The American Vindicator, Vol. 1, No. 1
Washington, D. C. The Vindicators Association, 1939. The inaugural issue of this scarce prewar isolationist newspaper, edited and initially financed by North Carolina senator Robert Rice Reynolds as the official organ of his newly established Vindicators Association. Beneath the headline “Let’s Pool Our Forces,” Reynolds announces the paper as the organizing link for a national movement devoted to keeping the United States out of war, registering and fingerprinting all aliens, stopping immigration for ten years, banning “foreign isms,” and deporting noncitizens deemed criminal or undesirable.
The issue combines Reynolds’s appeals and readers’ letters with reprinted speeches, news briefs, antiwar arguments, attacks on Communism and other alleged subversive movements, opposition to refugees and immigration, and warnings that foreign propaganda would draw the United States into another European conflict. Contributors and subjects include Fulton J. Sheen, isolationist senator D. Worth Clark, senators Ernest Lundeen and Robert Reynolds, representatives Martin Dies and Joe Starnes, and American Coalition president John B. Trevor. Although the paper formally condemns Communism, Fascism, and Nazism alike, its noninterventionism is inseparable from militant nativism: immigrants are repeatedly blamed for unemployment, crime, welfare costs, and political disorder, while several letters defend or minimize the activities of the German-American Bund.
A revealing primary document from the far-right edge of the pre–America First isolationist movement, illustrating how resistance to intervention in Europe could merge with immigration restriction, xenophobia, antisemitic insinuation, and fears of domestic subversion. Complete in eight pages; extensively folded, with edge wear, short tears and chipping, particularly along the upper margins, but substantially intact.
Tabloid format printed in black on newsprint, 8 pp. Creases from folding for mailing, minor soiling and one closed tear, but a very good copy of a scarce and fragile survivor. Item #15249
Price: $150.00