LAANE Honorary Board Member Joyce Appleby Brings a Historian’s Sensibility to Social Justice Work

A prominent historian, Joyce Appleby has had an impressive career as a researcher and teacher. Now a professor emeritus at UCLA—where she taught for 20 years—she has written on subjects ranging from Thomas Jefferson to early nineteenth century America to revolutionary France. Appleby is also an engaged activists, walking precincts for favorite political candidates and supporting Latin American economic development projects. She credits her politically active Nebraska family with helping to shape her interest in social change.

How did you first get involved with economic justice issues?

I don’t know whether my interest in economic justice drew me to the Democratic Party or the party heightened and clarified my interest in economic justice, along with other things such as civil rights and the enhancement of the public good through child care, schools, public health, libraries, museums, and parks. These commitments have been in important to me since I was a teenager. With the exception of the twelve years between 1980 and 1992, I’ve worked as a volunteer in political campaigns and on local issues such as fair housing and the elimination of “sundown” rules [banning African Americans from the streets after dark.] Although I grew up in cities, I have also spent a number of years in small towns in Southern California which present very different kinds of challenges to a liberal.

How did you first start working with LAANE?

I met [LAANE Executive Director] Madeline Janis while having breakfast with [activist and philanthropist] Stanley Sheinbaum. Of course, she impressed me a great deal. I was working on another project and asked to meet her for coffee. She wowed me, mainly by breaking through the conventional small talk of such meetings between virtual strangers and impressing me with her commitment, enthusiasm and strong positions on unions and how to secure economic justice.

What other organizations are you involved with?

The ACLU, the Liberty Hill Foundation, and FINCA [the Foundation for International Community Assistance] are the three other groups that get the lion’s share of my support. I went to Ecuador with FINCA to see at close hand how their microloans to poor, mainly women, borrowers were working. I am also co-director of the History News Service, an informal association of professional historians who write op-eds aimed at putting news stories in an historical context.

How does your work as an historian affect your work on social change?

My study of history has helped me understand the complexity of social change and enabled me to be optimistic in the face of some pretty awful things – like living through seven years of George Bush’s administration! I’m currently writing a history of capitalism for general readers curious enough to follow the story from the 16th through the 20th centuries.

Was there an activist who inspired you while growing up, and who is the most inspiring to you today?

I came from a Nebraska family with deep Populist roots. My paternal grandfather was a good friend of William Jennings Bryan whom he nominated in the 1900 Kansas City Democratic Convention. My two paternal aunts were staunch Democrats who happily moved to the left with the New Deal. At the same time, my father, who worked for a large corporation, began voting Republican when he was 45, so my childhood was filled with long evenings of political debate in which my aunts took him to task for his apostasy. They made me see what a positive force sound and generous government policies could be, and they brought to life for me the world outside. I still remember my aunt pacing the living room of our Dallas home while smoking and listening to the crackling news of the fall of France in 1940. That seemed more real to me—through the sheer intensity of her concern—than the sounds of my friends playing on the streets outside.