Louis Adamic collection

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: IHRC95

Staff Only

Abstract

The Louis Adamic collection (1941-1958), consists of photocopies of FBI files concerning Adamic obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit filed in 1986. There are several distinct components to the collection: Returned Referrals (Army, CIA, USPS); Bufile 100-1987; Bufile 100-63670 (Parts I and II); and Adamic Material from the Silvermaster File. Many documents in the collection are heavily redacted (blacked-out).

Dates

Creation: 1941-1958

Creator

Adamic, Louis (1899-1951) (Person)

Language of Materials

English

ACCESS RESTRICTIONS

Open for use in the Elmer L. Andersen Library reading room.

OWNERSHIP & LITERARY RIGHTS

This collection may be protected by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code). It is the user's responsibility to verify copyright ownership and to obtain all necessary permissions prior to the reproduction, publication, or other use of any portion of these materials. Researchers may quote from the collection under the fair use provision of the copyright law.

For further information regarding the copyright, please contact the IHRCA Archives.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

Louis Adamic, one of the best-known ethnic American authors of the twentieth century, was born in 1898 in Slovenia. He immigrated to the United States in 1913, and worked at various jobs throughout the 1920s. By the end of that decade, his writings were getting more exposure; by 1930 he had placed eight pieces in Mencken’s “American Mercury.” He also began to publish books, such as “Dynamite” (1930), on labor violence in America; and “Laughing in the Jungle” (1932), an autobiography. His “The Native’s Return” (1934), about a trip he made back to Yugoslavia, won him wide acclaim and led to his being appointed to the Executive Board of the Foreign Language Information Service. Adamic stayed with the organization as it became on Council for American Unity, and was active in the publishing of the periodical, “Common Ground,” which sought to integrate immigrant groups into American society without the chauvinism that had traditionally accompanied this process. His publishing successes continued with “My America” (1938); “From Many Lands” (1940); “Two-Way Passage” (1942); “What’s Your Name?” (1942); “My Native Land” (1943); and “A Nation of Nations” (1945). Adamic’s politics, firmly on the left, were always contraversial. His membership during the 1930s and 1940s in a multitude of “Popular Front” organizations, with known Communist membership and sympathies, brought him under the surveillance of the FBI and other intelligence agencies. In 1943, Adamic founded the United Committee of South Slavic Americans, which sought to bring various Yugoslavian ethnic groups together behind the war effort, and particularly in support of Tito’s partisans. In the postwar period, Adamic became increasingly marginalized as American politics, both foreign and domestic, shifted rightward. He wrote a scathing critique of U.S. foreign policy, “Dinner at the White House” (1946), and continued in his support of Tito, writing “The Eagle and the Roots” (published posthumously, 1952). In 1948, he supported Henry Wallace’s abortive Progressive Party election bid. In 1951, under circumstances that remain a mystery, he was found shot dead in his burning farmhouse in Milford, New Jersey.