Broadcast weekly from 1935 to 1956, America's Town Meeting of the Air was one of the most important public service projects of NBC. It attracted up to 3,000,000 listeners weekly, more than 1,000 discussion clubs were formed to listen to the broadcasts and to debate the issues raised, and transcripts of each program were widely distributed at modest cost to the radio audience, teachers and schools.
The format of the show usually involved a pair or a panel of speakers representing different perspectives followed by a question and answer period from the audience. The first program in the series, Which Way America? Communism, Fascism, Socialism or Democracy? featured speakers energetically advocating each of these alternatives. Occasionally advocacy threatened to become physical and at least one libel suit was filed. But for the most part the speakers endeavored to be rational and respectful of their opponents The audience was a very different matter, difficult to hold in check, often entering into contentious debates with the speakers in a kind of radio free for all. The moderator, George V. Denny, Jr., associate director of the League for Political Education which originated the series, loved the rough and tumble of the program and, while working energetically to keep discussions from descending into riots, also loved the drama of verbal blood letting. Moderated by George V. Denny, jr., the programs included a broad range of contemporary notables from Eleanor Roosevelt to Norman Thomas and Dorothy Thomson, Mary Mcloed Bethune, Rexford Tugwell and Langston Hughes.
Despite the vast popularity of the program, few recordings suvived, almost none easily accessible by the public. The programs presented here come from the National Archives and were converted to streaming QuickTime movies by the American Studies Programs at the University of Virginia.
- 6/14/1935: Will the Demands of Organized Labor Promote Recovery? Pt. 1and Pt. 2
- Sidney Hillman, President Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and James A. Emory, General Counsel, National Council of American Manufacturers.
- 12/05/1935:Has the new Deal Promoted or Retarded Business Recovery?
- Merwin K. Hart, President NY State Economic Council and Hugo L. Black, U.S. Senator from Alabama and Supreme Court Justice (1937-1971)
- 12/12/1935: Personal Liberty and the Modern State Pt. 1 and Pt. 2
- Howard Lee McBain, Dean and Professor of Constitutional Law, Columbia University, Lena Madison Phillips, President, International Federation of Professional and Business Women, Roger Baldwin, Director, Civil Liberties Union, and Henry Pratt Fairchild of NYU, and Lawrence Dennis author of The Coming American Facism.
- 12/19/1935: Should we Plan for Social Security?
- Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor, and George E. Sokolski author, Labor's Fight for Power.
- 03/19/1936: The Supreme Court and the Constitution
- Howard Lee McBain, Professor of Constitutional Law and author of The Living Constitution, and David I. Walsh, Governor and five time U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.
- 04/02/1936: Will Unionization Promote Industrial Recovery?
- Matthew Woll, V.P. American Federation of Labor, and Ralph Robey, Assistant Professor of Banking, Columbia University and author of Roosevelt vs. Recovery (1934).
- 04/16/1936: Will the Machine Dominate Man?
- Herman H. Lynn, National Machine Tool Builders Association, and Ralph Barsodi, author of This Ugly Civilization (1928) and founder of The School For Living at Suffern, N.Y..
- 11/05/1936: Public Opinion and the Town Meeting Idea.
- Dorthy Thompson, journalist, Lawrence Dennis, author of Coming American Fascism, and Scott Nearing, conservationst, peace activist and educator,
- 11/26/1936: What Does the Public Want in Music?
- William Lyon Phelps, Yale Univbesity, Mmme Olga Samaroff, musician and critic (and wife of Conductor Leopold Stokowski), Dr. Frank Black, Music Director at NBC, Pauline Pierce, singer, and Albert Serso, Conductor.
- 07/08/1937: Can America Remain Neutral? (NA)
- 12/23/1937: What System of Medical Care Should we Have?
- Dr. Arthur C. Christie, Radiologist, Dr. Gilbert W. Hague, and Dr. Kingsley Roberts, Medical Director, Bureau of Cooperative Medicine.
- 02/03/1938: What Does Democracy Mean?
- Salvado di Madariaga, Spanish historian, author and diplomat, Clarence Hathaway, Central Committee of the Comunist Party and editor of The Daily Worker, Isaac Don Levine, author and Hearst Newspaper columnist, Max Lerner, editor of The Nation and Dr. Ruth Alexander, Political Economist and Lecturer.
- 12/01/1938: Is an Economic Plan For World Peace Possible? (1st half only/audio problems)
Paul van Zeeland, Premier of Belgium, Thomas J. Watson, President IBM, Leland Rex Robinson, Economist and trustee of Columbia University, Dr. Ruth Alexander, Political Economist and Lecturer.
- 12/08/1938: How Should the Democracies Deal with the Dictatorships?
- Ms. Linda Littlejohn, Australian Feminist, Maj. George Fielding Eliot, military intelligence expert and author of The Ramparts We Watch, Quincy Howe, editor and author of England Expects Every American to do His Duty, and a 16 year old high school student, Marilyn Josselyn.
- 01/12/1939: Do We Have a Free Press?
- Harold L. Ickes, Asst. Secty of the Interior and Director of the Public Works Adninistration, Frank E. Gannett, publisher and Chair of the National Committee to Uphold Constitutional Government.
- 02/16/1939 (?): Reinhold Niebuhr on Progress in Technology and Morality (excerpt)
- Reinhold Neibuhr, American theologian and author of The Irony of History. (1952)
- 03/02/1939: Are the Schools Doing Their Job?
- John W. Studebaker, U.S. Commissioner of Education, Dr. Mortimer Adler, professor at the University of Chicago and later co-founder with Robert Hutchins of the The Great Books Program, and J.A. Starrak, Professor of Vocational Education.
- 10/19/1939: What are the Real Issues in the European War?
- Jay Allen, foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Daily News, Anne O'Hare McCormick, Pulizer prize winner for foreign journalism (1937), and John Gunther, author of Inside Europe and Inside Asia.
- 11/16/1939: Should We Ignore Racial Differences?
- Earnest A. Hooton, author of Apes, Men, and Morons, and Ashley Montague, author and Professor of Anatomy
- 11/23/1939: What Does American Democracy Man to Me? Mary McLeod Bethune (excerpt)
- Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College and Vice President of the NAACP.
- 12/07/1939: Can Business and Government Work Together Today?
- Floyd Adler, Atlas Corporation, William McChesney Martin, jr., President New York Stock Exchange, Robert Taft, Republican Senator Ohio, and Jerome Frank, Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission.
- 01/18/1940: Does America Need Compulsory Health Insurance?
- Henry Sigerist, Director, Johns Hopkins University Institute for the History of Medicine, Dr. Terry M. Townsend, Urologist, and C.E.A. Winslow, Chair, Yale Univesity Public Health Program.
- 01/25/1940: Should the President's National Defense Program be Adopted?
- J. Maas, Marine aviator and Minessota Congressman, Oswald Garrison Villard, journalist, editor of the Nation and early member of the America First Committee which opposed American involvement in WWII, Maj. James Fielding Eliot, military analyst and author, and William T. Stone, author and vice president of the Foreign Policy Association.
- 03/07-1939: What Should America Do for the "Joads?
- Rexford Tugwell, Head, Resettlement Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Phillip Bancroft, Association of Farmers of California, Carey McWilliams, author of Factores in the Field (1939) and Hugh Bennett, creator and first director of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service.
- 04/01/1940: What are the Essential Differences between the Republican and the Democratic Parties?
- Glenn Frank, former President of the University of Wisconsin and Chairman of the Republican Program Committee and Robert H. Jackson, U.S. Attorney General and Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court (1941-1945)
- 12/12/1940: What are we Preparing to Defend?
- Harry A. Overstreet, American Association of Adult Education, Colby M. Chester, Chairman of General Foods Corp., and Stanley Hyde, journalist.
- 12/26/1940: What is Youth's Role in the Defense of Democracy?
- George B. Cutter, President, Colgate University, Senator Claude B. Pepper, Florida, Carl Zeidler, Mayor of Milwaukee, and Albert McFadden, Sarasota, Fla. High School.
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