Conde McGinley

Michael Conde McGinley (October 13, 1890 – July 2, 1963) was the editor of a semi-monthly paper called Common Sense who received US-wide attention for a brief period due to his campaign against the nomination of Anna M. Rosenberg. This campaign led to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Born in Norman, Oklahoma, the eldest of three surviving children of Irish immigrant Connell B. McGinley (1852 – 1941) and his wife, Catherine. McGinley preferred to be known by his middle name Conde. He married Celia Brown around 1918. Around this time he claimed that he was "Secretary of the Grady County Highway Association" in Chickasha, Oklahoma. He moved with his parents to the Dallas, Texas area, where his daughter Nona was born in 1927, and where his father died in 1941.

McGinley moved to New Jersey in 1929, opening a chain of restaurants along the shore. During World War II, he worked as an inspector in a defense plant. In 1946, he began editing a weekly paper in Newark, New Jersey called variously Think, The Think and Think Weekly. By June 1947, it was issued as Common Sense. In November 1947, the headquarters were transferred to Union Township, Union County, New Jersey. The paper became semi-monthly in 1948.

Although the first issues were anti-Communist, it later developed into a mostly anti-Semitic broadsheet, produced by himself, with his son and daughter-in-law. Around 1948, he sued America magazine and others (including Walter Winchell) for libel, and the case dragged on for about seven years.

In one issue of 1948, a major part of the paper was taken up by support for Robert Best, who had been convicted of treason (broadcasting Nazi propaganda from Germany during World War II). In the July and August 1949 issues, W. Henry MacFarland Jr.'s name appears as associate editor. "At the time Conde was planning to combine forces with MacFarland's Nationalist Action League, as well as with the Loyal American Group, headed by William J. O'Brien." O'Brien later joined the paper's staff.

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