The following entries highlight the archival collection materials used in the class session held in the Gates Classroom, Sterling Memorial Library, on Friday, September 20, 2024. The link from the highlighted box will take you to the list of that box's contents in the Archives at Yale finding aid for the collection.
While you're exploring the box in front of you and preparing to tell your fellow students something about the materials it contains, it may be useful to consider any of the following questions that seem relevant to the materials in your box:
What kind of document is it? Where/when was the text produced? Who is its intended audience?
What are the historical and social contexts for the document?
How does the author/creator represent his/her/their relationship to time and place, or historical events?
What biases or stereotypes do you see presented?
How would you describe the "voice" of this document? What motivates this work? Is there an argument here? What conflict or issue underlies this work?
What is significant about this document, this author?
What continuities do you see in this piece with movements/debates/culture/etc. of today?
What questions do you have about this document?
Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Gus Hall (1910-2000) was an activist, politician, and prominent member of the Communist Party of the United States, and was one of the people arrested in the 1949-1958 Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders. The Gus Hall Papers contain the professional papers of Hall throughout his time as secretary-general and president of the Communist Party of the United States of America as well as his personal correspondence to his family during his time in jail.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Legal documents, writings, clippings, correspondence, and photographs that document the career of Jasper Alston Atkins, emphasizing his civil rights court cases. Atkins was born August 8, 1898, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated magna cum laude in 1919. He then entered Yale Law School and received an LL.B. degree in 1922. While at Yale, he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and, upon graduation, was elected to the national honor society, the Order of the Coif.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Anne Nelson Black graduated from Yale University in 1976 and, as a journalist, covered wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, contributing articles and photographs to numerous publications. The papers comprise material from El Salvador, including guerrilla propaganda, internal guerrilla memoranda, and U.S. and Salvadoran government documents; material from Puerto Rico relating to the Cerro Maravilla case and the Culebra island controversy; and documents on the 1981-1982 national elections of Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Personal and official papers of John G. Brady (1848-1918) documenting early missionary work in Alaska, the history and political and economic development of Alaska, and Brady's life and career. There are early 20th century publications by Alaskan government bodies and missionary groups, as well as the public records of the City of Sitka. Included are photographs, negatives, and glass lantern slides of Alaskan scenery and subjects, native Alaskans, and Brady's family.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: 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 at the Yale Law School from 1946 to 1976.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Papers document the career of Benjamin Pogrund, best known for his work as African affairs reporter, night editor, and deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail. The collection includes Pogrund's correspondence, most notably with the activist Robert Sobukwe while Sobukwe was a political prisoner. Pogrund's writings also comprise a significant portion of the papers, particularly his extensive notes for an unfinished book on the Communist Party in South Africa from 1945 to 1960. Files documenting the Rand Daily Mail "Prisons Case," as well as prison conditions in South Africa under apartheid, comprise another important series in the collection. Finally, the papers include a large amount of collected materials regarding various groups and individuals who organized resistance to the South African government while under the apartheid system.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Materials document the administrative and institutional history of CARP, and offer a detailed view of the workings of a non-profit civil rights legal agency. CARP's work in the New Haven area with dozens of minority economic interests and neighborhood organizations is reflected in extensive correspondence, legal memoranda, proposals, and collected material. Much of the CARP material also addresses the general topic of African-Americans in the professions, particularly in law and business. There is substantive documentation on housing (discrimination, fair housing, neighborhood advocacy) and educational issues (especially concerning community and technical colleges).CARP was founded in December 1973 as the legal arm and research agency of the Greater New Haven Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). John Wilkinson served as Secretary, Yale University, from 1981-1987, and from 1978-1983 served on the CARP board of directors.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Collection--assembled by the curator of the African Collection, Yale Library--of printed material, audio recordings, and memorabilia relating to current political, economic, and social conditions in South Africa. The majority of the material pertains to the African National Congress and the first democratic election of April 27, 1994.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: The papers document the life and work of Louise Bryant, American foreign correspondent and writer who knew many leading artistic and political figures in the United States, Europe, and Asia from the First World War and the decade that followed. The collection consists of correspondence, writings, books, visual artwork, photographs, printed matter, and other material created and collected by Bryant during the last twenty years of her life from 1916 to 1936.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Audiotapes, transcripts, notebooks, correspondence, documents, printed material, and writings accumulated by Levy while conducting research for his book, Cesar Chavez: Autobiography of La Causa. The collection documents the life of Cesar Chavez as well as the early history of the United Farm Workers union.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence and legal and financial papers, which document Ewing's commercial activities and interests in southern Africa. While the earliest item in the papers dates from 1892, the bulk of the material dates from 1909 to 1919. Includes incoming letters from Ewing's nephew, Vincent Ewing, which concern the management of Vincent's Braemar Ranch in Rhodesia. The letters present a detailed account of the development of a homestead and the problems encountered in raising cattle. Vincent's letters include family and local news, as well as discussions of weather and market conditions, outbreaks of disease among the populace and the livestock, water supply problems, and the effects of World War I on the area.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, memoranda, writings, speeches, photographs and other material that document the career of the diplomat, author and foreign policy expert and scholar Henry A. Kissinger, who served as United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from 1969 to 1975. These papers constitute Part II of a three part collection of Kissinger's personal papers. The Part II papers primarily document his career before and after he worked in government, as a professor at Harvard University and later as an influential author and commentator on international affairs and consultant.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, subject files, writings, memoranda and reports, research materials, and miscellanea, documenting the personal life and professional career of John Collier (1884-1968). 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.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, writings, notes and research materials, clippings, memorabilia, photographs and financial records of William Graham Sumner (Yale Class of 1863), a sociologist, professor at Yale University, and advocate of free trade and the gold standard. The correspondence documents many of Sumner’s interests including the Yale College curriculum and economic and political issues. It also includes substantive accounts from friends in the South about Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Tilden-Hayes election. Family correspondence spans the years 1863-1908.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Collection--assembled by the former Social Science Library (now Marx Library) at Yale--of photocopies of telegrams between the United States Embassy in Seoul and the U.S. State Department before, during, and after the Kwangju Uprising of 1980. The telegrams primarily discuss the stability of Seoul's government and human rights. Particular topics include the use of martial law, the restructuring of the government, the formation of a constitution, the arrests of dissidents, the trials of political prisoners, student protests, and labor issues.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, letterbooks, diaries, newspapers, and miscellanea documenting the personal life and professional career of James Watson Webb (1802-1884) and his family, including his second, wife Laura Virginia Cram Webb. The papers document Webb's journalistic and political careers, his personal life, and the activities and observations of his second wife, who was a close confidante to her husband. Major topics of interest include ew York politics and life, national politics, the Civil War, foreign relations with France and Brazil, and the social life of New York and Washington, D.C.
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Link to the online finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Project files, minutes, correspondence, and property records, documenting the work of the New Haven Redevelopment Agency, primarily from the 1950s to the 1980s.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, memoranda, reports, designs, photographs, audiovisual materials, clippings, printed material, and miscellanea documenting the personal life and professional career of Edward J. Logue (Yale Class of 1942, Law 1947), lawyer, politician, and urban planner and administrator. Urban planning materials detail his activity in New Haven, Boston, and New York state. Copies of Ambassador Chester Bowles's correspondence reflect Logue's role in the foreign service and U.S.-Indian relations. Extensive office files for New Haven and Boston redevelopment work (1954-1967) detail Logue's pioneer work in modern urban planning and provide documentation on the political, business, social, and cultural development of these cities. Urban Development Corporation files provide similar documentation for Logue's work in New York state. Boston mayoral files and scrapbooks include additional documentation on Logue's political career, his redevelopment work, and the city of Boston.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Orbis
Overview: Letters addressed to Nina Sulzer, inmate counselor at the New Orleans Parish Prison, Louisiana, from Wilbert Rideau (of The Angolite, an inmate-edited and published magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary), James Bennett, Charles E. Daniels, Janice Johnston, and Isiah Hall. The letters discuss matters pertaining to imprisonment. In addition there are manuscript notes from an interview with Rideau concerning the prison system, 1979 March 7, and a typescript copy of Rideau's resumé, circa 1980.
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Link to the online finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, writings, and collected material in the papers of Henry Hale Bucher, Jr. are focused on specific areas that are complementary to other collections at the Yale, including his participation in ecumenical study abroad programs, his work with the University Christian Movement, and his draft resistance in a movement that involved Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin. This collection should be examined in connection with the papers of Henry Hale Bucher, Jr.'s parents, the Henry Hale Bucher and Louise Scott Bucher Papers (RG 249). Henry, Jr.'s early life is well documented in the papers of his parents.
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