Oswald Garrison Villard

Oswald Garrison Villard (March 13, 1872 – October 1, 1949) was an American journalist and publisher of the New York Evening Post. He was a civil rights activist, a founding member of the NAACP. In 1913 he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson to protest his administration's racial segregation of federal offices in Washington, DC, a change from previous integrated conditions.

Villard also was a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League, favoring independence for territories taken in the Spanish-American War. He provided a rare direct link between the anti-imperialism of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s.

Villard was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 13, 1872, while his parents were living there. He was the son of Henry Villard, an American newspaper correspondent who had been an immigrant from Germany, and Fanny (Garrison) Villard, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Fanny Villard was a suffragist and one of the founders of the Women's Peace Movement. His father later invested in railroads, and bought The Nation and the New York Evening Post. The family returned to the United States soon after Villard's birth, settling in New York City in 1876.

Villard graduated from Harvard University in 1893 and, after touring Europe with his father for a year, returned to Harvard to earn his graduate degree in American History. He served as a teaching assistant, and could have pursued a career in academia, but desired a more active life. In 1896 he joined the staff of The Philadelphia Press, but disliked the paper’s pandering to advertisers. He soon joined the staff of his father’s Evening Post, serving as the editor of the Saturday features page. He began to write regularly for the New York Evening Post and The Nation, and said that he and his fellow staff members were

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