Charles Garland (philanthropist)

[2] He later explained to a reporter that he would not accept money from "a system which starves thousands while hundreds are stuffed" and which "leaves a sick woman helpless and offers its services to a healthy man.

"[8] Garland indicated to this reporter that he was not refusing to accept these funds because of socialist beliefs, but rather because as part of his study of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the works of Leo Tolstoy and H.G.

[11] Hearing of the young man's decision to refuse his inheritance and his rationale, the socialist author Upton Sinclair urged Garland to accept the money not for his personal gain, but rather to put it to a higher use.

Sinclair suggested making $100,000 donations to a set of specific organizations seeking to change the economic and social system of which Garland disapproved.

[13] Baldwin convinced Garland to accept his father's inheritance and to establish with it a "national trust fund" which would aid efforts to expand "individual liberty and the power of voluntary associations.

[15] In preparation for the task of distributing the funds, Roger Baldwin reached out to the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Russell Sage foundations to determine how those philanthropies handled grant requests.

[15] In January 1922, Garland announced that he had changed his mind, and would indeed accept the inheritance, in order to use it for his "own special purposes", which he declined to reveal.

[18] The fund later made significant donations to the ACLU and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

According to the autobiography of James Weldon Johnson, who was one of the fund's directors:[20] [Garland] was an uncommonly handsome young man and extremely reticent.

For example, around 1931 he sent a letter criticizing the NAACP's actions in the Scottsboro Boys case as "anything but advanced or radical", and suggesting that International Labor Defense would be a more worthy recipient of the Fund's support.

[21] After his separation from his wife, Garland established two successive agricultural communes, or "colonies of idealists", both named April Farm.

[19] Garland scandalized polite society by inviting young women to live with him at these colonies, where he planned to "work out the problems of life".