By Rachel Grant, Membership Co-Chair, rlgrant6@gmail.com

AEJMC History Division Chair recently co-authored a book on Emma Goldman’s No-Conscription League and the First Amendment, and we recently had a chance to chat with her about the process of researching and co-authoring this thought-provoking manuscript.

Q: Can you describe the focus of your book?

A: The book examines the legal atmosphere and rampant xenophobia that contributed to Russian anarchist Emma Goldman’s deportation in 1919. We analyzed the communications for which she was arrested―writings in Mother Earth, a mass-mailed manifesto, and speeches related to compulsory military service during World War I―as well as the ensuing legal proceedings and media coverage. Ultimately, we placed Goldman’s Supreme Court appeal in the context of the more famous Schenck and Abrams trials to demonstrate her place in First Amendment history while providing insight into wartime censorship and the attitude of the mainstream press toward radical speech.

Q: How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?

A: Jared encountered a short version of Emma Goldman’s story when he was reading “Free Speech in the Forgotten Years.” As he started reading more about her, he noticed fascinating overlaps between her legal struggles and the traditional narrative that surrounds the Supreme Court’s “discovery” of the First Amendment in 1919, which is an era he had spent a lot of time looking at for his legal research projects.

The narrative of how the First Amendment has been interpreted is incredibly male, something Jared had noticed in teaching his undergraduate communication law classes. Most of his students are women. So, he saw Goldman’s story as a missing piece in a male-dominated narrative. She was every bit as important as Eugene Debs or other extremists who were hauled into the courts for their speech during that period, but her story had not been told from a legal perspective. Her arguments, which the Supreme Court considered in 1918, seemed to have no place in the story of the First Amendment’s development.

We were both intrigued about bringing Goldman’s story into the narrative.

Although Dr. Earnest Perry has moved from the classroom to administration at the Missouri School of Journalism, his concern for students remains strong. His commitment to research, particularly in civil rights and social justice, is one way he stays connected to students, even as associate dean for graduate studies.

We recently chatted by about the impetus of his work, his most recent research project, and how his research informs his teaching.

Q: What is your most recent historical research project?

A: I am currently working with Kim Mangun of Utah on the history of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, the trade association for the African-American press. We are examining how the organization came about and the significance of bringing those publishers together to act as a unified group to be a voice, for not only the press, but for the communities they served. We are looking at the organization’s struggles and those of member newspapers, particularly the economic struggles coming out of segregation and connecting to government for validation, to be seen as a viable press.

The Journalism History podcast reached a new milestone this week by crossing 2,000 downloads.

As of today, the podcast has 2,027 downloads from 42 states and 32 countries, most recently picking up West Virginia and Saudi Arabia.

Show transcripts available at https://journalism-history.org/podcast/ have been accessed 718 times. The podcast team released its 23^rd episode Monday featuring Melita Garza discussing her book, “They Came to Toil: Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression.”

“It’s really been unbelievable to see how the podcast has taken off,” said Teri Finneman, vice chair of the History Division and executive producer of the podcast. “Since joining the leadership team, my goal has been to help increase the communication and community of our journalism historians. It’s been fantastic to get our work out to the general public in a new and accessible way.”

Name: Tom Bivins

Where you work: I teach in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon where I hold the John Hulteng Chair in Media Ethics and Responsibility. I split my time between courses in media ethics and media history.

Where you earned your Ph.D.:  I received my Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in Telecommunication and Film (part of the Speech Department), and taught at the University of Delaware for four years before returning to Oregon.

Current favorite class: My favorite class currently is called Satire, Ethics, and Free Speech. It’s a wide-ranging, sometimes raucous, exploration of an often controversial subject.

When uncovering unanswered questions into journalism’s past, with notable interest towards the Black press in the nineteenth century, Dr. Bernell Tripp, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Florida, has followed the advice of her mentor David Sloan: “when the puzzle pieces don’t fit together, you should question.”

We recently chatted by about the impetus of her work, her most recent research project, and how her research informs her teaching.

Q: How did you come to your area of scholarship?

A: I enrolled in a journalism history course at the University of Alabama under David Sloan. One of the key notions of the course was to ask “why do things happen?” I had a fascination with the nineteenth century during the Yellow Journalism era and started with the question of “where was the Black press?”

Ben Hecht had seen his share of death-row psychopaths, crooked ward bosses, and Capone gun thugs by the time he had come of age as a crime reporter in gangland Chicago. His grim experience with what he called “the soul of man” gave him a kind of uncanny foresight a decade later, when a loose cannon named Adolf Hitler began to rise to power in central Europe.

In 1932, Hecht solidified his legend as “the Shakespeare of Hollywood” with his thriller Scarface, the Howard Hughes epic considered the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. But Hecht rebelled against his Jewish bosses at the movie studios when they refused to make films about the Nazi menace. Leveraging his talents and celebrity connections to orchestrate a spectacular one-man publicity campaign, he mobilized pressure on the Roosevelt administration for an Allied plan to rescue Europe’s Jews. Then after the war, Hecht became notorious, embracing the labels “gangster” and “terrorist” in partnering with the mobster Mickey Cohen to smuggle weapons to Palestine in the fight for a Jewish state.