Carey McWilliams (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Carey McWilliams was an American
author
, editor
, and lawyer
. He is best known for his writings about social issues in California
, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans
in concentration camps during World War II
. For twenty years he was the editor of The Nation
magazine, during which time he was the first American journalist to reveal that the United States government was training guerrillas in preparation for the Bay of Pigs Invasion
in April 1961.
. McWilliams first came to California in 1922 following a collapse in the cattle market that ruined his father's health and his family's finances.
McWilliams attended the University of Southern California
, from which he obtained a law degree
in 1927.
From 1927 until 1938, McWilliams practiced law in Los Angeles
at Black, Hammack, and Black; taking on cases that prefigured some of the main issues of his writing career, including famously defending the rights of striking Mexican citrus laborers.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, McWilliams joined a loose network of mostly Southern California writers that included Robinson Jeffers
, John Fante
, Louis Adamic
, and Upton Sinclair
. His literary career also benefited greatly from his relationships with Mary Austin and H.L. Mencken. 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
.
and rise of European fascism
in the 1930s radicalized McWilliams. He began working with numerous left-wing political and legal organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union
and the National Lawyers Guild
, and wrote for Pacific Weekly, Controversy, The Nation
, and other progressive magazines. He also continued to represent workers in and around Los Angeles, helped organize unions and guilds, and served as a trial examiner for the newly formed National Labor Relations Board
.
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
, it examines the lives of migrant farm workers in California and condemns the politics and consequences of large-scale agribusiness
. Shortly before its publication, McWilliams accepted an offer from incoming governor Culbert Olson
to head California's Division of Immigration and Housing. Over his four-year term, he focused on improving agricultural working conditions and wages, but his hopes for major reform deteriorated with the advent of World War II
.
During the 1940s, McWilliams lived in Echo Park, California, a suburb of Los Angeles city. He owned his home at 2041 Alvarado 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 McWilliams. He 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 U.S. Supreme Court
the following decade. No such conversion occurred in his attitude toward another California politician, Richard Nixon
, whom McWilliams described in 1950 as "a dapper little man with an astonishing capacity for petty malice".
After leaving 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) 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
's Oscar-winning original screenplay for Chinatown (1974).
, which McWilliams considered a grave threat to civil liberties and healthy politics. Although he was never a member of the Communist Party
, he was a frequent target of anti-Communist attacks. In the 1940s, he was called before the Committee on Un-American Activities in California, and FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover
placed him on the Custodial Detention List, making him a candidate for detention in case of national emergency—even though McWilliams was serving in state government at the time.
McWilliams's activism took many forms. In the early 1940s, he helped overturn the convictions of mostly Latino youths following the so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder
trial. He also helped cool the city's temperature during the Zoot Suit Riots
of 1943, when scuffles between servicemen and Latino youths spun out of control. Once out of government, he became an outspoken critic of the evacuation and internment of Japanese-American citizens. In 1944, Prejudice was cited repeatedly in a Supreme Court dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States
, the decision that upheld the constitutionality of the internment. Several years later, a group of Los Angeles screenwriters, directors, and producers known as the Hollywood Ten were 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
and Dalton Trumbo
. (The Court declined to hear their appeal.)
Though by 1951 a committed Californian, McWilliams moved to New York City
to work at The Nation under then editor Freda Kirchwey
. For the next decade, he helped shepherd the magazine through its most difficult period. Taking over as editor in 1955, he stayed through 1975 and is credited with strengthening the magazine's investigative reporting and helping to introduce the ideas of the New Left
to more mainstream audiences. He also published the early work of Ralph Nader
, Howard Zinn
, Theodore Roszak
, and Hunter S. Thompson
, who credited McWilliams with the idea for his first bestselling book, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966).
n exiles in Guatemala
for the Bay of Pigs Invasion
. His article, titled "Are We Training Cuban Guerrillas?", was published in November 1960, five months before the invasion occurred, during the Eisenhower Administration.
The story was largely ignored by major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post. Arthur Schlesinger, an aide to President
John F. Kennedy
, pressured The New Republic
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, telling Times reporter Turner Catledge
, “If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.”
Since his death in 1980, McWilliams's 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."
His first son, Wilson Carey McWilliams
, was a noted political scientist who taught at Rutgers University
. 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
, and Helen McWilliams, the lead singer of VAGIANT Boston.
McWilliams' papers are housed in the Bancroft Library
at the University of California, Berkeley
and at Special Collections
at the University of California, Los Angeles
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, and lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
. He is best known for his writings about social issues in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, including the condition of migrant farm workers and the internment of Japanese Americans
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
in concentration camps during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. For twenty years he was the editor of 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...
magazine, during which time he was the first American journalist to reveal that the United States government was training guerrillas in preparation for the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
in April 1961.
Early years
Carey McWilliams was born December 13, 1905 in Steamboat Springs, ColoradoSteamboat Springs, Colorado
The city of Steamboat Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Routt County, Colorado, United States. The city is also known as "Steamboat," "The Boat," or "Ski Town USA". As of the 2010 census, the city population was 12,088.The city is an...
. McWilliams first came to California in 1922 following a collapse in the cattle market that ruined his father's health and his family's finances.
McWilliams attended the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, from which he obtained a law degree
Law degree
A Law degree is an academic degree conferred for studies in law. Such degrees are generally preparation for legal careers; but while their curricula may be reviewed by legal authority, they do not themselves confer a license...
in 1927.
From 1927 until 1938, McWilliams practiced law in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
at Black, Hammack, and Black; taking on cases that prefigured some of the main issues of his writing career, including famously defending the rights of striking Mexican citrus laborers.
During the 1920s and early 1930s, McWilliams joined a loose network of mostly Southern California writers that included Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...
, John Fante
John Fante
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938...
, Louis Adamic
Louis Adamic
Louis Adamic was a Slovenian American author and translator.- Biography :Adamic was born at Praproče Mansion in Praproče near Grosuplje, in what is now Slovenia...
, and Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
. His literary career also benefited greatly from his relationships with Mary Austin and H.L. Mencken. 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 Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...
.
Political activity
The DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and rise of European fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
in the 1930s radicalized McWilliams. He began working with numerous left-wing political and legal organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "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." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
and the National Lawyers Guild
National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild is an advocacy group in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . ....
, and wrote for Pacific Weekly, Controversy, 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 other progressive magazines. He also continued to represent workers in and around Los Angeles, helped organize unions and guilds, and served as a trial examiner for the newly formed National Labor Relations Board
National Labor Relations Board
The National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of...
.
His first bestseller, Factories in the Field, appeared in 1939 and ranks among his most enduring works. Published within months of John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
's The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....
, it examines the lives of migrant farm workers in California and condemns the politics and consequences of large-scale agribusiness
Agribusiness
In agriculture, agribusiness is a generic term for the various businesses involved in food production, including farming and contract farming, seed supply, agrichemicals, farm machinery, wholesale and distribution, processing, marketing, and retail sales....
. Shortly before its publication, McWilliams accepted an offer from incoming governor Culbert Olson
Culbert Olson
Culbert Levy Olson was an American lawyer and politician. A Democrat, Olson was involved in Utah and California politics and was elected as the 29th Governor of California from 1939 to 1943.-Personal background:...
to head California's Division of Immigration and Housing. Over his four-year term, 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
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
During the 1940s, McWilliams lived in Echo Park, California, a suburb of Los Angeles city. He owned his home at 2041 Alvarado 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
Earl Warren
Earl Warren was the 14th Chief Justice of the United States.He is known for the sweeping decisions of the Warren Court, which ended school segregation and transformed many areas of American law, especially regarding the rights of the accused, ending public-school-sponsored prayer, and requiring...
promised campaign audiences that his first official act would be to fire McWilliams. He 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 U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
the following decade. No such conversion occurred in his attitude toward another California politician, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, whom McWilliams described in 1950 as "a dapper little man with an astonishing capacity for petty malice".
After leaving 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) 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
Robert Towne is an American screenwriter and director. His most notable work may be his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown .-Film:...
's Oscar-winning original screenplay for Chinatown (1974).
McCarthy period
Witch Hunt (1950) was an early attempt to combat McCarthyismMcCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, which McWilliams considered a grave threat to civil liberties and healthy politics. Although he was never a member of the Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, he was a frequent target of anti-Communist attacks. In the 1940s, he was called before the Committee on Un-American Activities in California, and FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
director J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
placed him on the Custodial Detention List, making him a candidate for detention in case of national emergency—even though McWilliams was serving in state government at the time.
McWilliams's activism took many forms. In the early 1940s, he helped overturn the convictions of mostly Latino youths following the so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder
Sleepy Lagoon murder
Sleepy Lagoon murder was the name that newspapers and radio commentators used to describe the alleged murder of Jose Diaz, whose body was found on the Williams Ranch near a lagoon in southeast Los Angeles, California, on August 2, 1942...
trial. He also helped cool the city's temperature during the Zoot Suit Riots
Zoot Suit Riots
The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots in 1943 during World War II that erupted in Los Angeles, California between white sailors and Marines stationed throughout thehi c mlc city and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored...
of 1943, when scuffles between servicemen and Latino youths spun out of control. Once out of government, he became an outspoken critic of the evacuation and internment of Japanese-American citizens. In 1944, Prejudice was cited repeatedly in a Supreme Court dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States
Korematsu v. United States
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II....
, the decision that upheld the constitutionality of the internment. Several years later, a group of Los Angeles screenwriters, directors, and producers known as the Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer a House committee's questions about Communist Party membership. McWilliams drafted a Supreme Court amicus
Amicus curiae
An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
brief for two of them, John Howard Lawson
John Howard Lawson
John Howard Lawson was an American writer. He was head of the Hollywood division of the Communist Party USA. He was also the cell's cultural manager, and answered directly to V.J. Jerome, the Party's New York-based cultural chief...
and Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...
. (The Court declined to hear their appeal.)
Though by 1951 a committed Californian, McWilliams moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to work at The Nation under then editor Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey
Freda Kirchwey was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes. From 1933 to 1955, she was Editor of The Nation magazine.-Biography:...
. For the next decade, he helped shepherd the magazine through its most difficult period. Taking over as editor in 1955, he stayed through 1975 and is credited with strengthening the magazine's investigative reporting and helping to introduce the ideas of the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
to more mainstream audiences. He also published the early work of Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....
, Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
, Theodore Roszak
Theodore Roszak
Theodore Roszak may refer to*Theodore Roszak , Polish-American sculptor and painter*Theodore Roszak , historian and author of The Making of a Counterculture...
, and Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...
, who credited McWilliams with the idea for his first bestselling book, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966).
McWilliams and the Bay of Pigs story
Writing for The Nation, as the magazine's editor, McWilliams was the first American reporter to reveal that the CIA was training a group of CubaCuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n exiles in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
for the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
. His article, titled "Are We Training Cuban Guerrillas?", was published in November 1960, five months before the invasion occurred, during the Eisenhower Administration.
The story was largely ignored by major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post. Arthur Schlesinger, an aide to President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, pressured The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
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, telling Times reporter Turner Catledge
Turner Catledge
Turner Catledge was an American journalist, best known for his work at The New York Times. He was Managing Editor from 1952-1964, at which time he became the paper's first Executive Editor. After his retirement in 1968, he served briefly on the board of the New York Times company as a vice president...
, “If you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.”
Death and legacy
Carey McWilliams died June 27, 1980. He was 74 years old at the time of his death.Since his death in 1980, McWilliams's critical fortunes have risen steadily. The American Political Science Association
American Political Science Association
The American Political Science Association is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903, it publishes three academic journals...
gives an annual Carey McWilliams Award "to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics."
His first son, Wilson Carey McWilliams
Wilson Carey McWilliams
Wilson Carey McWilliams , aka Carey McWilliams, Jr., son of Carey McWilliams, was a political scientist with a storied career at Rutgers University. He served in the 11th Airborne Division of the United States Army from 1955–1961, after which he took his Masters and Ph.D. degrees at the University...
, was a noted political scientist who taught at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
. His second son, Jerry McWilliams, was an expert on vinyl disc records preservation
Vinyl disc records preservation
Vinyl disc records preservation refers to the preventive measures taken to defend against damage and slow degradation, and to maintain fidelity of singles, 12" singles, EP, LP in 45 or 33⅓ rpm disc recordings. LPs are most often in the 12” format, although very early vinyl recordings were 10”...
. McWilliams had two grandchildren: Susan McWilliams Barndt, a professor of politics at Pomona College
Pomona College
Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
, and Helen McWilliams, the lead singer of VAGIANT Boston.
McWilliams' papers are housed in the Bancroft Library
Bancroft Library
The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and at Special Collections
Special collections
In library science, special collections is the name applied to a specific repository or department, usually within a library, which stores materials of a "special" nature, including rare books, archives, and collected manuscripts...
at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
.
Works
- Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (New York: A. & C. Boni, 1929). Revised edition: Archon Books, 1967.
- 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, 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, 1945).
- Small Farm and Big Farm (New York: Public Affairs Committee, 1945).
- Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (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).
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, September 19, 2005.
- Geary, Daniel. "Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943," Journal of American History Vol. 90, No. 3, December, 2003, 912-934.
- Richardson, Peter. American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
- 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 entitled The "Excelsior" Affair, Ford's Better Idea, Violence in Oakland, and Protest
- Honorable in all things oral history transcript: The memoirs of Carey McWilliams. (1978). Interview by Joel Gardner. Oral History Program, UCLA, via Calisphere.
- http://www.apsanet.org/content_4505.cfmList of winners of the APSA'sAmerican Political Science AssociationThe American Political Science Association is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. Founded in 1903, it publishes three academic journals...
Carey McWilliams award] - NewsScan "Honorary Subscriber" Page on McWilliams
- Guide to the Carey McWilliams Papers at The Bancroft Library