Harry Golden

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Only in America (1958) paperback 1959 essay collection

Harry Lewis Golden (May 6, 1902–October 2, 1981) was an American Jewish writer and newspaper publisher. He was born Herschel Goldhirsch in the shtetl Mikulintsy, Ukraine, then part of Austria-Hungary.

In 1904 his father, Leib Goldhirsch, emigrated to Winnipeg, Manitoba, only to move the family to New York City the next year. Harry became a stockbroker but lost his job in the 1929 crash. Convicted of mail fraud, Golden served five years in a Federal prison at Atlanta, Georgia. In 1941, he moved to Charlotte, where, as a reporter for the Charlotte Labor Journal and The Charlotte Observer, he wrote about and spoke out against racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws of the time.

From 1942 to 1968, Golden published The Carolina Israelite as a forum, not just for his political views (including his satirical "Plan for the Vertical Integration of the Schools", which involved removing the chairs from any to-be-integrated building, since Southern Whites didn't mind standing with Blacks, only sitting with them), but also observations and reminisces of his boyhood in New York's Lower East Side. He traveled broadly: in 1960 to speak to Jews in West Germany and again to cover the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel for Life. In 1974, he received a presidential pardon from Richard Nixon. Calvin Trillin devised the Harry Golden Rule, which states that, according to Trillin, "in present-day America it's very difficult, when commenting on events of the day, to invent something so bizarre that it might not actually come to pass while your piece is still on the presses."

His books include three collections of essays from the Israelite and a biography of his friend, poet Carl Sandburg. One of those collections, Only in America, was the basis for a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. He also maintained a correspondence with Billy Graham.

External links

The Harry Golden Papers -- from UNC-Charlotte

Bibliography

1944-1968: The Carolina Israelite. (Weekly newspaper published in Charlotte, NC)
1950: (With Martin Rywell) Jews in American History: Their Contributions to the United States of America. (Henry, Martin Lewis Co.)
1952: (Martin Levin, Ed.) Five Boyhoods.
1955: Jewish Roots in the Carolinas: A Pattern of American Philo-Semitism.
1958: Only in America. (World Publishing Co.) Republished 1972 by World Publishing Co.
1958: For 2c Plain. (World Publishing Co.) Republished 1976 by Amereon Ltd., ISBN 0848810155.
1960: Enjoy, Enjoy! (World Publishing Co.)
1961: Carl Sandburg. (World Publishing Co.) Republished 1988 by Univ. of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-06006-7.
1962: You're Entitle. (World Publishing Co.)
1962: The Harry Golden Omnibus. (Cassell & Co.)
1962: O. Henry Stories. (Platt & Munk) ISBN 0448411059.
1963: Forgotten Pioneer. (World Publishing Co.)
1964: Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes. (World Publishing Co.)
1964: So What Else is New? (G.P. Putnam's)
1965: A Little Girl is Dead. (World Publishing Co.)
1965: Amerikah Sheli (My America). Hebrew. Selections from Only in America and For 2c Plain. (Jerusalem: Steimatzky)
1966: Ess, Ess, Mein Kindt (Eat, Eat, My Child). (G.P. Putnam's)
1966: The Lynching of Leo Frank. (Cassell & Co.)
1967: The Best of Harry Golden. (World Publishing Co.)
1968: The Humor Gazette - Funniest Stories from Country Papers. (Hallmark Editions)
1969: The Right Time: An Autobiography. (G.P. Putnam's)
1970: So Long As You're Healthy. (G.P. Putnam's)
1971: The Israelis: Portrait of a People. (G.P. Putnam's)
1972: The Golden Book of Jewish Humor. (G.P. Putnam's)
1972: The Greatest Jewish City in the World. (Doubleday & Co.)
1973: (With Richard Goldhurst) Travels Through Jewish America. (Doubleday & Co.)
1974: Our Southern Landsmen. (G.P. Putnam's)
1975: Long Live Columbus (Leben Zul Columbus). (G.P. Putnam's) ISBN 0399114408
1981: (Unfinished) America, I Love You.