Ray Ginger

Raymond Sydney Ginger (October 16, 1924 – January 3, 1975) was an American historian, author, and biographer of wide-ranging scholarship whose special focus was on labor history, economic history, and the epoch often called the Gilded Age. His biography of the American labor leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs is widely considered definitive, and his account of the Scopes trial has also received high praise. Both titles are still in print, and both, along with many of his other works, have been widely used in college courses across the United States.

Early life Ginger was born in Memphis, Tennessee on October 16, 1924, She also made public FBI files that document Ginger's account of being required to sign an oath. It was the first documented instance in which Harvard had made such a demand. Harvard had publicly announced it would remove members of the Communist Party but not those who refused to answer questions about party affiliation. Ann Ginger found the response insufficient and said Harvard needed a truth and reconciliation commission to make it face what it had done.

Francis Boyle, law professor at the University of Illinois, and a 1976 graduate of Harvard Law School, has led a national campaign to lobby Harvard to conduct a public inquiry, issue a meaningful apology, and endow a chair in the Gingers' name for the study of peace, justice, and human rights.

Selected publications Age of Excess; The United States From 1877 To 1914 (1965), (2nd ed., 1975) Altgeld's America; The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities (1958) American Social Thought (1961) The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs (1949) Also published as Eugene V. Debs: The Making of an American Radical Modern American Cities (1969) The Nationalizing of American Life, 1877–1900 (1965) People on the Move: A United States History (1975) Ray Ginger's Jokebook on American History (1974) Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1958) Spectrum; The World of Science (1959) William Jennings Bryan; Selections (1967)