Exhibit talk: "A Martyr to the Cause: The Mooney Trial, the Communist Party, and the Pleasures of Propaganda"
In conjunction with its ongoing exhibition, “Free Tom Mooney! The Yale Law Library’s Tom Mooney Collection,” the Law Library is sponsoring a talk by exhibition co-curator Lorne Bair, owner of Lorne Bair Rare Books.
Bair will deliver his talk, “A Martyr to the Cause: The Mooney Trial, the Communist Party, and the Pleasures of Propaganda,” at noon on Thursday, March 24, in Room 129 of the Sterling Law Building, Yale University. The public is invited, and a light lunch will be served.
The exhibition is co-curated by Lorne Bair, Hélène Golay (also of Lorne Bair Rare Books), and Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian at the Yale Law Library. A hundred years ago, San Francisco authorities framed the radical labor organizer Tom Mooney for murder following a bombing. Drawing on the Law Library’s extensive collection, the exhibition tells the story of Mooney’s 22-year campaign for exoneration that made him an international celebrity.
The exhibition is on display through May 27 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, located on level L2 of the Lillian Goldman Law Library. A catalogue of the exhibit is available online.
Lorne Bair has been an antiquarian bookseller for the past two decades. His firm, Lorne Bair Rare Books, is based in Winchester, Virginia, and specializes in radical history and the literature of American social movements. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America and is co-director of the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, where he has been on the faculty since 2010.
For more information, contact Mike Widener at (203) 432-4494, email mike.widener@yale.edu>.
