From the Archives: Freda Kirchwey, Class of 1915's "Most Militant" Student, Shaped 30 Years of Public Opinion as Editor and Publisher of The Nation
Undergarduate Association President Freda Kirchwey '15, ca. 1915. From The Mortarboard 1916, p. 26. Credit: Barnard College Archives |
In the 1915 Mortarboard Yearbook, Freda Kirchwey -- known to her peers as "Fritz" -- is everywhere. Her photo appears in a dozen places, and her writings, which would shape her future, are published throughout. She was class president, a member of the hockey team, the Greek Games, the Suffrage Club, the Socialist Club and, of course, the English and Press Clubs. In fact, her words, stories and articles also fill the Barnard Bulletin and The Bear from 1911 to 1915, and under one photo she is identified as "Fanatical Fritz."
Little wonder that she was voted by her professors as "Most Famous in the Future," "Most Militant," "Best Looking," and by Dean Virginia Gildersleeve as, "The One Who'd Done the Most for Barnard." She even gave the 1915 Valedictory Address, which The Bulletin described as "a splendid speech however much one may disagree with what she said."
In it, she cast a vision that would both define and sustain her throughout the rest of her life: "As we deepen our trust in our own importance and authority, we automatically throw overboard dogma and the authority of the idea. We become futurists and radicals. Not all of us need to be radicals of the kinds that fill the ranks of Socialists or Syndicalists -- indeed many of them are passionate clingers to dogma, hostile to new and different views, and under my definition, would rank as conservatives -- along with such folk as support monarchies or delight in required classics. No, the radical generated by the new conception of a college is a free-lancing sort, wary of traditions and sentimentalities; willing to test beliefs and feelings in the hot fire of experiment and experience and intelligently hospitable to new ideas."
Indeed, Kirchwey would spend her career "testing beliefs. . . in the hot fire of experiment and experience" as one of the most influential journalists and liberal voices of the last century, shaping national discussion through her work in America's oldest liberal magazine, The Nation .
As biographer Sara Alpern described in her 1987 book, Freda Kirchwey: A Woman of The Nation , Fritz was indeed, "the quintessential new woman."
Born on Sept. 26, 1893, in Lake Placid, N.Y., she was exposed early to progressive ideas by her father, George Washington Kirchwey, a professor at Columbia Law School.
By the time she'd graduated from Horace Mann Prep School and arrived at Barnard, she had already forged an active political and social life. So much so that her Barnard transcripts suggest she spent as much time in her outside commitments as she did her studies, earning only consistent A's in English and averaging B's and C's in her other courses. Though her classmates considered history the most valuable class and zoology the most interesting, Fritz didn't do particularly well in either.
But she excelled as a writer and won many literary awards at Barnard. She landed her first job after graduation as a reporter with the daily Morning Telegraph . She married Evans Clark the same year and struggled to balance marriage, motherhood, and career, a strain she never quite overcame.
"I never missed a day of work until I left to go to the hospital, and I think that's silly," she said years later. "It is a strain that is fair neither to the woman nor the baby. I don't mean that one should choose one or the other -- job or motherhood -- but there should be a greater effort to find a balance between them. Both the job and the baby are important to the state, and make a problem which must be solved by society in the near future."
By 1918, she joined the staff at The Nation . Oswald Garrison Villard was the editor along with managing editor, Henry Mussey, who had taught economics at Barnard. It was an exciting step for the young activist who discussed her start with Dorothy Woolf in the 1933 Barnard College Alumnae Monthly : "Wartime interest in foreign affairs was high (then in 1918), so The Nation brought out a fortnightly section called 'The International Relations Section.' William MacDonald edited this and I became his assistant. That winter provided marvelous experience and gradually I was given more and more to do."
She tackled her work with the same energy she exhibited at Barnard and by 1925 rose to managing editor of The Nation . She took the role of executive editor in 1933 and four years later bought the journal to become publisher. She focused her leadership, writing and editing, according to Alpert, "on large political and international issues, including the Spanish Civil War, democracy versus fascism and Nazism, pacifism and collective security, the plight of refugees and Zionism, McCarthyism and censorship."
Kirchwey's influence earned her a wide audience as well as a Doctor of Human Letters from Rollins College in 1944. In 1946, she was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of the French Legion of Honor.
When she retired in 1955 from her position at The Nation , she continued to write and lecture. She became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for World Disarmament and the Women's International League for the Rights of Man.
On Jan. 3, 1976, Freda Kirchwey died in St. Petersburg, Fla., leaving little doubt for her readers, friends, family and Barnard classmates that she had indeed fulfilled her yearbook motto: "I dare do all that may become a man."
--Jo Kadlecek
Sara Alpern, Freda Kirchwey: A Woman of The Nation , (Harvard University Press, 1987).
Barnard College Archives, Mortarboard 1915
Barnard College Alumnae Monthly , February 1933, Projections.
Barnard College--Alumna Record.
The Barnard Bear, Vol. XI October 1915, No. 1., Valedictory, 1915, by Freda Kirchwey.
The Nation, ("One World or None" by Freda Kirchwey, from Aug. 18, 1945)
Women in American History
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