Conditions Governing Use

Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. For more information, please see the Permissions and Copyright page on the West Virginia and Regional History Center website.

Conditions Governing Access

No special access restriction applies.

Preferred Citation

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], Collection of Controversial Publications, A&M 0161, West Virginia and Regional History Center, West Virginia University Libraries, Morgantown, West Virginia.

Scope and Contents

Collection of controversial publications including newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, bulletins, typescripts, ephemera, and other material.

Publications from the 1910s pertain to the World War I (WWI) era and regard government opposition, anti-war sentiment, and support of American armed forces. There are two pamphlets authored by Otto Kahn: "The Menace of Paternalism" and "Prussianized Germany: Americans of Foreign Descent and America's Cause." Kahn was a native of Germany, as well as a successful investment banker. There is also a series of articles reprinted from "The Dearborn Independent" (1920) titled "The International Jew: the World's Foremost Problem."

The bulk of the collection consists of publications from the 1930s and 1940s; these materials generally concern the following subjects: anti-Semitism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, communism, World War II, corporate control, international loans, and immigration into the United States. There is also a bound volume of 1939 issues of "The Daily Christian Advocate"; issues of "Facts in Review", published by the German Library of Information (1939-1940); and a series of transcripts of radio broadcasts by Reverend Charles E. Coughlin.

Publications from the 1950s and 1960s regard: the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO); integration of African-Americans into the Armed Forces; the Federal Reserve; freedom for Morton Sobell who was convicted in the Rosenberg-Sobell treason case; the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Budget; Martin Luther King, Jr.; anti-Semitism; The National Council of Churches of Christ; communism; the John Birch Society; the House Un-American Activities Committee; and Students for a Democratic Society.

Publications directly relevant to West Virginia include "Liberate Yourself" (1970) (a brief history of the Mountaineer Freedom Party, which was formed at West Virginia University), "Semi-Socialism, An Alternative Government and Economic System" (2013) by West Virginia author Keith B. Anderson, and other related material.