Journalist. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of The “Truth Seeker”, a freethought and reform periodical. Considered one of 19th-century America’s most controversial publishers, he founded the “blasphemous” (as it was called) newspaper in 1873, and his publications were censored and prohibited from newsstands. In less than a decade, he became the most successful publisher of liberal literature in America, and provided a medium for figures such as Mark Twain, Clarence Darrow, and Robert G. Ingersoll, His opposition to dogmatic religion and obscenity laws so infuriated Anthony Comstock, the United States Post Office’s “special agent” and self-proclaimed “weeder in God’s garden,” that he was eventually prosecuted, subjected to a controversial and widely publicized trial, and finally imprisoned.  Bennett’s historically significant New York obscenity trial and monumental, though ultimately unsuccessful, petition campaign for a pardon was the largest of its kind in the 19th century and one that went all the way to the White House. D.M. Bennett was also a prominent member of the National Liberal League, spiritualist, and theosophist. (bio by: Rod Bradford)