens and almost immediately began writing an
exposé Expose, exposé, or exposed may refer to: News sources * Exposé (journalism), a form of investigative journalism * '' The Exposé'', a British conspiracist website Film and TV Film * ''Exposé'' (film), a 1976 thriller film * ''Exposed'' (1932 ...
on the topic. Published in 1944, ''Prejudice: Japanese-Americans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance'' was cited by Justice Frank Murphy in his dissenting opinion in '' Korematsu v. United States'', the Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion. Several years later, a group of Los Angeles screenwriters, directors, and producers known as the
Hollywood Ten The Hollywood blacklist was an entertainment industry blacklist, broader than just Hollywood, put in effect in the mid-20th century in the United States during the early years of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying empl ...
was cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer a House committee's questions about Communist Party membership. McWilliams drafted a Supreme Court amicus brief for two of them,
John Howard Lawson John Howard Lawson (September 25, 1894 – August 11, 1977) was an American writer, specializing in plays and screenplays. After starting with plays for theaters in New York City, he worked in Hollywood on writing for films. He was the first pres ...
and
Dalton Trumbo James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...
. (The Court declined to hear their appeal.) In 1951, McWilliams moved to New York City to work at ''The Nation'' under editor
Freda Kirchwey Mary Frederika "Freda" Kirchwey (September 26, 1893 – January 3, 1976) was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes ( anti-Fascist, pro-Soviet, anti- anti-communist). From 1933 ...
. For the next decade, he helped shepherd the magazine through its most difficult period. Taking over as editor in 1955, he stayed until 1975 and is credited with strengthening the magazine's investigative reporting. He also published the early work of
Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the U ...
,
Howard Zinn Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a politica ...
, Theodore Roszak, William Ryan (psychologist) and Hunter S. Thompson. William Ryan credited McWilliams with challenging him to write what became his classic book 'Blaming the victim' (1971). Hunter S. Thompson credited McWilliams with the idea for his first bestselling book, '' Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga'' (1967).


McWilliams and Bay of Pigs story

McWilliams was the first American reporter to reveal that the
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
was training a group of
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
n exiles in Guatemala for the
Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called ''Invasión de Playa Girón'' or ''Batalla de Playa Girón'' after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in 1961 by Cuban exiles, covertly fin ...
. His article for ''The Nation'', "Are We Training Cuban Guerrillas?", was published in November 1960, during the Eisenhower Administration, five months before the invasion occurred. The story was largely ignored by major newspapers like ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' and ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (; born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a s ...
, an aide to
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John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
, pressured ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...
'' not to run a story about the guerrilla force. Following the failure of the invasion, Kennedy expressed regret that more information about the invasion plan was not published by telling ''Times'' reporter
Turner Catledge William Turner Catledge (; 1901–1983) was an American journalist, best known for his work at ''The New York Times''. He was managing editor from 1952 to 1964, when he became the paper's first executive editor. After retiring in 1968, he serv ...
, "If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake."


Death and legacy

He died in New York City on June 27, 1980, at 74. Since his death, his critical fortunes have risen steadily. The American Political Science Association gives an annual Carey McWilliams Award "to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics." In ''Embattled Dreams'' (2002), California historian
Kevin Starr Kevin Owen Starr (September 3, 1940 – January 14, 2017) was an American historian and California's state librarian, best known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "Americans and the California Dream." ...
calls McWilliams "the single finest nonfiction on California–ever," and biographer Peter Richardson maintains that McWilliams might be the most versatile American public intellectual of the twentieth century. His first son,
Wilson Carey McWilliams Wilson Carey McWilliams (2 September 1933 – 29 March 2005), son of Carey McWilliams, was a political scientist at Rutgers University. Biography McWilliams served in the 11th Airborne Division of the United States Army from 1955–1961, after ...
, was a noted political scientist who taught at
Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
. His second son, Jerry McWilliams, was an expert on vinyl disc records preservation. McWilliams had two grandchildren: Susan McWilliams Barndt, a professor of politics at
Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
, and Helen McWilliams, the lead singer of
VAGIANT Boston Tijuana Sweetheart (formerly known as VAGIANT and VAGIANT Boston) was an American all-female punk rock band from Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The band was initially formed in 2005 by four employees of the gaming company Harmonix after ...
. His papers are housed in the Bancroft Library at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
and at Special Collections at the
University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
.


Works

*''Ambrose Bierce: A Biography'' (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1929). Revised edition: Archon Books, 1967. *''America Is In the Heart, A Personal History'', by Carlos Bulosan: Introduction by Carey McWilliams (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973; reissue 2014 with addition of New Introduction by Marilyn C. Alquizola and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi) *''Brothers Under the Skin: African-Americans and Other Minorities''. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1943). *''California: The Great Exception'' (New York: Current Books, 1949). *(Edited by McWilliams) ''The California Revolution'', (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1968). *''The Education of Carey McWilliams'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). *''Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939). *''Ill Fares the Land: Migrants and Migratory Labor in the United States'' (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942). *''Louis Adamic and Shadow-America'' (Los Angeles: A. Whipple, 1935). *''A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948). *''The Mexicans in America: A Students’ Guide to Localized History'' (New York: Teachers College Press, 1968). *''North from Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the US'' (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1949).
Politics of Personality: California
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...
, October 27, 1962. *''Prejudice: Japanese-Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944). *''Race Discrimination – and the Law'' (New York:
National Federation for Constitutional Liberties The National Federation for Constitutional Liberties (NFCL) (1940–c. 1946) was a civil rights advocacy group made up from a broad range of people (including many trade unionists, religious organizations, African-American civil rights advocates a ...
, 1945). *''Small Farm and Big Farm'' (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1945). *''Southern California Country: An Island on the Land'' (
American Folkways series The American Folkways is a 28-volume series of books, initiated and principally edited by Erskine Caldwell, and published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce from 1941 to 1955. Each book focused on a different region, or "folkway", of the United States, inc ...
, New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946). Also published as ''Southern California: An Island on the Land'' (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1973). *''What About Our Japanese-Americans?'' (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1944).
''Witch Hunt: The Revival of Heresy''
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1950).


References


Further reading

*Corman, Catherine A. "Teaching – and Learning from – Carey McWilliams," ''California History'' December 22, 2001. *Critser, Greg. "The Political Rebellion of Carey McWilliams," ''UCLA Historical Journal'' 4 (1983: 34–65. *Critser, Greg. "The Making of a Cultural Rebel: Carey McWilliams, 1924–1930," ''Pacific Historical Review'' 55 (1986): 226–55. *Davis, Mike.
Optimism of the Will
,
The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...
, September 19, 2005. *Geary, Daniel. "Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943," ''Journal of American History'' Vol. 90, No. 3, December 2003, 912–934. *Peter Richardson.
American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams
' (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2005; rpt. University of California Press, 2019). *Richardson, Peter.
Carey McWilliams: The California Years
, UCLA Library, May 2005. *Stewart, Dean & Jeannine Gendar (eds.). ''Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader'' (Santa Clara, California: Santa Clara University Press, 2001).


External links


Carey McWilliams Quotes
* Co-written Letters to the Editor of the
New York Review of Books New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...
entitle
The "Excelsior" AffairFord's Better IdeaViolence in Oakland
an
Protest
* Interview o
Carey McWilliams
Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
List of winners of the American Political Science Association's Carey McWilliams award

NewsScan "Honorary Subscriber" Page on McWilliams

Guide to the Carey McWilliams Papers
at
The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

1965 talk at UCLA on the anticipated impact of computers
YouTube, Retrieved 30 August 2015 {{DEFAULTSORT:McWilliams, Carey 20th-century American non-fiction writers American political writers American magazine editors The Nation editors American male journalists 20th-century American lawyers California lawyers Agricultural labor in the United States Mexican-American history USC Gould School of Law alumni People from Echo Park, Los Angeles 1905 births 1980 deaths 20th-century American male writers