Activists Protest Post Office Censorship of Anti-War Publications
A group of prominent New Yorkers, including attorney Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York, met over lunch on this day and agreed to send a representative to Washington to protest the exclusion of anti-war periodicals from the mails. This effort, along with all others, failed to end the repressive policies of the Post Office.
After the U.S. entered World War I on April 6, 1917, suppression of dissent by the administration of President Woodrow Wilson began almost immediately. Exclusion of anti-war publications from the mails by the Post Office was one of the most powerful instruments of repression. Two of the most important anti-war publications, The Masses and the Socialist Party’s magazine, American Socialist, were barred from the mails on July 7, 1917.
On the suppression of dissent by the Post Office, see the important case involving the exclusion of The Masses (July 24, 1917; November 2, 1917) and also publications of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (November 1, 1917) in the summer and fall of 1917.
Learn more: Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States (1979)
See parts of The Masses issue that was banned: William L. O’Neill, Echoes of Revolt: The Masses, 1911–1917 (1966)
Read about Postmaster General Burleson: https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu38
Learn about the ACLU during times of national crisis: https://www.aclu.org/aclu-history-defending-liberty-times-national-crisis