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HIST 116J: A History of American Citizenship: Archival Collections Held at Yale

Primary Source Assignment

The smaller boxes below contain links to the collection-level finding aids and specific boxes/folders for the Yale archival collection items used in the archives workshop session and available in the indicated reading room for your Short Essay #1: Primary Source Analysis assignment due on February 4th, 2025.

Finding aid for assigned primary source reading

American Immigration Conference Board Records (MS 614) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library

On hold in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room (Sterling Memorial Library) until February 7, 2025

Finding aid for archival materials for option #9

Yonekazu Satoda Papers, Photographs, and Moving Films (WA MSS S-2897) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

On hold in the Beinecke Library reading room until February 7, 2025

Finding aid for archival materials for option #2

Timothy Lester Woodruff Family Papers (MS 1229) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library

On hold in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room (Sterling Memorial Library) until February 7, 2025

Finding aid for archival materials for option #10

For Vine DeLoria if we end up using something from that collection.

  • X

On hold in the Beinecke Library reading room until February 7, 2025

Finding aid for archival materials for option #8

Potter Stewart Papers (MS 1367) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library

On hold in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room (Sterling Memorial Library) until February 7, 2025

Other Yale archival collections that may be fodder for your final Term Paper project (not a comprehensive list!)

The following are some suggestions for other archival collections held in Yale special collections repositories that may be useful as you start work on your own research project for HIST 116J. This list is not intended to be comprehensive, and is simply a starting point - you can do additional searching for Yale-held archival collections using the Archives at Yale database.

Harry Weinberger Papers (MS 553) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: Harry Weinberger was born in New York City in 1888. He attended New York University and was admitted to the bar in 1908. A staunch believer in civil liberties, Weinberger defended many aliens, immigrants, anarchists, and other radicals, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, whom he believed had been deprived of their rights. The papers consist of correspondence, legal papers, notes, and other materials documenting Weinberger's career as a lawyer who specialized in civil liberties cases and, later in his career, copyright law. The one hundred and sixteen (116) case files include legal briefs, writs, and memoranda prepared by Weinberger and his staff, and similar material prepared by opposing attorneys. Correspondence files include letters with clients and individuals interested in a specific case. 

Elizabeth Page Harris Papers (MS 771) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: Elizabeth Merwin Page Harris, author, graduated from Vassar College (1912) and received an M.A. from Columbia University (1914). She was a teacher (1914-1916), Y.M.C.A. worker during World War I, and an International Grenfell Association volunteer (1921-1925) and secretary (1927-1931). Elizabeth Page wrote four books, including the 1939 best seller, The Tree of Liberty. The papers contain correspondence, family papers, writings, printed works, photoprints, and other materials documenting the life and career of Elizabeth Page Harris. The Harris Papers have extensive material on such subjects as family life, single women, publishers and publishing, voluntarism, the International Grenfell Association, American Friends Service Committee, the Society of Friends, Japanese relocation, and pacifism.

Thomas Irwin Emerson Papers (MS 1622) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: Thomas Irwin Emerson was born on July 12, 1907, in Passaic, New Jersey. He graduated from Yale College in 1928 and from the Yale Law School in 1931. Throughout his life, Emerson was a passionate civil libertarian. His organizational activity demonstrated the importance he assigned to the protection of civil liberties. He was active in both the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Haven Civil Liberties Council, later called the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. He served as an advisor to the Civil Liberties Educational Foundation and as a member of the national council for the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. He fought against repressive government legislation in the National Committee to Abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation and opposed the Federal Loyalty Program. He taught at the Yale Law School from 1946-1976. The papers consist of correspondence, writings, course material, legal documents, and printed material that document Thomas Emerson's career as a lawyer and law professor. The papers emphasize Emerson's teaching, writing, and organizational activities during his career.

Frank J. Donner Papers (MS 1706) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: Frank J. Donner was a lawyer, journalist, historian and civil libertarian who remained active in the American left for the better part of five decades. From the first investigations of Communists by the House Committee on Un-American Activities to the Reagan-Bush years, Donner was a leading expert on the use of political surveillance in the United States. Donner's belief in the ideals of democracy and civil liberties led to a lifelong commitment to the social movements of the left. Over the years, Donner came to work with members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), numerous unions, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), the Socialist Workers Party, Students for a Democratic Society, Weathermen Underground, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Black Panther Party, and the Nuclear Freeze and Sanctuary movements. During these many years of activism, Donner collected his own set of files to rival those of J. Edgar Hoover, documenting and cataloguing the abuses of American political power. The papers consist of clippings, court documents, correspondence, publications, interview transcripts, writings, and other materials documenting the research, writing, and activism of Frank Donner. The collection includes a small amount of Donner's correspondence, multiple files documenting the activities of individuals who served as political informers, and subject files covering a range of political and social protest groups from the 1950s to the 1990s. The papers also hold a series of Donner's writings, including manuscripts from two unpublished books on the use of informers in the 1950s and of government malfeasance during the 1980s, as well as several unpublished articles.

Materials Relating to Choctaw Tribal Rolls Legislation (WA MSS S-2663) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Original and photostatic copies of typescript letters, notes, statements, and other documents dating from 1912-1926 (box 1), and United States government documents and other printed material dating from 1898 to 1916 (boxes 2 and 3) relating to the issue of reopening the Choctaw tribal rolls to allow Mississippi Choctaws to receive per capita distribution of proceeds from the sale of community Choctaw property.

Detainment Letters Concerning Lawrence Labadie (WA MSS S-3742 D4802) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Lawrence Labadie of Bordeaux, France, was granted United States citizenship in 1851 in California. His family purchased the cargo vessel Remembrance, which Labadie sailed from California to Valparaíso, Chile, circa 1853. 11 manuscript copies of letters, unsigned, pertaining to the detention of Lawrence Labadie at Valparaíso, Chile, after charges made by an unsatisfied passenger of the cargo vessel Remembrance and ensuing trial, circa 1851-1854. Includes copy of letter from Labadie to Commander Theodorus Bailey of the United States ship Saint Mary's, circa 1854 June 16; copies of 3 letters from Reuben Wood, United States Consul at Valparaíso, to the intendant of Valparaíso, circa 1854 June 24-July 7; and copies of 2 letters from Bailey to Wood, circa 1854 June 17-18. Also present is a copy of Labadie's certificate of citizenship granted by the United States, circa 1851 November 10.

United States War Relocation Authority. Poston, Arizona, Relocation Center Collection (MS 803) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: Scrapbooks, record books, and memorabilia chiefly relating to the educational and library activities at the Relocation Center. Nine scrapbooks made and bound by the students cover topics of academic study as well as their memoirs describing their feelings on being relocated. A printed yearbook is also included.

John Collier Papers (MS 146) / Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library: John Collier was born on May 4, 1884 in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as editor of the Journal of American Indian Life from 1915-1919 and as executive secretary of the American Indian Defense Association from 1923-1933. Collier also served as United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933-1945, established the Institute of Ethnic Affairs and served as its president in 1945, and taught sociology and anthropology at City College in New York City (1947) and Knox College in Illinois (1955-1956). The papers consist of correspondence, subject files, writings, memoranda and reports, research materials, and miscellanea, documenting the personal life and professional career of John Collier. His service with the American Indian Defense Association (A.I.D.A.), as United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and as a teacher and author is detailed. Correspondence files include materials with leading political, literary, and social figures. Drafts of books, articles, essays, reviews, and poetry are supplemented with extensive subject files and research materials. Files relating to the Institute of Ethnic Affairs include substantive correspondence and memoranda. The papers of anthropologist Laura Thompson, Collier's second wife, are also arranged in the papers, and date from 1945-1956.

Douglas Clyde Macintosh Papers (RG 50) / Divinity Library Special Collections: This collection provides a good overview of Macintosh's professional life, which was spent primarily at Yale Divinity School. The correspondence is not extensive; Macintosh's thoughts on theological subjects are expressed in a few letters, but most are routine exchanges related to his writings, students, and engagements. Most significant among the biographical materials in Series IV is a large scrapbook that includes correspondence, clippings, and documents related to Macintosh's citizenship case. A native of Canada, Macintosh was denied United States citizenship by the Supreme Court because of his stance against bearing arms.

Joshua Ross Papers (WA MSS S-4543) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Correspondence, ephemera, memoranda, photographs, and receipts kept by Joshua Ross, a Cherokee (American Indigenous people also known as Aniyvwiyaʔi or Anigiduwagi) educator, politican, and trader, 1848-1918. Material from 1872 to 1908 pertains to Cherokee politics, tribal membership, and land claims. A portion of this material relates to the Dawes Act of 1887 and Curtis Act of 1898, which dismantled tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Multiple letters to Ross from relatives concern Cherokee genealogy. Letters from his siblings concern the genealogy of an African American man, Calvin Fields Ross, formerly enslaved by the Ross family.

Clifford N. Taylor Papers (WA MSS S-1321) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: The papers consist of Clifford Taylor's business records and printed material. The business records document the Ku Klux Klan in North Dakota and the American Krusaders and printed material contains publications by the Klan.

Aiko Takita and Miyeko Takita Papers (WA MSS S-3211) / Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Materials relating to Aiko Takita and Miyeko Takita's incarceration at the Tanforan Assembly Center, a temporary detention center at San Bruno, California, and the Topaz War Relocation Center, an American concentration camp in Millard County, Utah, 1942-1945. Included are letters, in English, concerning Miyeko's college enrollment and letters, in Japanese, from mother Aoyagi Takita to daughter Miyeko concerning family acquaintances all over the United States and daily life at the Topaz War Relocation Center. Also included are Topaz High School class materials (primarily lesson notes), Topaz Music School and Protestant church programs, 2 autograph books, and 3 drawings of the Tanforan Assembly Center. Accompanied by printed incarceration camp pamphlets and newsletters as well as printed sheet music. 2 additional autograph books predate the incarceration of the Takita family. There are also 15 photographs of the Takitas (some with Japanese manuscript captions), circa 1928-1946.