The New Leader

The New Leader began in 1924 under a group of figures associated with the Socialist Party of America, such as Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas.

It was published in New York City by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs.

Its overall politics shifted in its second decade: Under Levitas's editorship, during years when the much-higher-circulation Nation and New Republic often ran acrobatic apologies for Stalin, the New Leader became a bi-weekly platform for what was then known as liberal anti-Communism.

Other contributors, who were generally paid nothing or only a modest fee, included James Baldwin, Daniel Bell, Willy Brandt, David Dallin, Milovan Djilas, Theodore Draper, Max Eastman, Ralph Ellison, Sidney Hook, Hubert Humphrey, George F. Kennan, Murray Kempton, Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky,[4] Richard J. Margolis, Reuben Markham,[5] Claude McKay, C. Wright Mills, Hans Morgenthau, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Albert Murray, Ralph de Toledano, Reinhold Niebuhr, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, Cyril Joad, Bayard Rustin, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Tony Sender.

Longtime Editor Myron Kolatch conducted an interview with Columbia University's The Current in 2007.

Front page of The New Leader , June 12, 1926, depicting the funeral of congressman Meyer London