Harry Golden

Harry Lewis Golden (May 6, 1902 – October 2, 1981) was an American writer and newspaper publisher.

Early life Golden was born Herschel Goldhirsch (or Goldenhurst) in the shtetl Mikulintsy, Austria-Hungary. In 1904 his father, Leib Goldhirsch (a former Hebrew teacher) and his mother Anna Klein Goldhirsch emigrated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, only to move the family to New York City the next year and "became an editor of the Jewish Daily Forward." As a teenager, he became interested in Georgism, and later spoke on its behalf. President Richard M. Nixon gave Golden a full presidential pardon for the mail fraud conviction.

Desegregation In 1941, he moved to Charlotte, where, as a reporter for the Charlotte Labor Journal and The Charlotte Observer, he wrote about and spoke out against racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws of the time.

From 1942 to 1968, Golden published The Carolina Israelite as a forum, not just for his political views but also observations and reminiscences of his boyhood in New York's Lower East Side. He traveled widely: in 1960 to speak to Jews in West Germany and again to cover the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel for Life. He is referenced in the lyrics to Phil Ochs' song, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal": "You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden."

His satirical "The Vertical Negro Plan," involved removing the chairs from any to-be-integrated building, since Southern whites did not mind standing with blacks such as at bank tellers' windows, only sitting with them.

Golden reportedly

Golden's books include three collections of essays from the Israelite and a biography of his friend, poet Carl Sandburg. One of those collections, Only in America, was the basis for a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. He also maintained a correspondence with Billy Graham.

Personal His Irish Catholic wife, the former Genevieve Gallagher, predeceased him.