Harry Barnard Papers

Harry Barnard

Harry Barnard was born Harry Kletzky in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 5, 1906 to David (an oculist) and Pauline (Halpern) Kletzky. He was educated at the University of Denver (1924-1925), the University of Chicago (Ph.B., 1928) and John Marshall Law School (1935-1937). He was a journalist, biographer, historian and liberal political activist from Wilmette and Chicago, Illinois. Barnard began his career in journalism as a Cub reporter in Colorado. Later he worked on the editorial staffs of the Chicago Herald Examiner (1929-1935) and the Chicago Times (chief editorial writer, 1944-1945) and was an occasional member of the editorial staffs at the Chicago Sun and the Detroit Times. He was the author of a syndicated column “Liberal at Large” that appeared in the Chicago Daily News and other newspapers in 1958-1960. 

Barnard’s first biography, Eagle Forgotten: The Life of John Peter Altgeld, a biography of Illinois Governor (1839-1897) published in 1938. He was widely heralded as a probable Pulitzer Prize winner, but ended up as a runner-up. Nevertheless, it was listed by Carl Sandburg as a basic book of Western literature. As governor of Illinois from 1893-1897, Altgeld courageously pardoned three men convicted of conspiring to throw the bomb that killed 8 Chicago policemen during the 1886 Haymarket Square demonstration. The reaction from the press was that, as Barnard once said “Altgeld became the most attacked man in American history-and I’m not forgetting the vilification of Abraham Lincoln.” Harry Barnard Papers 2 Other published biographies by Barnard include Rutherford B. Hayes and His America (1954); Independent Man: The Life of Senator James Gould Couzens (1958); and The Forging of an American Jew: The Life and Times of Judge Julian Mack (1974). Barnard has also contributed articles to Encyclopedia Americana, The Dictionary of American Biography, Nation, Saturday Review and other periodicals and reference works. At the time of his death, he was working on biographies of Wendell Willkie and William O. Douglas. Barnard was married to Miriam Helstien (1929-1942, divorce) and to Ruth Eizenstat (1943-1982) with whom he had 4 children. He died on August 26, 1982 after suffering a heart attack in his Wilmette, IL home. Before his death, Barnard donated his manuscripts and other papers, including an immense collection of correspondence with many of America’s leading political, social, and literary figures, to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. His wife Ruth Barnard donated various clippings, books and magazines to the Jimmy Carter Library January 17, 1984.