Freedom and Foundation

Freedom and the Foundation is a study in depth of the first and most controversial of the tax-exempt foundations dedicated to research and public education in the field of civil liberties and civil rights: The Fund for the Republic.

The story of its struggle for survival, as Mr. Reeves demonstrates, exemplifies the broader conflict between America’s liberal and conservative forces in the early 1950s. The Fund—created in 1952 by the Ford Foundation—was set up to explore possibilities for l...