John Kenneth Turner
John Kenneth Turner (born April 5, 1879 in Portland (Oregon) , † 1948 ) was an American publicist, journalist and author.
Turner's father was a printer for the Portland Oregonian and later ran a print shop in Stockton, California , where Turner grew up and learned the printing business. His grandfather, a Methodist pastor, had led a settler trek from Kentucky to Oregon as pioneer in 1849 .
Turner took an interest in socialism at the age of 16, and at 17 published the scandalous paper Stockton Saturday Night , which exposed corrupt politicians and business people. He studied at the University of California , where he met Ethel Evelyn Duffy (1885-1969). Both married in 1905 and settled in San Francisco 's bohemian district (Montgomery St. area), but lost their homes in the 1906 earthquake . After a short time in Portland, they moved to Los Angeles, where Turner worked as a reporter for the Express . From 1908 to 1911, the couple were involved in the Mexican revolutionary movement, the beginning of which had accelerated Turner's book on corruption under Porfirio Díaz .
Since 1912 the family lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea , where George Sterling had left his house to them. Turner has written articles for New York's socialist magazine Call , Appeal to Reason, and other periodicals. In the spring of 1915 he traveled to Mexico to report on the US occupation of Veracruz and conducted an exclusive interview with Venustiano Carranza . The following year he traveled there again to report on the punitive expedition against Pancho Villa .
As a guest of Senator Robert M. La Follette sr. In April 1917 he heard Woodrow Wilson's speech to Congress on the entry of the United States into the First World War . From then on he opposed the participation in the war and Wilson and in 1922 wrote a critical book about the causes, which, among others, cited the former German Kaiser Wilhelm II in his book Events and Figures on the War Guilt Question.
After the war, when the US could still intervene militarily in Mexico, the Rand School of Social Science published his book Hands Off Mexico . Turner, who was also interested in agrarian reforms in 1921 interviewed the Zapatistas -General Genovevo de la O in Cuernavaca .
The heavy persecution after the Palmer Raids in the 1920s / 30s discouraged Turner and it was not until 1941 that he published a last book. His widow moved to Mexico at the age of 70 at the request of the local government. She was buried with military honors for her services to the Mexican Revolution .
Works
-
Barbarous Mexico . An Indictment of a Cruel and Corrupt System. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Comp. 1910
- Spanish: México Bárbaro . 1908 online
- La intervención en México y sus nefandos factores . 1916
- Quien es Pancho Villa? . 1916
- Hands off Mexico . New York. The Rand School of Social Science. 1920
- Shall It Be Again? .New York. BW Heubsch. 1922 online
- Challenge to Karl Marx . New York. Reynal & Hitchcock. 1941
Web links
- Armando Bartra: John Kenneth Turner: un testigo incómodo , Chiapas 7, 1999, EZLN
swell
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Turner, John Kenneth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1879 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Portland, Oregon |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1948 |