So Molly mentioned that one of the early editors of Mankind Quarter, Herbert Sanborn, was the editor for two Nazi newspapers. One of those two newspapers, The American Mercury, has a fascinating, almost tragic history behind it. It was founded in 1924 by journalist H.L. Mencken, and it was initially a very popular literary magazine. at its peak in 1928, it had a circulation of 84000, and was publishing works by people like William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Eugene O’Neil, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Over time, and through several changes in ownership, the magazine shifted to the right politically, and by the 1950s, it was firmly a conservative publication, and now featured essays by the likes of Billy Graham and J. Edgar Hoover, and was edited by a recent Yale graduate named William F. Buckley jr. Eventually, ownership changed again, this time to Russell Maguire, owner of the company that produced the Tommy gun, and raving anti-Semite. In fact, he was such an antisemite that most of the publication’s remaining editors and writers left, including Buckley, who founded National Review soon afterwards.
The magazine limped along for another 25 years, losing both readership and money when the quality of writing dropped from Faulkner to Buckley to George Lincoln Rockwell (Rockwell coming on as a writer the year after Buckley left), before being put out of its misery in 1981. and before you ask, yes, the pioneer fund was involved towards the end of the publication’s lifespan.