Ray Ginger
Encyclopedia
Raymond Sydney Ginger 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.
, Tennessee
, the fourth son and next-to-last child of an affluent Southern family that moved to Indiana
(Debs' home state) while he was very young, and was shortly thereafter plunged into abject poverty by the Great Depression
. After four years "squatting" in a series of unoccupied houses in Greencastle
while their eldest son attended DePauw college, the Ginger family settled in Indianapolis
, still in extremely difficult circumstances. These experiences deeply influenced Ray Ginger's political convictions and much of his historical work: in later life he frequently recounted his childhood humiliation when sent to collect the bag of flour that was the only form of public welfare available, and also the intense personal rage that dominated his youth.
and the University of Chicago
before his 17th birthday. In another frequently-told tale, he chose Chicago in the belief that it would be easier to augment his scholarship with part-time employment "in a big city like Chicago than in a small town like Cambridge." He didn't think to look at a map, and wouldn't have dreamed of asking for advice. At Chicago he soon took a step towards fulfilling his supreme ambition at that time — to become a sportswriter — by landing a post as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune
— "the only time my father was ever really proud of me." This job turned into something more than menial when the United States entered World War II
shortly thereafter, most of the reporters became foreign correspondent
s, and Ginger was promoted to a writing job in the city room.
His journalistic career was ended permanently by the military draft, but the interruption to his academic education proved only temporary. Soon after basic training, Military Intelligence
plucked him out of the swarming pool of draftees and sent him for special training in the Japanese language
at the University of Michigan
, where he met his first wife, now the nationally-known civil-liberties lawyer Ann Fagan Ginger
. At the end of this course Ginger was assigned to work as a code-breaker
near Washington
— work for which an education in statistical analysis would have been more appropriate than linguistic studies. It was while serving in this capacity in the closing days of the war that he joined the Communist Party
, with the expectation that the revolution was just around the corner.
His interest in Eugene Debs had already begun to crystallize into a determination to write a definitive biography, drawing on both archival sources and interviews with some of the many individuals then living who had known Debs well. Fortunately the recently enacted GI Bill provided an easy means of support for this enterprise. Ann Arbor
, which was close to his wife's family home and where he had already accumulated academic credits while studying Japanese, seemed the obvious place to begin; he completed his bachelors degree there, and then (the book not being finished) stayed for a masters degree in economics. Still drawing on GI benefits in the cause of literature, he then entered a Ph.D program in American Studies at Western Reserve University in Cleveland
, Ohio
(now Case Western Reserve University
), where he completed The Bending Cross (Rutgers University Press, 1949). This classic biography met great critical acclaim, including an assessment by the eminent American historian Henry Steele Commager
as "the best biography of Debs." It has almost never been out of print in the intervening years; Haymarket Books
issued the most recent edition in 2006.
as editor of the Business History Review, with a little teaching on the side. Besides his editorial duties, he wrote numerous scholarly articles in economics, labor history, and business history while at Harvard, researched a projected biography of Clarence Darrow
, and enjoyed every prospect for a distinguished academic career.
The witchhunts of the McCarthy Era put an abrupt halt to this promising future. When it seemed probable that both Ginger and his wife might be subpoenaed by the Massachusetts
equivalent of the infamous House Committee on Unamerican Activities, university officials demanded (on June 16, 1954) that he sign an oath declaring that he was not a member of the Communist Party, and that his wife (who had no university connection) sign a similar oath. Instant dismissal despite a recent three-year contract was the threatened alternative. When Ginger instead chose to resign, Harvard insisted that he leave the state immediately as a condition of receiving the two weeks of salary remaining on his existing contract.
Ginger, his pregnant wife, and their small son went to New York on two days notice to stay with relatives they had never met. Ann Ginger gave birth as a charity patient, and the marriage came to a rancorous halt not long thereafter. Ginger worked in New York for the next six years, first in advertising and then as an editor at the book publishers Alfred Knopf
and Henry Holt, but neither his success in these endeavors, his remarriage in 1956, nor the publication of two notably readable works of history (Altgeld's America and Six Days or Forever?
) fully compensated for his bitterness at having been ejected from the academic world and then apparently blacklist
ed.
was sufficiently impressed with his abilities and achievements to offer him an assistant professor
ship in the history department. He stayed at Brandeis for six years, becoming a tenured full professor, chairing the Committee on American Civilization, writing several more books, coaching the tennis
team, and evolving rare pedagogical gifts. His lectures were legendary, less for their adept showmanship than for Ginger's uncanny ability to entice even the greenest and most awkward undergraduate to join him on a mutually thrilling journey of intellectual exploration. This remarkable talent received tangible acknowledgment many years after his death, when a former student (William Friedman, Brandeis '65), raised $2.5 million to endow the Ray Ginger Professorship of History at the university.
After leaving Brandeis in 1966, Ginger taught briefly at Stanford University
and moved on to tenured positions at Wayne State University
in Detroit
and the University of Calgary
, in Alberta
, Canada
. He died in Boston in 1975, of complications from acute alcoholism
, survived by his third wife and two sons from his first marriage. Most of his papers were subsequently presented to the Labor History Archives at Wayne State University, where they are available for scholarly consultation.
. Preliminary evidence suggests that Harvard has been less than forthcoming in discussing the events of that period. In 2000, Ann Fagan Ginger
wrote a letter to the president of Harvard, requesting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to discuss the Ginger firing and other acts of Harvard against students and faculty members who had Left political leanings or membership. The Harvard Crimson
has published a number of articles on this issue. Francis A. 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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and biographer
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of wide-ranging scholarship whose special focus was on labor history
Labor history
Labor history may refer to:* Labor history , a subfield of the discipline of history**Labor history of the United States, describes the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people, in the United States...
, economic history
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
, and the epoch often called the Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
. His biography of the American labor leader and socialist Eugene Victor Debs is widely considered definitive, and his account of the Scopes trial
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
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 MemphisMemphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, the fourth son and next-to-last child of an affluent Southern family that moved to Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
(Debs' home state) while he was very young, and was shortly thereafter plunged into abject poverty by the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. After four years "squatting" in a series of unoccupied houses in Greencastle
Greencastle, Indiana
Greencastle is a city in Greencastle Township, Putnam County, Indiana, United States, and the county seat of Putnam County. It was founded in 1821 by Scots-Irish American Ephraim Dukes on a land grant. He named the settlement for his hometown of Greencastle, Pennsylvania...
while their eldest son attended DePauw college, the Ginger family settled in Indianapolis
Indianapolis
Indianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
, still in extremely difficult circumstances. These experiences deeply influenced Ray Ginger's political convictions and much of his historical work: in later life he frequently recounted his childhood humiliation when sent to collect the bag of flour that was the only form of public welfare available, and also the intense personal rage that dominated his youth.
Education
Despite his troubled childhood, and the equally troubled personality it engendered, his incisive intelligence and great verbal gifts were rewarded by acceptance to both Harvard CollegeHarvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
and the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
before his 17th birthday. In another frequently-told tale, he chose Chicago in the belief that it would be easier to augment his scholarship with part-time employment "in a big city like Chicago than in a small town like Cambridge." He didn't think to look at a map, and wouldn't have dreamed of asking for advice. At Chicago he soon took a step towards fulfilling his supreme ambition at that time — to become a sportswriter — by landing a post as a copyboy at the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
— "the only time my father was ever really proud of me." This job turned into something more than menial when the United States entered World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
shortly thereafter, most of the reporters became foreign correspondent
Foreign correspondent
Foreign Correspondent may refer to:*Foreign correspondent *Foreign Correspondent , an Alfred Hitchcock film*Foreign Correspondent , an Australian current affairs programme...
s, and Ginger was promoted to a writing job in the city room.
His journalistic career was ended permanently by the military draft, but the interruption to his academic education proved only temporary. Soon after basic training, Military Intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
plucked him out of the swarming pool of draftees and sent him for special training in the Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, where he met his first wife, now the nationally-known civil-liberties lawyer Ann Fagan Ginger
Ann Fagan Ginger
Ann Fagan Ginger is an American lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the founder and the Executive Director Emerita of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley. CA....
. At the end of this course Ginger was assigned to work as a code-breaker
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties...
near Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
— work for which an education in statistical analysis would have been more appropriate than linguistic studies. It was while serving in this capacity in the closing days of the war that he joined the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
, with the expectation that the revolution was just around the corner.
His interest in Eugene Debs had already begun to crystallize into a determination to write a definitive biography, drawing on both archival sources and interviews with some of the many individuals then living who had known Debs well. Fortunately the recently enacted GI Bill provided an easy means of support for this enterprise. Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
, which was close to his wife's family home and where he had already accumulated academic credits while studying Japanese, seemed the obvious place to begin; he completed his bachelors degree there, and then (the book not being finished) stayed for a masters degree in economics. Still drawing on GI benefits in the cause of literature, he then entered a Ph.D program in American Studies at Western Reserve University in Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
(now Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...
), where he completed The Bending Cross (Rutgers University Press, 1949). This classic biography met great critical acclaim, including an assessment by the eminent American historian Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...
as "the best biography of Debs." It has almost never been out of print in the intervening years; Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books is a non-profit left-wing book publisher and distributor. It is published by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change...
issued the most recent edition in 2006.
Academic career and blacklisting
After earning a Western Reserve Ph.D. in 1951 by the unusual expedient of presenting his published biography as a dissertation, Ginger took up a post at Harvard Business SchoolHarvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
as editor of the Business History Review, with a little teaching on the side. Besides his editorial duties, he wrote numerous scholarly articles in economics, labor history, and business history while at Harvard, researched a projected biography of Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
, and enjoyed every prospect for a distinguished academic career.
The witchhunts of the McCarthy Era put an abrupt halt to this promising future. When it seemed probable that both Ginger and his wife might be subpoenaed by the Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
equivalent of the infamous House Committee on Unamerican Activities, university officials demanded (on June 16, 1954) that he sign an oath declaring that he was not a member of the Communist Party, and that his wife (who had no university connection) sign a similar oath. Instant dismissal despite a recent three-year contract was the threatened alternative. When Ginger instead chose to resign, Harvard insisted that he leave the state immediately as a condition of receiving the two weeks of salary remaining on his existing contract.
Ginger, his pregnant wife, and their small son went to New York on two days notice to stay with relatives they had never met. Ann Ginger gave birth as a charity patient, and the marriage came to a rancorous halt not long thereafter. Ginger worked in New York for the next six years, first in advertising and then as an editor at the book publishers Alfred Knopf
Alfred Knopf
Alfred Knopf is the name of:*Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. , founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the publishing company*Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. , son of Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.*Alfred A. Knopf or Knopf Publishing Group, subsidiary of Random House...
and Henry Holt, but neither his success in these endeavors, his remarriage in 1956, nor the publication of two notably readable works of history (Altgeld's America and Six Days or Forever?
Six Days or Forever?
Six Days or Forever?: Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes is a 1958 book on the Scopes Trial by Ray Ginger, first published in hardcover by Beacon Press and later reprinted in paperback by Oxford University Press...
) fully compensated for his bitterness at having been ejected from the academic world and then apparently blacklist
Blacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
ed.
Later career
The doors opened again in 1960, when Brandeis UniversityBrandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
was sufficiently impressed with his abilities and achievements to offer him an assistant professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
ship in the history department. He stayed at Brandeis for six years, becoming a tenured full professor, chairing the Committee on American Civilization, writing several more books, coaching the tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
team, and evolving rare pedagogical gifts. His lectures were legendary, less for their adept showmanship than for Ginger's uncanny ability to entice even the greenest and most awkward undergraduate to join him on a mutually thrilling journey of intellectual exploration. This remarkable talent received tangible acknowledgment many years after his death, when a former student (William Friedman, Brandeis '65), raised $2.5 million to endow the Ray Ginger Professorship of History at the university.
After leaving Brandeis in 1966, Ginger taught briefly at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
and moved on to tenured positions at Wayne State University
Wayne State University
Wayne State University is a public research university located in Detroit, Michigan, United States, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center Historic District. Founded in 1868, WSU consists of 13 schools and colleges offering more than 400 major subject areas to over 32,000 graduate and...
in Detroit
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
and the University of Calgary
University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
, in Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. He died in Boston in 1975, of complications from acute alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, survived by his third wife and two sons from his first marriage. Most of his papers were subsequently presented to the Labor History Archives at Wayne State University, where they are available for scholarly consultation.
Continuing controversy
Many of the archived documents from that troubled time are now (2004) nearing the end of a fifty-year embargoEmbargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
. Preliminary evidence suggests that Harvard has been less than forthcoming in discussing the events of that period. In 2000, Ann Fagan Ginger
Ann Fagan Ginger
Ann Fagan Ginger is an American lawyer, teacher, writer, and political activist. She is the founder and the Executive Director Emerita of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in Berkeley. CA....
wrote a letter to the president of Harvard, requesting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to discuss the Ginger firing and other acts of Harvard against students and faculty members who had Left political leanings or membership. The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson, the daily student newspaper of Harvard University, was founded in 1873. It is the only daily newspaper in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is run entirely by Harvard College undergraduates...
has published a number of articles on this issue. Francis A. Boyle, law professor at the University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
, and a 1976 graduate of Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, 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)
- Altgeld's America; The Lincoln Ideal Versus Changing Realities (1958)
- American Social Thought (1961)
- The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs (1949)
- 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)
External links
- Red Square - A Scrutiny by Vicky C. Hallett, The Harvard Crimson
- FBI Files Show HBS Forced Out Leftist Professor by Joshua E. Gewolb, The Harvard Crimson
- Harvard Admits Role in Forced Resignation by Joshua E. Gewolb, The Harvard Crimson
- School admits ultimatum to suspected 'Communist' prof Boston Herald article