Month: April 2013

  • Marion Rodgers on Mencken and the Red Scare

    Marion Elizabeth Rodgers will speak on Mencken’s writings concerning “The Red Scare.” “In the deportation of radicals after the Red Scare, of April 1921, Mencken reminded his readers that “probably two-thirds of those allegedly Reds were wholly innocent, and even the guilty ones were not fairly tried.” Though by no means sharing the views of…

  • Mr Mencken’s “Hatrack”, Part 1

    Eighty-seven years ago subscribers to the American Mercury were receiving the April number of the magazine little knowing that 2,943 words occupying not quite four-and-a-half pages would create an anti-censorship tempest-in-a-teapot. The banning in Boston of the article titled “Hatrack” made the front page of the Sun but was sent to pages in the mid-twenties…