Ford Foundation Gives Fund For the Republic $1 Million For Bill of Rights Studies
Creation of the Fund for the Republic was announced on this day by a grant from the Ford Foundation. The purpose of the Fund was to publish studies countering the attacks on civil liberties during the Cold War.
The Fund sponsored a number of books and studies defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The most important project was a two-volume Report on Blacklisting by John Cogley, published on July 1, 1956, which covered blacklisting in radio and television and, in a separate report, the movies. Other reports and books included The American Right Wing (1960).
For its efforts, the Fund for the Republic was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1956, summoning John Cogley to testify about his report on blacklisting. He declined to have an attorney with him, and also refused to reveal the sources of his information about blacklisting. He was nearly cited for contempt of Congress by HUAC.
The work of the Fund for the Republic was paralleled by a series of books published by Cornell University Press, The Cornell Studies in Civil Liberties, which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation during the Cold War.
Cogley was associated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions for several years. He later became religion editor for the New York Times.
Read about the Fund: Thomas C. Reeves, Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism (1969)
Learn more about the history of the Fund for the Republic: http://www.american-buddha.com/illum.fundrepublicrecords.htm
Read: Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (2000)
Learn more: Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century America: A Critical History (2011)