Scope and Content Note
The papers of John Bartlow Martin (1915-1987) cover the period 1900-1986, with the bulk of the material dated between 1939 and 1983. The winner of numerous awards for excellence in magazine reporting and writing, Martin credited his achievements in the fields of biography, political campaign work, and public affairs to the skills he developed as a free-lance magazine writer from the 1930s to the end of his life. The collection contains family and personal papers and professional correspondence documenting all aspects of Martin's varied career, as well as manuscript drafts and research materials for his magazine articles and books, including an extensive set of files relating to his highly acclaimed two-volume biography of Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965), The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson . Also included in the papers is a rough draft for a speech written by Martin and delivered by Newton N. Minow in May 1961. Known as the "Vast Wasteland" speech and located in the Speech File, it presented a pointed critique of television programming and suggested the lost promise of a generation.
As an advance man, campaign speech writer, and political adviser to all of the Democratic presidential candidates from Stevenson in 1952 to George McGovern in 1972, Martin was in a good position to observe and chronicle the development of the modern political campaign at the national level. Martin recorded his observations in journals and memoranda which are perhaps the single most important items in the collection. Although their quality varies from campaign to campaign, with those written for Stevenson's 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns and Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential primary campaign supplying the fullest documentation, the journals provide a singular eyewitness account of the world of mid-century American campaign politics. The papers further include a similar series of personal memoranda kept as a journal by Martin while serving as United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, 1962-1964. Though not fully developed, this journal provides insight into Martin's reflections on the turbulent state of the Dominican Republic's internal political struggle during the administration of President Juan Bosch. However, material in the remainder of the Ambassador File does not allow for a more complete understanding of Martin's diplomatic career than that already available in his published diplomatic memoir, Overtaken by Events.
In addition to political and diplomatic material, the collection also contains a rich assemblage of letters in the General Correspondence series, reflecting Martin's relationships with personal friends, literary colleagues and agents, editors, publishers, and government officials. This series maintains its original arrangement and is filed in reverse chronological order. Although selected portions of his correspondence were kept with associated material, Martin filed many of his letters, regardless of content, in the General Correspondence series and it should therefore be consulted for all phases of his life.
Martin was first and always a writer and one of a small group of independent reporters who made a living from full-time free-lance nonfiction writing. After a short period as a string reporter for the Indianapolis Times, Martin moved to Chicago in 1938 and began his writing career by specializing in a literary subgenre called "true crime." Although based on actual criminal cases, the facts of these stories were sensationalized in a manner to enhance their popular appeal. The articles that Martin produced during this period, many of which were published under pseudonyms, were printed primarily in a series of magazines controlled by editor Harry Keller, including Actual Detective Stories and Official Detective Stories. Martin corresponded frequently with Keller during his early career, outlining his investigations and reporting on the progress of his stories. The letters and memoranda that comprise this correspondence, as well as those exchanged with all of his subsequent editors and publishers, are located in the General Correspondence series. Additional correspondence relating to the publication of specific stories, along with manuscript drafts and research material, is contained in the Article File.
Martin increasingly began to write serious nonfiction articles for mass-circulation magazines such as Harper's and Saturday Evening Post, and in March 1948, he established his national reputation with the publication of "The Blast in Centralia No. 5," a report in Harper's of a coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois. The article was the longest in the magazine's history up to that time and led to the enactment of new Federal mine safety laws. It also brought Martin to the attention of Adlai E. Stevenson, who used the issue of mine safety in his successful 1948 campaign against the incumbent Illinois governor, Dwight Green. The Article File contains a full set of records documenting the research, writing, and editing of this and many other articles written by Martin during his long and prolific career.
Although he published several books directly from book-length manuscripts, some of Martin's more successful books derived from multi-series magazine articles which he later expanded. Martin's theme in these writings often centered on a specific social dilemma or behavioral problem, such as prison and labor reform, racial segregation, juvenile delinquency, and the mentally ill. The result of this practice was Martin's transfer of manuscripts and research materials from files associated with the articles to those created for the book. Where such situations exist, the Book File contains the final and most complete record of Martin's research and writing.
The best of Martin's articles and books are characterized by exhaustive research and social commitment, and each was the product of many drafts. Martin was an extensive reviser, and most of his drafts are heavily edited, allowing the researcher to trace the literary development of his social themes. The manuscript drafts are located within both the Article and Book files. Accompanied by selected research notes as well as indexes and outlines, they highlight Martin's work habits and the effect of those habits on his writing style and investigative techniques.
In 1952, Martin accepted a position on Adlai E. Stevenson's speech writing team. Referred to as "the Elks," because of the group's headquarters at the Elks Club in Springfield, Illinois, the team included David Bell, Arthur M. Schlesinger (1917- ), Robert Tufts, and W. Willard Wirtz. The Political File contains material relating to this campaign and to other political activities in which Martin participated, as do the campaign journals mentioned above. The journals Martin wrote following Stevenson's 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns are supplemented by a series of exhibit files containing speech drafts, notes, and other items. These files were assembled by Martin as a primary resource and are referred to in references and footnotes throughout the journals. The exhibit files, therefore, along with a corresponding numerical identification system, have been retained in their original order.
After working for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960, Martin was appointed ambassador to the Dominican Republic in 1962. With the exception of Martin's ambassador's journal, the Ambassador File contains mostly routine records generated by Martin and his family during his two-year appointment. More significant, perhaps, are a series of notebooks written by Martin while ambassador and removed by him while researching his book, Overtaken by Events. These notebooks are located in the Book File and should be consulted together with the Ambassador File for a more complete understanding of Martin's diplomatic career.
Although Martin was known principally for his many prize-winning magazine articles, his single greatest writing achievement may have been the publication of The Life of Adlai E. Stevenson . The research and writing of this two-volume work, Martin's only published effort in the field of scholarly biography, occupied ten years of his life. It resulted in the accumulation of a large research file, which is organized with other records relating to the biography in a separate series under the book's title. A large group of documents copied from the Adlai E. Stevenson Papers located in the Princeton University Library forms the largest single segment of the research files in the series. The photocopies are contained in a set of well-organized notebooks, categorized by type of material and assigned identification numbers, as well as in various chronological and subject files created by Martin with documents transferred from the notebooks. The series further includes political records which Martin removed from presidential campaign files in the Political File. Additional items of interest relating to Stevenson may be found in the "politicians" subseries in the Political File; among the research material collected by Martin for the 1952 campaign biography, Adlai Stevenson, in the Book File; and data he compiled to write, "The Drafting of Adlai Stevenson," Harper's, Oct. 1952, in the Article File.