John Saxton Sumner (September 22, 1876 - June 20, 1971) was an American anti-vice activist who headed the

New York Society for the Suppression of Vice The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV or SSV) was an organization dedicated to supervising the morality of the public, founded in 1873. Its specific mission was to monitor compliance with state laws and work with the courts and d ...

(NYSSV), a

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state censorship body empowered to recommend obscenity cases to the appropriate prosecutors. He served as Associate Secretary of the NYSSV for three years, succeeding founder

Anthony Comstock Anthony Comstock (; March7, 1844 – September21, 1915) was an American anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian mo ...

as Executive Secretary in 1915 upon the latter's death. Sumner retired in 1950; the organization, by then named the Society to Maintain Public Decency, was disbanded shortly thereafter.

Biography

Sumner was born in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, on September 22, 1876, the son of

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George W. Sumner . He was educated in Washington and

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

. He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1904. Sumner's actions as NYSSV chief were frequently controversial. He did not win all his cases, and was occasionally hit by countersuits from acquitted publishers. Unapologetic, Sumner was quick to defend the NYSSV and its actions. He arranged for both civil and criminal

libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

actions to be brought against critics who ridiculed him or the society in print. At times, Sumner veered from his central mission of policing obscenity to attack general values of which he disapproved. At a National Republican Club luncheon broadcast on national radio, playwright

Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays '' The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Sce ...

attacked fellow speaker Sumner, saying, " umner'sjob is dependent on his finding vice. If he doesn't find any, his job ceases. Therefore his testimony is no more dependable than that of a prohibition enforcement officer. The obscenity issue is only a smokescreen, hiding an effort to prevent the publication of ideas which are unpleasant to various church groups and to ultra-conservatives." He died on June 20, 1971.

Biography

See also

References

Further reading