An Inventory of His Literary File in the Photography Collection at the
Harry Ransom Center
Creator:
Spivak, John L. (John Louis),
1897-1981
Title:
John. L. (John Louis) Spivak Literary
File
Dates:
1930-1931
Extent:
1.5 document boxes (146 photographs)
Abstract:
The Literary File of American
journalist and author John L. (John Louis) Spivak consists of 146 photographic
prints and negatives that primarily depict African American prisoners, their abuse
by wardens, and their living conditions in rural Georgia. Spivak took the
photographs in 1930 and 1931, and he used them as documentation for and
illustrations in his 1932 novel Georgia
Nigger.
Call Number:
Photography Collection
PH-02721
Language:
English and
Access:
Open for research. Please note: Negatives cannot be accessed without curatorial
approval and advance notice, but access prints are available for negatives that
were
not accompanied by original prints.
Administrative Information
Acquisition:
Internal transfer
Processed by:
Susan McClellan, 2006; Kait Dorsky, 2015; finding aid revised, Mary Alice Harper,
2019
John Louis Spivak was born on June 13, 1897, and grew up in New Haven, Connecticut.
After a series of factory jobs, Spivak began his career in journalism as a police
reporter for the New Haven Union. His antipathy for
the patriotic hysteria of the late 1910s, coupled with an interest in socialism,
politicized Spivak, who investigated and exposed corruption and venality in American
business and government. By 1919, Spivak was working as a freelance reporter for
the
American Socialist Party's paper, The Call, where he
covered labor unrest in the West Virginia mines, going so far as to personally
ask
the White House to investigate the murders of unionizers and the Sacco-Vanzetti
murder trial.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Spivak travelled around the country and the world
investigating corruption and inequality. He successfully proved that a New York
police commissioner's "evidence" of labor unions
receiving funds from the U.S.S.R. was forged. He also investigated living conditions
in Georgia prison camps and chain gangs, which he revealed in his 1932 novel Georgia Nigger. This book caused a sensation, and it is
credited with curtailing the chain gang system in the South.
In the 1930s, Spivak investigated the rise of fascism, working with several
anti-fascist and Jewish groups to expose German and Japanese propagandists and
spies. His 1934 book, Plotting America's Pogroms,
investigated Nazi groups in the United States. He continued his investigations
and
interviewed members of the anti-Nazi underground in Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw,
and Prague. He published these reports as Europe Under the
Terror (1936). Spivak also exposed a group of fascist sympathizers who
were trying to foment a revolution in Mexico in order to divert American attention
from Germany and Japan. His 1940 book, The Shrine of the
Silver Dollar, led to the downfall of the anti-Semitic broadcaster,
Father Charles Coughlin.
Spivak retired from journalism in the early 1960s and published an autobiography,
A Man in His Time, in 1967. Two years later, he
became consumer affairs editor at a Pennsylvania newspaper. There he exposed a
corrupt magazine sales scheme which eventually led to a new state consumer
protection law.
Spivak died on September 30, 1981, in Philadelphia.
Scope and Contents
The collection consists of photographic prints (957:0108:0001-0081) and negatives
(957:0108:0052-0146) by journalist and author John L. (John Louis) Spivak (American,
1897-1981). The negatives were taken during two trips he made to rural Georgia,
the
first in the fall of 1930, and the second in the fall of 1931. The images primarily
depict African American prisoners, their abuse by wardens, and their living
conditions. Spivak used the photographs as documentation for and illustrations
in
his 1932 novel Georgia Nigger (New York: Brewer,
Warren and Putnam, 1932). While the majority of the photographs are small in size,
approximately nine by twelve centimeters, several enlargements are also included.
A
few of the photographs have black and white paint applied to either mask or enhance
the image, and several show printer's crop marks.
Descriptions in this finding aid are based on Spivak’s inscriptions on the
photographic print versos, where available. The images are arranged based on their
original order, with negatives at the end of the collection.
This file forms a part of the Ransom Center’s Literary File photography collection,
which is comprised of photographs and albums withdrawn from the libraries and/or
papers of literary figures and businesses, and generally include portraits and
images taken or collected by and/or of those people and businesses. This collection
was internally transferred from the John L. (John Louis) Spivak Collection
(MS-03939).
Related Material
Associated manuscript materials, much of it related to Georgia
Nigger, can be found at the Ransom Center in the John L. (John Louis)
Spivak Collection (MS-03939).
