Heading: (1919 – American Socialist radicals support anti-British revolutionaries of India)
Author:
Title: 1919 propaganda broadside by the American Friends of Freedom for India
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published:
Description:

Surendra Karr, Margaret Sanger, Agnes Smedley, et al. India News Service of the Friends of Freedom for India. Vol. 1, No. 23, Nov. 12, 1919 (NY, 1919) 6 x 14", 1pg. broadside as press release. A rare imprint, original copies are held in the US by Harvard, Yale and one other institution.

One of the least known causes adopted by American Socialist and Communist "radicals" of the post-World War I Red Scare era was freeing India from British colonial domination. The two most prominent editors of this weekly, issued from June 1919 to April 1921 by "Friends of Freedom for India" (FFI) were Margaret Sanger, the great birth control advocate and Smedley, much later an apologist for the Chinese Communists (and, some said, a Soviet Russian spy). With support from the Industrial Workers of the World and equally anti-British Irish Republicans, the FFI shied away from advocating violent revolution against the British Raj to point out, as in this issue, the social failures of British rule and the "hatred" of Indians for British royalty. The longest piece in this issue, on Indian suffrage, reflects the influence of the American feminists in the FFI organization.

Small tear at fold.