Our articles about recently-released books are great resources for readers interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books. Here is a brief overview about ​Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Race, Liberty, and Equality, 1942–1945.

Buy Now!

Author: Rose Wilder Lane
Annotated by: David T. Beito & Marcus Witcher
Publisher: South Dakota Historical Society Press (September 17, 2024)

Synopsis:

Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, wrote a column titled “Rose Lane Says” from 1942 to 1945 for the Pittsburgh Courier, the largest circulating African American newspaper of the era. Her columns took on issues of race, equality, and liberty, offering deep analyses of themes also explored in her 1943 book, The Discovery of Freedom. The Pittsburgh Courier’s vast circulation brought Lane’s understanding of individual liberty to hundreds of thousands of readers. While Lane’s writings and role as a collaborator on her mother’s Little House books have garnered substantial attention of late, her columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, as well as her broader comments about and relationships with African Americans and civil rights, have not received their due. Her background in the rural Midwest was crucial in influencing the content of her individualist antiracism. Lane’s writings at the Courier represented the most ambitious effort of any author during this period to promote laissez-faire ideas to a black audience. Through her columns, Lane creatively linked her philosophical beliefs to issues of concern to her readers, including segregation, civil disobedience, entrepreneurship, and the struggle for liberty both overseas and at home.

In Rose Lane Says, editors David T. Beito and Marcus Witcher provide annotations and an excellent introduction to Lane’s columns, which until now have been next to impossible to locate. This volume includes eighty-four columns, in print for the first time since their original runs in the 1940s.

About the Author: Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968), was a prolific fiction writer, biographer and political theorist, as well as the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House series of children’s books. Lane’s skillful editing and publishing connections assisted her mother in making the transition from rural Ozark journalist to world-renowned children’s author. Lane had left her parents’ impoverished Missouri farm at the age of 17 and soon began to make her mark on the world. After a stint as a Western Union telegrapher, she sold real estate in California and later began a successful career as a reporter for the San Francisco Bulletin. Her 1918 divorce from Gillette Lane, after several years of separation, officially ended a relationship that had never recovered from the death of an infant son around 1910. She never remarried. After her divorce, Lane continued to carve out a successful career as a writer of novels, short stories, biographies, and tales of her extensive world travels. Her work as a war correspondent dated from post-WWI Europe to a tour of Vietnam in 1965 (when she was nearly 80 years old). She was a well-known literary figure of her day. Later in life, Lane’s writing focused on her increasing political conservatism, her distaste of Communism, Socialism and any other form of government that denied the freedom of the individual. She is widely regarded as one of the leading figures behind what has grown into the American Libertarian Party. Among her many works are Free Land, Young Pioneers, Diverging Roads, and Give Me Liberty.

David T. Beito is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Alabama and a Senior Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. His academic research has covered various topics in American history, including civil rights, tax revolts, civil liberties, the nongovernmental provision of infrastructure, and mutual aid. His most recent book is The New Deal’s War On the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2023).

Marcus Witcher is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Economic History at West Virginia University, where he also serves as Manager of Undergraduate Programs for the Knee Regulatory Research Center. He completed his Ph.D. in history from the University of Alabama in 2017. His first book, Getting Right with Reagan: The Struggle for True Conservatism, 1980–2016, was published by the University Press of Kansas in 2019. Witcher is also the co-editor of seven edited collections and has written for a diverse range of publications, including Reason Magazine, National Review, Modern Age, and the Washington Post. His most recent book, Black Liberation Through the Marketplace: Hope, Heartbreak, and the Promise of America, co-authored with Rachel Ferguson, was published by Emancipation Books in 2022.

Pick up your own copy of Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Race, Liberty, and Equality, 1942–1945 here.

Check out our Recommended Reading for Adults and Recommended Reading for Children & Young Adults for more great books and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for information and recommendations about interesting reading and activities.