M. Margaret Anderson papers

M. Margaret Anderson, born 8 December l902, was the daughter of two Swedish immigrants. She grew up in Jamestown, New York on a family farm. After graduating from Jamestown High School in 1919, she attended Mount Holyoke college. She graduated cum laude with a BA in history and social science in 1926, having taken two years off to help her family with the farm. In 1931, Margaret Anderson received her Masters and Teacher's Certificate from Columbia University, but continued her graduated education until 1936 with extension classes in English. She taught one year at Jamestown High in 1926-27, then moved to Canford, New Jersey, where she remained until 1940. There, she headed the English department and served as faculty adviser for the literary quarterly and the year book. During this time, she began researching the life of her uncle, O.W. Anderson, a Swedish immigrant who worked for Swedish-language newspapers in St. Paul, Minnesota and Jamestown, New York. This research led to a sabbatical in 1936, which she spent in Sweden looking for further information she hoped to use in a novel about her uncle. The research also helped Margaret Anderson come into contact with Louis Adamic, who was in the process of forming the Common Council for American Unity (CCAU). A successor of the Foreign Language Information Service, this organization sought both to serve recent and settled immigrants in their struggle to adapt to American life, and to help encourage understanding between different racial and ethnic groups living in the United States. Margaret Anderson helped found Common Ground, a literary magazine put out by the CCAU which focused on issues surrounding the interracial and intercultural aspect of the American population. She served as managing editor for one year, under Louis Adamic, and then as sole editor from 1941 to 1950, when production ended due to lack of funds. Margaret Anderson was committed to the integration of all those living in the United States into American life, and to the importance of national unity. While causing some controversy, Common Ground focused mostly on those ethnic groups which they felt had been most discriminated against-the Jews, Japanese, and African-Americans.

As editor, Margaret Anderson helped launch many new writers who focused mainly on multi-cultural issues. The True Believer, by Eric Hofter, Moscow-on-the-Hudson by M.K. Argus, and Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory are some examples. After the demise of Common Ground, Margaret Anderson stayed with the Common Council for American Unity, doing free-lance editing and promotional work. In 1954 she began teaching again at Remus Point, New York, serving as head of the English department until her retirement in 1968. She then continued her research and translations of the work of her uncle, O.W. Anderson.