William English Walling

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William English Walling in 1906
William English Walling (1877–1936) (known as "English" to friends and family) was an American labor reformer and Socialist Republican born in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the grandson of William Hayden English, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1880, and was born into wealth. He was educated at the University of Chicago and at Harvard Law School.[1] He was a co-founder of the NAACP,[2] and founded the National Women's Trade Union League in 1903.

In 1906, following a trip to Russia to report on the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905 he married Anna Strunsky, a Jewish immigrant and an aspiring novelist from San Francisco.[3] In 1908 he published Russia's Message, a book inspired by the social unrest he and his wife had observed in Russia.[4]

In 1908 Walling and his wife went to Springfield, Illinois to investigate a race riot. As a result of their investigations, Walling wrote an article The Race War in the North for the September 3 issue of The Independent, in which he stated, “the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and Lovejoy, must be revived and we must come to treat the negro on a plane of absolute political and capitalist equality.”[5] He also appealed for a “large and powerful body of citizens to come to their aid.” The article directly led to the founding of the NAACP.[6]

Walling was a member of the Republican Party, but quit in 1917 due to the party's stance against U.S. involvement in World War I. His marriage to Anna Strunsky ended at this time, in part due to their disagreement over the United States' role in the conflict.[3] He later worked full-time for the American Federation of Labor.[1]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "William English Walling Biography (1877–1936)". Biography.com. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2006-10-17. 
  2. ↑ Boylan, James. Revolutionary Lives: Anna Strunsky & William English Walling. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. viii, 334 pp.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Greenberg, David (February 21, 1999). "Comrades in Love". New York Times. Retrieved 2006-10-17. 
  4. ↑ Walling, William English Russia's Message: The True World Import of the Revolution (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1908).
  5. ↑ Walling, William English. "The Race War in the North." Independent 65 (September 3, 1908): 529-534.
  6. ↑ Library of Congress Exhibitions. NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom 1909-2009. William English Walling.

Further reading

  • James Boylan, Revolutionary Lives: Anna Strunsky and William English Walling. Amherst, MA: University of Massachutsetts Press, 1998.
  • Berry Craig, "William English Walling: Kentucky's Unknown Civil Rights Hero," The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 96, no. 4 (Autumn 1998), pp. 351-376. In JSTOR
  • Richard Schneirov, "The Odyssey of William English Walling: Revisionism, Social Democracy, and Evolutionary Pragmatism," The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 2, no. 4 (Oct. 2003), pp. 403-430. In JSTOR

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