Edward Michael Keating | |
---|---|
Born | New Jersey, U.S. | April 17, 1925
Died | April 2, 2003 Stanford, California, U.S. | (aged 77)
Other names | Edward M. Keating |
Alma mater | Stanford Law School |
Occupation(s) | Newspaper publisher, journalist, author, lawyer, politician, businessman |
Known for | Left-wing politics, activism |
Spouse | Helen English |
Children | 6 |
Edward Michael Keating, Sr. (1925–2003), was an American newspaper publisher, journalist, author, lawyer, politician, and businessman.[1] He was the founder and publisher of Ramparts, a magazine in print 1962 to 1975, that had started as a Catholic literary magazine and evolved into a voice for the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and support of the New Left movement.[2][3][4]
Edward Michael Keating, Sr. was born on April 17, 1925, in New Jersey.[2][5] In 1940, when he was a teenager, the family moved to Menlo Park, California.[2] During World War II, Keating served in the Pacific in the United States Navy.[2] He attended Stanford Law School, graduating in 1950.[2] He married Helen English, who also attended Stanford.[6]
He was raised as a Protestant and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1954.[2][7]
After college he worked for 4 years as a commercial real estate lawyer, followed by teaching English at the Santa Clara University for one year.[2][6] In 1962, he found and published Ramparts, a Catholic quarterly literary magazine based in Menlo Park.[3] He personally financed the quarterly publication, and the magazine reached circulation of 400,000.[1][3] Ramparts printed articles about the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi; and in 1967 they exposed the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret financing of the National Student Association.[2] Writers in Ramparts included Susan Sontag, Seymour Hersh, Robert Scheer, Eldridge Cleaver, and John Howard Griffin.[3]
In 1965, Keating left the Catholic church and became agnostic, and in the same year wrote the book The Scandal of Silence (1965) about the Catholic Church during World War II.[3]
On December 12, 1966, Keating helped Eldridge Cleaver get paroled from Folsom State Prison and get hired as a staff writer at Ramparts.[6] Keating was forced to leave Raparts in 1967, and ran for United States Congress for the 11th Congressional District seat in San Mateo.[3][8] He lost the election to Pete McCloskey.[3][9]
Keating wrote a few books, short stories, and novellas after his Congressional run. He served on the legal council for Huey Newton of the Black Panthers Party.[3] In 1971, Keating published the book Free Huey!. In March 2003, he donated his 1960s Black Panther documents to the Black Panthers Papers at Stanford University.[3]
Keating died of pneumonia on April 2, 2003, at Stanford Hospital in Stanford, California.[10][5] At the time of his death he was living in Mountain View, California.[11][3] He was survived by 6 children.[1]