John Reed Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Not to be confused with the band, The John Reed Club, of Ivy League Records
The John Reed Club was founded in October 1929 by staff members of The New Masses to support leftist and Marxist artists and writers.
Originally politically independent, it and The New Masses officially affiliated with Moscow in November 1930. It took its name from John Reed, the muckraking journalist and communist activist.
Among the members of its approximately 30 national chapters was Samuel Lewis Shane in New York, and Richard Wright in Chicago. (Ten years later Wright distilled his uncomfortable experience in an Atlantic Monthly article, "I Tried to be a Communist".) Other chapters were formed in Detroit, Waukegan, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and other cities.
The clubs were dissolved into the American Artists' Congress in 1936 by order of the American Communist Party.[1]
The magazine Partisan Review was originally a publication of the John Reed Club.
[edit] References
- ^ Hagelstein Marquardt, Virginia (1989). ""New Masses" and John Reed Club Artists, 1926-1936: Evolution of Ideology, Subject Matter, and Style". The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts (Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU) 12 (Spring 1989): 56–75. doi:. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1504057. Retrieved on 2008-07-08.
