Elinor Ferry (1915–1993) was an American journalist, labor organizer, and socialist. She was member of the

Independent-Socialist Party John Thomas McManus (1904 – November 1961) was an American journalist active in progressive politics in the 1950s and 1960s best known as co-founder of the ''National Guardian'', a left-leaning newspaper. Background McManus was born in New Yo ...

and lifelong supporter of

Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...

. She was married for about a decade to ''

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 tha ...

'' publisher

George Kirstein George Kirstein (December 10, 1909 – April 3, 1986) was publisher and principal owner of The Nation magazine from 1955 to 1965. Background George G. Kirstein was born on December 10, 1909, Boston. He attended the Berkshire School, a private bo ...

Background

Ferry was born in 1913 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Career

At age 16 (), she became a female sports reporter (as "Betty Moore") for the ''

Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph The ''Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph'' was an evening daily newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1927 to 1960. Part of the Hearst newspaper chain, it competed with ''The Pittsburgh Press'' and the ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'' until bein ...

'', a Hearst newspaper. She helped organize the American Newspaper Guild (now simply the

Newspaper Guild The NewsGuild-CWA is a trade union, labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's busin ...

), founded in 1933 by sportswriter

Heywood Broun Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (; December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, later known as The Newspaper ...

(who in 1930 had run unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist) and journalists

Joseph Cookman Joseph Cookman (February 6, 1899 – August 12, 1944) was an American journalist, critic and a founder of The Newspaper Guild. Life and career Early life Born in 1899, in Batley, England, Joseph was the oldest of three children born to John ...

and Allen Raymond.

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...

mentions the founding of the Newspaper Guild in his 1952 memoir: She became an assistant to Mike Quill of the Transport Workers Union, founded in 1934 by Quill for subway workers in New York City and which had leadership dominated by the

CPUSA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

during its early years up through 1948 during the presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace. She worked for the

Steel Workers Organizing Committee The Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) was one of two precursor trade union, labor organizations to the United Steelworkers. It was formed by the CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization) on June 7, 1936. It disbanded in 1942 to become the ...

, founded in 1936 by the

Congress of Industrial Organizations The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of ...

(CIO), disbanded in 1942 to become the United Steel Workers of America, now the

United Steelworkers The United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, commonly known as the United Steelworkers (USW), is a general trade union with members across North America. Headquar ...

(USW) union. She also served as secretary of Emergency Civil Liberties Union, founded in 1951 under the direction of

Clark Foreman Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated ...

, formed as a breakaway from the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

(ACLU), known after 1968 as the

National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee The National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC), until 1968 known as the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, was an organization formed in the United States in October 1951 by 150 educators and clergymen to advocate for the civil liberties ...

(NECLC), and merged in 1998 with the

Center for Constitutional Rights The Center for Constitutional RightsThe Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) is a Trotskyite Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an Orthodox Marxism, orthod ...

" debate in the International Socialist Review''. In 2001, her name receives mention as an Independent-Socialist Party "campaigner."

Hiss case

During the 1950s, Ferry documented

McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...

and

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

defendants. Defendants whom she contacted include

Anne Braden Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality. She and her husband bought a suburban house for an African American couple during Ji ...

. She spent many years writing about the

. Her correspondence appears in the Hiss papers at Harvard. According to

Allen Weinstein Allen Weinstein (September 1, 1937 – June 18, 2015) was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in ...

, Ferry was a "friend and defense researcher" of Hiss who "worked closely with Helen Buttenweiser on research for Hiss's retrial motion." He also noted that "Links between ''The Nation'' and the Hiss defense had been close from the beginning of the case," starting with publisher Frida Kirchwey and followed by succeeding publisher

(Ferry's husband). According to G. Edgar White, she was "Helen Buttenweiser's research assistant." Her work was to result in a negative "political history" of

and a defense for Hiss. In ''The Nation'', she once called her unpublished book ''Whittaker Chambers: Agent Provocateur''. As early as 1952, other writers began to draw on her research to discredit Chambers. Author John Chabot Smith cited Ferry's interview with

Max Bedacht Max Bedacht Sr. (October 13, 1883 – July 4, 1972) was a German-born American revolutionary socialist political activist, journalist, and functionary who helped establish the Communist Party of America. Bedacht is best remembered as the long-time ...

(whom Chambers claimed had delivered his summons to the Soviet underground) and wrote that "Bedacht denied the whole story; he told journalist Elinor Ferry it was a flat lie, and that he had never had any connections with an underground of any sort, Russian or American". In his "psychobiography" on Chambers, author

Meyer Zeligs ''Friendship and Fratricide, an Analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss'' is a 1967 book by psychoanalyst Meyer A. Zeligs. In his work, Zelig argued that Whittaker Chambers was a psychopathic personality who had framed Alger Hiss. Backgrou ...

cites copious usage of materials from Ferry. Author Julia M. Allen cited Ferry about Chambers' wife, "Recollections of

Esther Shemitz Esther Shemitz (June 25, 1900August 16, 1986), also known as "Esther Chambers" and "Mrs. Whittaker Chambers," was an American painter and illustrator who, as wife of ex-Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers, provided testimony that "helped substantiate" h ...

reflect the gender rigidity of the time and help to explain why both Hutchins and Rocher felt especially protective of her. In interviews conducted by Elinor Ferry in the 1950s, Shemitz was characterized as being 'masculine'."

FBI

The

Federal Bureau of Investigation 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, ...

investigated Ferry from 1952 through 1968.

Personal

Ferry married at least twice, the second time to

for ten years. (Kirstein bought ''

'' magazine in 1955 and ran it until 1965). She had at least one child, James. She resided mostly in

Mamaroneck Mamaroneck ( ) is a town in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 31,758 at the 2020 United States census over 29,156 at the 2010 census. There are two villages contained within the town: Larchmont and the Village of M ...

, New York, and died in 1993. Friends since the mid-1950s included Nora Ruth Roberts ("a good friend of mine and valued comrade since 1957" she wrote in 2013) and Matthew Mills Stevenson.

References

External sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ferry, Elinor 1915 births 1993 deaths People from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American women journalists American socialists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers