Charles L. Smith
Charles Lee Smith (B. 1887; d. 26 October 1964) was the editor and publisher of the atheist publication The Truth Seeker from 1937 until 1964. Shortly before his death he sold the publication to James Hervey Johnson and moved the paper from New York to San Diego. He must not be confused with Charles Lee Smith (1865–1951), professor, university president, publisher, and bibliophile.
Life
Smith was the son of a Methodist minister and came to atheism thru the writings of Thomas Jefferson.[1]
In 1925, Smith helped to organize the American Association of the Advancement of Atheism (4A). The group is said to have had over 3,000 members and chapters on 20 campuses. In 1928 Smith was arrested for blasphemy while distributing atheist pamphlets in Arkansas. The charges were eventually dropped after a series of appeals and a hunger strike by Smith.[2]
As editor of The Truthseeker since 1937, Smith subtitled the paper as The Journal for Reasoners and Racists and created his own version of Darwinism mixing atheism with racism. Smith promoted the ideas of Vacher de Lapouge who started a science called anthroposociology. The new discipline was totally materialistic and rejected any mystical premise of a "race-soul". [3] Smith was a Nordicist and articulated his ideology in a six-hundred-page tome Sensism: The Philosophy of the West first published in 1956 in two volumes.
- Charles is probably the most scholarly of all our Editors. He attended Harvard University but had to withdraw in his Junior year due to lack of funds. As Roderick Bradford writes about him in our 125th Anniversary Issue: "He discovered Thomas Jefferson's book of abstracts from the New Testament about Jesus in 1912 and reading it made him realize that Jefferson was an infidel. This started Charles' interest in freethought literature, eventually culminating in his conversion to atheism. Charles enlisted in WWI and after the war returned to New York City and started selling the freethought magazine The Truth Seeker and writing for the publication. Charles purchased The Truth Seeker in 1938 and converted the format from a foilo-sized weekly to a smaller monthly." In 1940 he incorporated the Company and in 1964 he sold The Truth Seeker Co., Inc. to James Hervey Johnson and moved himself and the entire Company to San Diego, California. He did not live to enjoy the move to this beautiful city for he died of a fatal heart attack only six months after the move.[4]
Racial views
Smith was a harsh critic of any notion of racial equality. He saw the doctrines of Christianity and Communism with the same goal of leveling man by removing all racial instincts leading him to a mongrel existence. "If universal amalgamation occurs, if the White race disappears, it may never reappear....The jew-led equalists are marching to world-wide conquest."
Smith rejected segregation a solution to the race problem in America. He predicted "the seepage of blood through social barriers is inevitable....The final remedy is not segregation but reduction, leading to virtual elimination, which Christians, from fear of everlasting pain, dare not practice." In Sensism he advocated "legalizing and subsidizing abortion to prevent the birth of a mulatto or a Negro."
Smith saw the jews as playing a leading role in imposing an interracial insanity over White America. "jew-led Love mongers simply cannot discriminate; having lost their senses in judging others, they obey words absolutely…They are jewized."[5]
Imperium
In 1962, Smith published the first American edition of Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium. It is oblivious Smith was impressed by Imperium although he surely rejected Yockey’s mystical view on race. It is not know if Smith was inspired to answer to the work when he published Sensism.
Works
- Evolution Illustrated. By Charles Smith. American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, Incorporated. 2 p. 192?
- Godless Evolution. By Charles Smith. American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, Incorporated. 4 p. 192?
- A Debate Between William Landon Oliphant, Minister, Oak Cliff Church of Christ, Dallas, Texas and Charles Smith, President, American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, New York City: Held in the Church of Christ, Shawnee, Oklahoma, August 15 and 16, 1929 / F. L. Rowe, 177 p. 1929.
- 2-nd edition: Gospel Advocate Company, Nashville, Tennessee. 177 p. 1952.
- 3-nd edition: M. Lynwood Smith Publications, Wesson, Mississippi. 177 p. 1983
- 4-nd edition: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 180 p. 2013
- The Bible in the Balance. By Charles Smith. American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, Incorporated. 4 p. 1935
- Sensism: The Philosophy of the West: In two vol. Vol. 1. By Charles Smith. The Truth Seeker Company, New York, First Edition, LVI, 732 p. 1956.
See also
External link
References
- ↑ Science For Segregation: Race, Law, And The Case Against Brown V. Board Of Education, by John P. Jackson, page 55
- ↑ Science For Segregation: Race, Law, And The Case Against Brown V. Board Of Education, by John P. Jackson, page 55
- ↑ Science For Segregation: Race, Law, And The Case Against Brown V. Board Of Education, by John P. Jackson, page 55
- ↑ The Truth Seeker
- ↑ Science For Segregation: Race, Law, And The Case Against Brown V. Board Of Education by John P. Jackson Jr., pages 56-57