Freda Kirchwey

Mary Frederika "Freda" Kirchwey (September 26, 1893 – January 3, 1976) was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes (anti-Fascist, pro-Soviet, anti-anti-communist). From 1933 to 1955, she was editor of The Nation magazine.

Quotes

• It [The Nation] is a weapon in our common fight for a democratic victory and a decent peace; against reaction, isolationism, and appeasement. We have a political war to wage and win.
  • letter (1943)

• To a person who sees life in clear blacks and whites the issue is doubtless a simple one: decent people don’t associate with criminals and gangsters or try to extenuate their crimes. One cannot but envy the man who is able to dispatch his social problems so easily. But to me, as to many other non-Communists and unattached liberals, the issue is a confused and troubling one. The Communists display the qualities of most fanatics, qualities that stem as directly from Cotton Mather as from Karl Marx. They are intolerant and ruthless, often unscrupulous, often violent and lacking in political judgment. They are also zealous, brave, and willing to put up with hardship and abuse. The Communist Party and its press have “assassinated”—or tried to—many a character, including that of The Nation. But they have also fought for decent conditions for workers and the unemployed, for equality of rights for Negroes, for relief and aid to the victims of the civil war in Spain. They have stood consistently for justice and nonaggression in international relations—as, indeed, has the Soviet government as well. Neither can one forget that Communists and Communist sympathizers from the United States fought in Spain in numbers out of all proportion to their numbers here; and, it might be added, they fought side by side with Socialists and Anarchists and democrats of all shades, even while political strife between all these factions poisoned the air behind the lines. The Spanish struggle taught many lessons, of which perhaps the most important was this one: It is not necessary for liberal lambs and Communist lions to lie down together. Enough if they will move ahead toward their common objectives without wasting time and strength in an attempt to exterminate each other along the way. The job of making this country unsafe for fascism calls for tremendous constructive effort as well as defensive strength. If Communists and non-Communists and even anti-Communists could forget their mutual recriminations and concentrate on the major task of our generation, there would be better hope of its successful accomplishment.
  • letter in The Nation (June 17, 1939) excerpted here

• Logic is not a vice of the fundamentalist. He is against birth control. He detests the very words. He shrinks from the thought behind the words. Birth control can hardly be considered without considering sex, and sex should be suppressed and ignored as far as possible. If children are born, let us not dwell on the incidences of their origin; let us presume that God sent them to bless our homes, and leave the matter there. Besides, says the fundamentalist under his breath, what will become of morals if people can sin without fear?...the bigots of both faiths are right; they do well to fear the effect of a widespread knowledge of birth control methods. At present such knowledge is in the hands of the upper classes-through bootleggers-and the effect of it has been to change the habits and morals and economic status of middle-class women, and to modify almost beyond recognition the middle-class home. Some of this knowledge gets through to the poorer classes. But, like bootlegged liquor, it is apt to be poisonous-the more so, the cheaper the bootlegger. So the women of the working class are dying from the effects of drugs and abortions, when they are not dying from the effects of too many children; and a bitter, passionate clamor for fair treatment is beginning to sound through muffling layers of poverty and repression. Not for the sake of the dwindling Nordic, but for their own health and happiness and security and freedom and for their children's future, these women are going to have what they want. If you doubt it, read "Motherhood in Bondage" [[[by Margaret Sanger]] (1928)]
  • "Out of Bondage" article in The Nation (November 21, 1928) included in The Best of The Nation (2000)

Quotes about

• In 1944, on the 25th anniversary of her association with The Nation, some 1,300 people turned out to do her honor at a testimonial dinner. Dorothy Thompson, the columnist and radio commentator, was one of a dozen speakers. She praised her friend for having fought “to throw light into dark places and to defend the peOple versus those interests that in our society have repeatedly striven to defeat the full realization of the promises of democracy.”
  • from her obituary in The New York Times (January 4, 1976)