Reading Yale professor John Fabian Witt’s ninth and newest book, “The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America,” I was reminded of Angelica Schuyler’s search in “Hamilton” for “a mind at work.” There is a great mind at work in this book; Witt has meticulously uncovered and documented the lost history of one of the United States’ most efficient charitable funds. With incredible detail, he has reconstructed the ways a modest fund endowed by a reluctant heir managed to reshape American civil rights in less than 20 years.
Starting with the life stories of the founders of the American Fund for Public Service, Witt immerses us in parallel tracks hurtling forward into the heady 1920s, when an exclusive few hoarded American wealth while the rest toiled painfully and daily. In an eerie echo of today, a post-pandemic president promised to restore “real” American values while the country came to blows over racial unrest, shameless disinformation activity, crumbling labor unions, income inequality and censorship. Witt dives deep into this social setting, revealing not only big-picture moments and movements but also the people and legal decisions that created the environment for this crisis of American life.