James Rorty

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James Rorty (March 30, 1890 – February 26, 1973) was a 20th-century American radical writer and poet as well as political activist who addressed controversial topics that included

Jim Crow, American industries, advertising, and nutrition, and was perhaps best known as a founding editor of the New Masses magazine.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Background

James Hancock Rorty was born March 30, 1890, in

New School for Social Research.[1][2][4][6]

Career

In 1913, he began his career with work in the advertising industry. He also worked in settlement houses.[2][3]

During World War I, Rorty served as a stretcher bearer on the Argonne front, an experience that led him to become a "militant pacifist."[1][2][3][4][6]

Rorty worked as a journalist and poet for more than sixty years. He considered himself "the last of the muckrakers," as a combatant against social injustice in America.[1][4][6]

During World War I, Rorty moved to San Francisco to continue his career in advertising and to write experimental poetry.[2]

In 1925, Rorty moved to New York City, where he was a founding editor (with

John Sloan, and others) of the New Masses, a Communist literary magazine, which launched the following year. However, Rorty left that next year when fellow editors rejected his publication of Robinson Jeffers's poem "Apology for Bad Dreams."[1][2][3]

In 1927, Rorty was one of many arrested during protests against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.[2]

To earn money, he also worked as an editor, journalist, advertising copy writer, and consultant for the Tennessee Valley Authority.[4]

In 1932, he supported and then quit the campaign to support

CPUSA) for U.S. president.[1]

Personal life and death

Around 1919, Rorty married Maria Ward Lambin; they were divorced in 1928. The same year, he married writer Winifred Rauschenbush (daughter of Christian socialist Walter Rauschenbusch); they had one son, philosopher Richard Rorty.[1][2][3][4]

He suffered from depression.[6]

Rorty died at age 82 on February 26, 1973, in

Sarasota, Florida.[1][4]

Works

In the mid-1950s, Rorty co-authored with Moshe Decter a book attacking McCarthyism called McCarthy and the Communists, supported by the American Committee for Cultural Freedom.[1]

Books include:

  • What Michael said to the census-taker (1922)
  • The Intruders (1923)
  • Where Life is Better: An Unsentimental American Journey (1923/1936/2014/2015)
  • Children of the sun, and other poems (New York: Macmillan, 1926)
  • End of Farce (1933)
  • Order on the air! (New York: John Day Company, ca. 1934)
  • Our Master's Voice: Advertising (New York: John Day Company, ca. 1934/1976)
  • Where life is better : an unsentimental American journey (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, c1936)
  • American medicine mobilizes (New York, W.W. Norton, ca. 1939)
  • Brother Jim Crow (New York: Post War World Council, 1943)
  • Tomorrow's food; the coming revolution in nutrition N. Philip Norman MD (New York, Prentice Hall, 1947/1956)
  • Tennessee Valley Authority: Soil ... people and fertilizer technology (Washington: US GPO, 1949)
  • Engineers of world plenty (Washington, Public Affairs Institute, 1950)
  • McCarthy and the Communists with Moshe Decter (Boston : Beacon Press, 1954/1972)
  • We Open the Gates: Labor's Fight for Equality with Harry Fleischman (1958)

Poems in

Harper's
include:

  • "Bread, and the stuff we eat" (March 1950)
  • "Memorandum to a tired bureaucrat" (December 1950)
  • "Starting from Manhattan" (October 1951)
  • "Return of the native (Donegal, April 1957)"

Articles in

Harper's
include:

  • "Tortillas, beans, and bananas" (September 1951)
  • "Go slow on fluoridation!" (February 1953)

Awards

  • c.1918: Distinguished Service Cross[1]
  • 1923: The Nation prize for poetry ("When We Dead Awaken")[1][2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "James Rorty Papers, 1915–1972". Archives West = Orbis Cascade Alliance. 26 February 1973. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i
    ISBN 9780807841693
    . Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e Peters, John Durham; Simonson, Peter, eds. (2004). Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts, 1919–1968. rowman & Littlefield. p. 16.
    ISBN 9780742528390
    . Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g "James Rorty Papers, 1915–1972". University of Oregon. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  5. ^ "James Rorty Papers". Yale University Library - Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
  6. ^ a b c d e Gross, Neil (2008). Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philopsher – James Rorty. Archives West = Orbis Cascade Alliance.
    ISBN 9780226309903
    . Retrieved 10 September 2017.

External sources
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