Oswald Garrison Villard

Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist and editor of the New York Evening Post. He was a civil rights activist, and along with his mother, Fanny Villard, a founding member of the NAACP. In 1913, he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson to protest his administration's racial segregation of federal offices in Washington, D.C., a change from previous integrated conditions. He was a leading liberal spokesman in the 1920s and 1930s, then turned conservative.

Villard was a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League, favoring independence for territories taken in the Spanish–American War. 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.

Early life and career Villard was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 13, 1872, while his parents were living there. He was the son of Henry Villard, an American newspaper correspondent who had been an immigrant from Germany, and Fanny (Garrison) Villard, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Fanny Villard 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 in 1881. The family returned to the United States soon after Villard's birth, settling in New York City in 1876.

Villard graduated from Harvard University in 1893 and, after touring Europe with his father for a year, returned to Harvard to earn his graduate degree in American history. He served as a teaching assistant, and could have pursued a career in academia, but desired a more active life. endorsing his opponents and editorializing against him in the Evening Post and the Nation.

Books and writings

In 1910, Villard published John Brown 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, which portrayed Brown as an inspiring American hero. It was praised by reviewers for its unbiased tone and use of new information.

Villard also wrote Germany Embattled (1915), in which he urged readers to acknowledge German contributions to American life and described the political divide in Germany. He reminded readers that the Germans believed in their cause, and advocated for continued neutrality in the European conflict.

Conservative spokesman

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 non-interventionist America First Committee which opposed U.S. entry into World War II, and used the editorial page of The Nation to express his views:

No, the truth is that if reason and logic, and not sentiment, hysteria, and self-interest, were applied to this question, the American army and navy would take the lead in advocating disarmament—always provided that we are not going to be so insane as to go to war in Europe again. I am even hoping that my friends the editors of The Nation will now turn about and join me in exposing the needless waste of the terrific military expenditures we are now making, to say nothing of the steady militarization of the country.

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, and John T. Flynn, against the Cold War policies of Harry S. Truman.

Villard suffered a heart attack in 1944 and sustained a stroke five years later. He died on October 1, 1949, in New York City.