In 1939, the editors spoke out against the Daughters of the American Revolution when the group tried to prevent Marian Anderson from performing in Constitution Hall. Anderson performed instead at the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000.
Vantage Point
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
From 1931: Modern travel is a failure
Who doesn’t love to get away? G. C. Heseltine, for one. But one might wonder if it was a question of temperament rather than the details of his journeys, because this extended screed against modern travel from the April 18, 1931, issue of America turned fairly quickly into a screed against, well, just about everything […]
Posted inPolitics & Society, Vantage Point
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Christian Moralist
Born 100 years ago, Solzhenitsyn was not sold on democracy, but battled what he perceived to be an amoral pragmatism.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
Thomas Merton’s Obituary from 1969
I for one have never known a mind more brilliant, more beautiful, more serious, more playful. The energy behind it was immeasurable, and the capacity for love.
Posted inArts & Culture, Vantage Point
Mickey Mouse and the meaning of Americanism
If a product of an age is entirely free from criticism, it is something of great interest.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
This is the homily Óscar Romero was delivering when he was killed.
“We know that every effort to better a society, especially one that is so enmeshed in injustice and in sin, is an effort that God blesses, that God desires, that God demands of us.”
Posted inPolitics & Society, Vantage Point
Anita Hill v. Clarence Thomas: How television influenced the hearings
From 1991: Are our governmental processes being skewed by sensational and inhumanly accelerated electronic images?
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
John LaFarge on the March on Washington
On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. America editor John LaFarge, S.J., was there.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
What makes a good deacon?
A man pursuing the diaconate must see his desire to serve as a true vocation.
Posted inFaith, Vantage Point
From 1968, America’s editors on ‘Humanae Vitae’
“The right of Catholics to express disagreement with their leaders is a right as old as Peter and Paul.”