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Marshall Bloom
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{{short description|American journalist}} {{infobox person | name = Marshall Bloom | birth_date = {{birth date|1944|07|16}} | birth_place = [[Denver, Colorado]], U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|1969|11|1|1944|07|16}} | death_place = [[Montague, Massachusetts]]<ref name=DHG /> | known_for = [[Liberation News Service]] | occupation = Journalist, activist | death_cause = [[Suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning]] | alma_mater = [[Amherst College]], 1966 | education = [[London School of Economics]] | awards = Samuel Bowles Prize }} '''Marshall Irving Bloom'''<ref name=DHG /> (July 16, 1944 – November 1, 1969) was an American journalist and activist, best known as co-founder in 1967 of the [[Liberation News Service]], the "[[Associated Press]]" of the [[underground press]].<ref name = "ap">{{cite web | title =No Success Like Failure | publisher = Green Mountain Post Films website | url =http://www.gmpfilms.com/NLF.html | accessdate=2007-12-05 }}</ref> ==Early life and education == Marshall Bloom was born in [[Denver, Colorado]]. He attended [[Amherst College]] and graduated in 1966. While there, he served as chairman of ''The Student'' publication and received the [[Samuel Bowles (journalist)|Samuel Bowles]] Prize for his accomplishments in journalism.<ref>''Marshall Bloom Papers, 1959-1999'', Amherst College, Archives & Special Collections</ref> During the summer of 1965, Bloom worked as a [[Montgomery, Alabama]], correspondent for ''[[The Southern Courier]]'', reporting on the [[Civil rights movement]].<ref name=Stevens>{{cite book|last=Stevens|first=Amy|title=Daniel Shays' legacy?: Marshall Bloom, radical insurgency and the Pioneer Valley|year=2005|publisher=Levellers Press|page=31|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uGnaAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA31}}</ref> Bloom was one of the 20 Amherst graduates who walked out during their own commencement to protest the awarding of an honorary degree to Defense Secretary [[Robert McNamara]].<ref name=DHG>{{cite news|last=Dobrow|first= Martin|url= https://www.gazettenet.com/The-Amherst-College-student-activist-who-embodied-his-era-2354986 |title=A Life in Full Bloom: 50 Years Ago, this Amherst College Student Embodied Turbulent Times|work=[[Daily Hampshire Gazette]]|date=May 25, 2016}}</ref> Bloom achieved some national notoriety in England, where he attended the [[London School of Economics]] as a graduate student and was elected as president of its student union. He had a prominent role in the [[sit-ins]] and demonstrations there in the spring of 1967, protesting the appointment of [[Sir Walter Adams]] as the school's next director. Bloom was suspended and his suspension sparked further demonstrations.<ref>{{cite news|last=Blair|first= W. Granger|title=Student Protest in London Goes On|work=The New York Times|date=March 16, 1967|page=11}}</ref> ==Liberation News Service== In the summer of 1967, Bloom was elected director of the [[United States Student Press Association]] (USSPA), which ran the [[Collegiate Press Service]] (CPS) news service. At an organizational meeting in [[Minneapolis]] in August, however, Bloom was purged from the USSPA because of his radical politics,<ref name=Leamer>{{cite book|last=Leamer|first=Laurence|title=The paper revolutionaries: the rise of the underground press|year=1972|publisher=Simon and Schuster|location=New York|isbn=978-0-671-21143-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Glessing|first=Robert J.|title=The underground press in America|url=https://archive.org/details/undergroundpress00gles|url-access=registration|year=1970|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington|isbn=978-0-253-20146-1}}</ref> which included a push to send student editors to Cuba and defy the U.S. travel ban. (Others thought that Bloom's purging was additionally because of what historian John McMillian refers to as his "[[effeminate]] demeanor").<ref name="McMillian"/> As a result, Bloom and his colleague [[Ray Mungo]] formed the [[Liberation News Service]].<ref name=McMillian>{{cite book|last=McMillian|first=John|title=Smoking Typewriters: the Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-531992-7 }}</ref> The inaugural issue of the Liberation News Service, a [[mimeographed]] news packet, was sent in the summer of 1967.<ref name=Mungo>{{cite book|last=Mungo|first=Ray|title=Famous long ago: my life and hard times with the Liberation News Service|url=https://archive.org/details/famouslongagomyl00mung|url-access=registration|year=1970|publisher=Beacon Press}}</ref> By February 1968, LNS was becoming the hub for [[alternative journalism]] in the United States, supplying the growing movement media with interpretive coverage of current events and reports on movement activities and the [[Sixties counterculture]]. In 1968, the LNS moved to New York, and in August, an internal split developed. In August 1968, a successful fundraising event led to an ugly fight over control of the organization's funds. Bloom's intention was to abandon political activism in an urban setting, and supplant it with a [[Henry David Thoreau|Thoreau]]vian lifestyle. Aspiring to contribute to the [[counterculture of the 1960s|counterculture]] phenomenon of rural [[Intentional community|communes]] in the late '60s,<ref name=DHG /> Bloom, Mungo, and their LNS colleague Steve Diamond left New York for [[Massachusetts]], where they used the $6,000 cash from the fundraiser to make the down payment on a farm in [[Montague, Massachusetts|Montague]] which was to be the new headquarters of LNS. An angry posse of LNSers trailed them from New York, leading to a tense six-hour standoff at the farm. The dispute ended with Bloom writing a check for the money to the New York group, but soon afterward Bloom filed kidnapping charges against 13 people.<ref name=NYTimes >{{cite news |last1=Leo |first1=John |title=Liberation News Rocked by Strife: Personal and Policy Issues Divide Agency for the Left |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/08/15/archives/liberation-news-rocked-by-strife-personal-and-policy-issues-divide.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=August 15, 1968 |page=34}}</ref> The charges were later dismissed.{{cn|date=December 2022}} For the next six months,<ref>Slonecker, Blake. ''A New Dawn for the New Left: Liberation News Service, Montague Farm, and the Long Sixties'', Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012, p. 47.</ref> Bloom published the "LNS of the New Age,"<ref name=DiamondTrees>{{cite book|last=Diamond|first=Stephen|title=What the Trees Said: Life on a New Age Farm|url=https://archive.org/details/whattreessaidlif00diam|url-access=registration|year=1971|publisher=Delacorte}}</ref> with subscribers receiving rival news packets from LNS-Montague and LNS-New York. But Bloom's group was understaffed, underfunded, and isolated on a remote (and cold) country farm, and the project died when the ink froze in the mimeograph.<ref name=DiamondTrees /> Only the New York headquarters group survived the split.<ref name=McMillian/><ref name=Leamer/><ref name=DiamondTrees /> Bloom's former political colleagues, [[Ray Mungo]] and [[Verandah Porche]], were later among the founders of a similar rural commune in southern [[Vermont]].<ref name=Mungo /><ref>{{cite book|last=Mungo|first=Raymond|title=Total Loss Farm: a Year in the Life|year=1970|publisher=E.P. Dutton|location=New York|isbn=0-525-22133-6|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/totallossfarmyea00mungrich}}</ref> ==Death== On November 1, 1969, Bloom committed suicide by [[carbon monoxide]] poisoning.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Slonecker|first=Blake|year=2010|title=We are Marshall Bloom: sexuality, suicide and the collective memory of the Sixties|journal=The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture|volume=3|issue=2|pages=187–205|doi=10.1080/17541328.2010.525844|s2cid=144406764}}</ref> He was found dead in his car with the tailpipe connected to the window.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=PD0vX2QIzdYC&dq=%22Marshall+Bloom%22+suicide+1969&pg=PA108 Bruce Pollock, ''By the Time We Got to Woodstock: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Revolution Of 1969'']</ref> Many theories have emerged as to why he killed himself;<ref>{{cite book|title=Insider histories of the Vietnam era underground press, part 1|year=2011|publisher=Michigan State University Press|isbn=978-0-87013-983-3}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Slonecker|first=Blake|title=We are Marshall Bloom: sexuality, suicide, and the collective memory of the Sixties|journal=The Sixties|year=2010|volume=3|issue=2|pages=187–205|doi=10.1080/17541328.2010.525844|s2cid=144406764}}</ref> [[Allen Young (writer)|Allen Young]] and Amy Stevens have both suggested that it was because he was unhappily [[closeted]].<ref name=Stevens /><ref>{{cite journal|last=Young|first=Allen|title=Marshall Bloom: Gay Brother|journal=[[Fag Rag]]|year=1973|issue= 5|pages=6–7}}</ref><ref>Young, Allen. (1990) "Liberation News Service: A History," Liberation News Service. [https://archive.org/details/lns-history-byYoung1990 Archived] at the [[Wayback Machine]]. Retrieved Dec. 15, 2022.</ref> ==References== {{Reflist}} == External links == *[https://archivesspace.amherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/150 Marshall Bloom Alternative Press Collection] in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College *[https://archivesspace.amherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/13 Marshall Bloom Papers] in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College {{Authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Bloom, Marshall}} [[Category:1944 births]] [[Category:1969 deaths]] [[Category:1969 suicides]] [[Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics]] [[Category:American anti–Vietnam War activists]] [[Category:American male journalists]] [[Category:Amherst College alumni]] [[Category:20th-century American journalists]] [[Category:News agency founders]] [[Category:People associated with the London School of Economics]] [[Category:Journalists from Denver]] [[Category:People from Montague, Massachusetts]] [[Category:Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning]]
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