Freda Kirchwey

Mary Frederika "Freda" Kirchwey (September 26, 1893 – January 3, 1976) was an American journalist, editor, and publisher strongly committed throughout her career to liberal causes (anti-Fascist, pro-Soviet, anti-anti-communist).

[2] In 1918, she was brought to The Nation by then editor Oswald Garrison Villard, largely at the behest of Kirchwey's former professor at Barnard, Henry Raymond Mussey, first working in the International Relations Section.

[4] On the domestic front, she was a sharp critic of the House Un-American Activities Committee — calling Martin Dies Jr., its leader from 1938 to 1944, a "one-man Gestapo from Texas" — and the growth of McCarthyism in America.

[2] Another attendee was journalist Dorothy Thompson, who in a speech praised Kirchwey for having the courage "to throw light into dark places and to defend the people versus those interests that in our society have repeatedly striven to defeat the full realization of the promise of democracy.

[1] This criticism was repeated even at times by members of the American left; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. famously referred to the magazine's "wretched apologies for Soviet despotism.

As a result, Kirchwey sold her individual ownership of the magazine in 1943, creating a nonprofit organization, Nation Associates, formed out of the money generated from a recruiting drive of sponsors.