Du Bois and Mao Tse Tung, 1959

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives and the Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst co-sponsor an annual colloquium to commemorate W.E.B. Du Bois. Timed to coincide with the anniversary of his birth (February 23), the departments invite a distinguished Speaker to discuss Dr. Du Bois’ life, work, and legacy.

Speaker: Arnold Rampersad

Department of English, Stanford University

A distinguished biographer and literary critic, Arnold Rampersad is the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. A scholar of race and American literature and the Harlem Renaissance, Rampersad has written books on W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and most recently, Ralph Ellison. He has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and was a 1991 recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant.” He is a recipient of fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Professor Rampersad has recently published Ralph Ellison, a biography of the novelist (1914-1994). His other books include The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (1976); The Life of Langston Hughes (2 vols., 1986, 1988); Days of Grace: A Memoir (1993), co-authored with Arthur Ashe; and Jackie Robinson: A Biography (1997). In addition, he has edited several volumes including Collected Poems of Langston Hughes; the Library of America edition of works by Richard Wright, with revised individual editions of Native Son and Black Boy; and (as co-editor with Deborah McDowell) Slavery and the Literary Imagination. He was also co-editor, with Shelley Fisher Fishkin, of the Race and American Culture book series published by Oxford University Press. His teaching covers such areas as nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature; American autobiography; race and American literature; and African-American literature.

Speaker:James Turner

Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University

Poster (pdf)

Speaker: Clayborne Carson

Stanford University, editor, Papers of Martin Luther King

Press release (pdf)

Speaker: Robert Hill

UCLA, editor, Papers of Marcus Garvey

Press release (Word file)

Speaker: John H. Bracey

Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst

Panelists:

Horace Clarence Boyer

Music, UMass Amherst

Esther Terry

Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst

Phil Zuckerman, “Du Bois, Religion, and The Souls of Black Folk“

Sociology, Pitzer College

David Blight, “A Poet’s Sense of the Past: The Souls of Black Folk as History”

History, Yale University

Ernest Allen, “The Education of Black Folk: The Educational Philosophies of W.E.B. Du Bois”

Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst

Gerald Friedman, “Reconstructing the Color Line: The New Economics of Race in the Post-bellum South”

Economics, UMass Amherst

Panelists:

Esther Cooper Jackson

Co-founder, Freedomways

James Jackson

Editor, Daily Worker

Abbott Simon

Executive director, Peace Information Center and co-defendant with Dr. Du Bois

Speaker: David Levering Lewis

History, Rutgers University

Speaker: Ruth Simmons

President, Smith College

Speaker: Ernest Allen

Afro-American Studies, UMass Amherst

Speaker: Randolph W. Bromery

President, Springfield College and former Chancellor, UMass Amherst

Speaker: David Levering Lewis

History, Rutgers University

Panelists:

David Du Bois

William Strickland

Michael Thelwell

Speaker: Herbert Aptheker

Editor, Complete Published Works of W.E.B. Du Bois

Listen to a recording of Aptheker’s lecture.

Marshall P. Wilder

A merchant and amateur horticulturalist from Dorchester, Mass., Marshall P. Wilder (1798-1886) was a key figure in American pomology during the mid-nineteenth century and a major supporter of agricultural education. A supreme organizer and institution builder, he was a founder and president of the American Pomological Society and United States Agricultural Society, and president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and New England Historic Genealogical Society. His 1849 address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society is often credited as an important catalyst for the creation of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, and he served as trustee of the College from its opening in 1867 until his death in 1886.

The Wilder Collection consists primarily of printed works written or collected by Marshall P. Wilder, including materials pertaining to early meetings of the American Pomological Society and the United States Agricultural Society, his 1849 address to the Norfolk Agricultural Society, and his address to the first graduating class at MAC. Among the handful of manuscripts are a draft proposal to hold a national meeting of fruit growers (the inaugural meeting of the American Pomological Society), two letters regarding his donation of a large number of books to the MAC library, and a bound set of 22 beautiful watercolors of pear varieties painted by Louis B. Berckmans.

Photographs from the 1930s of members of local Polish communities in Massachusetts, including images of the Polish Women’s Club, the Polish Tigers, and the Polish Boy Scouts. Also includes photographs, correspondence, and brochures documenting the Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C. in 1988.

A nearly lifelong resident of Springfield, Massachusetts, J. Wesley Miller was actively engaged in the city’s politics. Often described as an eccentric activist, Miller graduated from Colby College and later earned his law degree from Western New England College of Law. Although he never practiced as an attorney, Miller did sue the law school upon graduation for “educational malpractice,” a suit that was settled out of court. Miller taught English at Heidelberg College in Ohio and at the University of Wisconsin, and it is at the latter institution where it seems he formed his habit of collecting street literature, mostly posters and fliers. Evidently consumed by a desire to collect such materials, Miller accrued a vast quantity of street literature by the time of his death in 2005.

The collection consists primarily of flyers and posters collected by Miller in Madison, Wisconsin and throughout western Massachusetts that reflect the contemporary history of the two regions. The literature ranges from announcements of student protests and rallies to advertisements for local pubs. Miller signed each item, possibly as part of a ritual to catalog the collection. Also included is a microfilm copy of Miller’s diaries.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1939, F.J.R. “Max” Taylor became an internationally recogninzed specialist in phytoplankton. Educated primarily in his native South Africa, Taylor studied Zoology and Botany at the University of Cape Town, receiving his doctorate in 1965 for a dissertation on the phytoplankton communities in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Joining the faculty of the Departments of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Botany at the University British Columbia in 1964, he became full professor at the age of 35. At UBC, he continued to work on the phytoplankton of the Indian Ocean, preparing the seminal Indian Ocean Dinoflagellate Atlas (1976), which included some of the earliest electron micrographic illustrations of dinoflagellates. He was a pioneer in the study of the ecology of harmful algal blooms (red tides and brown tides), and he and Anand Prakash were the first to identify the causative dinoflagellate behind paralytic shellfish poisoning. His diverse research interests ran the gamut of ecological and evolutionary studies, from study of cryptomonad endosymbionts in Mesodinium to the feeding mechanism in Protoperidinium and the motility of the dinoflagellate transverse flagellum. An important figure in paleopalynology, he was also an early contributor to Serial Endosymbiosis Theory for chloroplasts and mitochondria. Named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1997 and recipient of the Yasumoto Lifetime Achievement Award by 9th Int Conf Harmful Algal Blooms (2000), Taylor was a cofounder of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology (1975) and Founding President of International Society for the Study of Harmful Alagae (1998). He retired in 2005.

Consisting primarily of research notes, drafts of publications, and illustrations, the Taylor Papers offer primary documentation of the ecology and evolutionary biology of dinoflagellates.

Founders of the Niagara Movement,
ca.1905

The acquisition of the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois in 1972 established SCUA as a center for research in African American history. In subsequent years, the University of Massachusetts has supported the publication of three volumes of Dr. Du Bois’ correspondence and SCUA has served as a resource for many dozens of scholarly articles and books on Du Bois and his legacy. SCUA has also made efforts to build around the Du Bois collection, adding other important printed and manuscript materials both in African American history and in the history of efforts to promote social change.

Beyond Du Bois, significant collections in African American history include the papers of the abolitionist Hudson Family of Northampton, the expatriate playwright Gordon Heath, the sociologist, educator, and former president of Lincoln University, Horace Mann Bond.

Each February, in commemoration of Dr. Du Bois’s birthday, SCUA and the Du Bois Department of Afro-Americans Studies at UMass co-sponsor a colloquium on Du Bois and his legacy. Our lecturers have included distinguished scholars such as Herbert Aptheker, Randolph Bromery, Clayborne Carson, and David Levering Lewis.

Significant collections

A tanner, currier, and shoemaker, Benjamin Akin was born into a prominent Bristol County family in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1715. With a prolific and well-connected family and successful in his own business endeavors, Akin attained some stature in Dartmouth. First appointed town clerk in 1745, he filled that office from 1754-1770 and again from 1776-1780, adding the title “Esq.” to his name by the 1760s. During the Revolutionary years, he served on the town’s public safety committee. He died on April 10, 1802.

The Akin ledger offers insight into the fortunes of an 18th-century artisan during the most productive years of his life, as well as into the structure of a local community in southeastern Massachusetts. The ledger includes accounts of with customers for tanning and currying of calf and sheepskin, day-book entries, and accounts with the Town of Dartmouth for services performed at Town Clerk.

A product of the vibrant and progressive political culture of western Massachusetts during the early 1970s, the Alternative Energy Coalition played a key role in the growth of antinuclear activism. In 1974, the AEC helped mobilize support for Sam Lovejoy after he sabotaged a weather tower erected by Northeast Utilities in Montague, Mass., in preparation for a proposed nuclear power plant, and they helped organize the drive for a referendum opposing not only the proposed plant in Montague, but existing plants in Rowe, Mass., and Vernon, Vt. Forming extensive connections with other antinuclear organizations, the AEC also became one of the organizations that united in 1976 to form the Clamshell Alliance, which made an art of mass civil disobedience.

The AEC Records provide insight into grassroots activism of the 1970s and 1980s, galvanized by the seemingly unrestrained growth of the nuclear power industry. The records, emanating from the Hampshire County branch, contain both research materials used by the AEC and organizational and promotional materials produced by them, including publications, minutes of meetings, correspondence, and materials used during protests. Of particular interest are a thick suite of organizational and other information pertaining to the occupation of the Seabrook (N.H.) nuclear power plant in 1979 and minutes, notes, and other materials relating to the founding and early days of the Clamshell Alliance. The collection is closely related to the Antinuclear Collection (MS 547).