Born in Germany as Johann Moritz Rugendas, Juan Rugendas was a painter who spent much of his adult life working and traveling in South America. The collection includes a total of 4 poems and 192 personal letters received by Rugendas from four friends during the years 1835 to 1845. Rugendas received the bulk of these letters while living in Valparaíso, Chile, where he found political asylum, and in Lima, Peru from 1842 to 1844.

Dean Albertson’s 384-level History classes at the University of Massachusetts Amherst conducted interviews with social activists of the 1960s and early 1970s, participants and observers in the Springfield, Massachusetts North End riots of 1975, and war and nuclear power resisters. The collection includes transcripts of 15 interviews conducted during the years 1975-1977, as well as the students’ papers, which put the transcripts into context. See also the Dean Albertson Papers (FS 109).

Broadside 6

A significant African American poet of the generation of the 1960s, Dudley Randall was an even more significant publisher of emerging African American poets and writers. Publishing works by important writers from Gwendolyn Brooks to Haki Madhubuti, Alice Walker, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, his Broadside Press in Detroit became an important contributor to the Black Arts Movement.

The Broadside Press Collection includes approximately 200 titles published by Randall’s press during its first decade of operation, the period of its most profound cultural influence. The printed works are divided into five series, Broadside poets (including chapbooks, books of poetry, and posters), anthologies, children’s books, the Broadside Critics Series (works of literary criticism by African American authors), and the Broadsides Series. . The collection also includes a selection of items used in promoting Broadside Press publications, including a broken run of the irregularly published Broadside News, press releases, catalogs, and fliers and advertising cards.

Nancy E. Foster

For the better part of four decades, Nancy E. Foster was active in the struggle for social justice, peace, and political reform. From early work in civil rights through her engagement in political reform in Amherst, Mass., Foster was recognized for her work in the movements opposing war, nuclear power, and the assault on civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Locally, she worked with her fellow members of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst and with interfaith coalitions to address problems of hunger and homelessness.

Centered in western Massachusetts and concentrated in the last decade of her life (2000-2010), the Nancy Foster Papers includes a record of one woman’s grassroots activism for peace, civil liberties, and social justice. The issues reflected in the collection range from the assault on civil liberties after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to immigration, hunger and poverty, the Iraq Wars, and the conflict in Central America during the 1980s, and much of the material documents Nancy’s involvement with local organizations such as the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. The collection also contains a valuable record of Nancy’s participation in local politics in Amherst, beginning with the records of the 1972 committee which was charged with reviewing the Town Meeting.

Formed in 1887 as the Massachusetts branch of the American Federation of Labor, the Massachusetts AFL-CIO currently represents the interests of over 400,000 working people in the Commonwealth. Like its parent organization, the national AFL-CIO, the Mass. AFL-CIO is an umbrella organization, a union of unions, and engages in political education, legislative action, organizing, and education and training.

The official records of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO provide insight into the aims and administrative workings of the organization. These includes a nearly complete run of proceedings and reports from its conventions since 1902, except for a five year gap 1919-1923, minutes and agendas for the meetings of the Executive Council, and the President’s files (1982- ). The collection is particularly strong in the period since about 1980.

Tracy M. Sonneborn

The experimental ciliatologist David L. Nanney spent much of his career studying the protozoan Tetrahymena. Under Tracy M. Sonneborn at Indiana University, he completed a dissertation in 1951 on the mating habits of Paramecium, but soon after joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, he turned his attention to Tetrahymena. During his subsequent career in Ann Arbor (1951-1959) and at the University of Illinois (1959-1991), Nanney made a series of fundamental contributions to the cytology, genetics, developmental biology, and evolution of ciliates, influencing the work of other biologists such as Joe Frankel, Janina Kaczanowska, Linda Hufnagel, and Nicola Ricci. Since his retirement in 1991, Nanney has remained in Urbana.

The Nanney Papers include a dense run of professional correspondence with ciliatologists, geneticists, students and colleagues regarding his pioneering research on ciliates and other professional matters. Of particular note is an extensive correspondence with Sonneborn, accompanied by several biographical essays written after Sonneborn’s death, and a large body of correspondence of the controversial reorganization of the biological sciences departments at the University of Illinois in the 1970s. The collection also includes a selection of Nanney’s writings and a handful of photographs.

Images from the Yankee Publishing Incorporated Records. The originals in this small sub-collection are mostly glass plate negatives taken during the period 1915-1939, and may have been taken by a photographer associated with the Boston Ledger.

Amelia Earhart, 1928-07-09

Dug Out Dan: Dana Smith, East Barre, Vt., Ca.1930

Herbert Hoover on Boston Common, Ca.1930

Nan Howard with lobster, Ca.1930

Abbie Long, Quaker, on Cape Cod, Ca.1930

Oldest telephone operator, Chesterfield, N.H., Ca.1930

Harriet Blackstone, American Mother Goose woman, Ca.1930

Charles Coffin, Freeport, Me., the Maine Hermit, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass.: James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat’s Club, Carlisle, Mass. James E. Taylor, Ca.1930

Cat with flag, Bell Farm, Lexington, Mass., Ca.1930

Kitty Gordon awakes (cat in a baby carriage), Ca.1930

Lynching scene: breaking down the door (possibly San Jose, Calif.), Ca.1930

Alburgh, Vt., Stone School house, 1899-09-02

Armless Johnson, Ca.1930

Street cleaner, Ca.1930

Doctor who walked on his hands (Boston?), Ca.1930

Old fisherman, Cape Cod, Ca.1930

Old town crier, Provincetown: Walter Smith, the last in America (died Dec. 5, 1932), Ca.1930

Mr. Poole, Jaffrey, N.H., Ca.1930

George Willey, Sutton, N.H. One man band. Willey was a drummer boy during the Civil War, Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger, Falmouth, Mass., Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Capt. Otis Fish, blind clam digger , Ca.1930

Old lady purchasing walnuts from street vendor, Ca.1930

Capt. Clark, New Bedford whaling captain, Ca.1930

Man with divining rod, Ca.1930

Professor Braganda, crystal gazer, Ca.1930

Cobbler, South Boston, Mass., Ca.1930

Nathan S. Hill, china repairer, 1931

Childrens’ pageant: Jack and Jill, ca.1930

Blacksmith with horseshoes, ca.1930

Old bicycle rider, ca.1930