W.E.B. Du Bois

Scholar, writer, editor of The Crisis and other journals, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan African Congresses, international spokesperson for peace and for the rights of oppressed minorities, W.E.B. Du Bois was a son of Massachusetts who articulated the strivings of African Americans and developed a trenchant analysis of the problem of the color line in the twentieth century.

The Du Bois Papers contain almost 165 linear feet of the personal and professional papers of a remarkable social activist and intellectual. Touching on all aspects of his long life from his childhood during Reconstruction through the end of his life in 1963, the collection reflects the extraordinary breadth of his social and academic commitments from research in sociology to poetry and plays, from organizing for social change to organizing for Black consciousness.

William K. Hefner

In 1960, William K. Hefner (1915-1993) became one of the first of new breed of radical pacifists to run for elective office, when he ran as a peace candidate for Congress in the 1st district of Massachusetts. An accountant from Greenfield, Hefner was involved at a national level with movements for peace and civil rights. An early member of SANE, a founder of Political Action for Peace in 1959 (now CPPAX) and the Greenfield Peace Center (1963), and an active member of the American Friends Service Committee, War Resisters League, Turn Toward Peace, and the World Without War Conference, Hefner was an energetic force in the movements for peace and disarmament, civil rights, and a more just economic system. He ran unsuccessfully for office in three elections between 1960 and 1964, and supported peace candidate H. Stuart Hughes in his bid for election to the U.S. Senate in 1962.

The Hefner papers offer a remarkable record of politically-engaged activism for peace and social justice in the early 1960s. With an intensely local focus, Hefner was tied in to the larger movements at the state and national level, corresponding with major figures such as A.J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Benjamin Spock, and Arthur Springer. The collection includes particularly rich documentation of the early years of Political Action for Peace, which Hefner helped found, with correspondence, minutes of meetings, and publications, as well as equally rich materials on Hefner’s bids for congress in 1960 and 1962.

William E. Heronemus underwent a radical transformation during his tenure as Professor of Civil Engineering at the University. After serving in the U.S. Navy, engineering the construction of submarines from 1941 until his retirement in 1965, Heronemus disavowed his work with nuclear energy and joining the University faculty in 1967, dedicated his life to the study of alternative energy. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Heronemus earned his B.S. from then United States Naval Academy and two M.S.s (Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering), from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Heronemus was invited to the University to help develop a research program in Ocean Engineering and focused his work on alternative energy to sources that could make use of oceanic power. William Heronemus retired from the University in 1978 and died of cancer on November 2, 2002.

The William E. Heronemus Papers document his research in alternative energy and his quest for harnessing wind and thermal power from the ocean through technical reports on alternative energy systems written from 1972 to 1974.

Beginning with his dissertation in theoretical astrophysics “Local irregularities in a universe satisfying the cosmological principle” (Harvard, 1961), William M. Irvine enjoyed a distinguished career as an astronomer and a role as one of the primary figures in developing astronomy at the Five Colleges. Arriving at UMass in 1966, Irvine helped build the graduate program in astronomy and beginning in 1969, he was a motive force in establishing the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Focussed largely on the chemistry of dense interstellar clouds and the physics and chemistry of comets, and with a broad interest in bioastronomy, Irvine has been a prolific contributor to his field, and has served as Vice President of the Commission on Bio-astronomy at the International Astronomical Union, a member of Federal Union, Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences at the American Astronomical Society, and he has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Irvine Papers offer a thorough record of the establishment of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory from 1969 through its dedication in Oct. 1976, along with insights into the growth of astronomy at UMass. Correspondence, memoranda, grant applications, and many dozens of photographs offer insight into the financial and political challenges of building the Observatory in the Quabbin watershed. The collection also includes notes for teaching Astronomy 101 and 223 (planetary science).

John W. Lederle

John Lederle played a large role in shaping the Amherst campus as it looks today, transforming UMass Amherst into a nationally respected research university and “great public center for excellence in higher education.” Born in Royal Oak, Michigan, Lederle received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1942. Admitted to the Michigan Bar in 1936, he worked with a Detroit law firm from 1936 to 1940 before joining the political science department at Brown University from 1941 to 1944. He returned to the University of Michigan in 1944, filling a number of positions until 1960, when the University of Massachusetts elected him President. Under Lederle’s leadership, the Amherst campus enjoyed its greatest period of growth. From 1960 to 1970, student enrollment more than tripled and faculty salaries nearly doubled. The academic program expanded greatly, particularly at the graduate level, and under his watch, the university instituted an academic press, a public radio station, and collaborative arrangements between the local colleges. The University system also evolved in the Lederle years, with the establishment of the Boston campus in 1964 and the medical school in Worcester in 1962.

The Lederle Papers include professional correspondence, administrative records, subject files, committee notes, reports, and clippings; Extra-University records that document Lederle’s involvement and interactions with governmental and non-governmental organizations at the state, regional, and national levels; personal correspondence, speeches, bibliographies of his writings, biographical information, a transcript of an oral history describing his administration, and materials relating to his professional activities that followed his presidency; and a series of confidential records.

In the 1950s, William P. MacConnell (Class of 1943), and his photogrammetry students in the Dept. of Forestry began using aerial photography to map forests, agricultural fields, wetlands, and other land cover in Massachusetts. Their work was eventually expanded to include the mapping of all land use for Massachusetts, making this state the first in the nation to be completely mapped in this fashion, and laying the foundation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wetlands Inventory.

The MacConnell Collection includes a comprehensive set of stereopair photographs derived from multiple transects of the state taken between 1950 and 2000. In addition to some original field notes, a stereoscope, and other project materials, the collection includes the following series:

• 1951: Massachusetts, black and white prints (1:20,000 scale)
• 1971: Massachusetts, black and white prints (1:20,000)
• 1985: Massachusetts and Rhode Island, infrared transparencies (1:25,000)
• 1990: Boston, Cape Cod, Buzzard’s Bay, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1991-1992: Massachusetts, infrared transparencies (1:40,000)
• 1991-1992: Merrimack River Valley, North Shore, MDC-1, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1993: Massachusetts, Cape Cod, MDC-2, Nantucket, Dukes and Plymouth Counties, Naushon, West Metro, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1999: Massachusetts. infrared transparencies and prints (1:25,000)

The collection is housed in the Map Collection on the 2nd Floor of the library.

William L. Machmer

Enjoying one of the longest tenures of any administrator in the history of the University of Massachusetts, William Lawson Machmer served under five presidents across 42 years, helping to guide the university through an economic depression, two world wars, and three name changes. During his years as Dean, Machmer witnessed the growth of the university from fewer than 500 students to almost 3,800, and helped guide its transformation from a small agricultural college into Massachusetts State College (1931) and finally into the University of Massachusetts (1947).

Machmer’s papers chronicle the fitful development of the University of Massachusetts from the days of Kenyon Butterfield’s innovations of the 1920s through the time of the GI Bill. The collection is particularly strong in documenting the academic experience of students and the changes affecting the various departments and programs at the University, with particular depth for the period during and after the Second World War.

William Manchester was a journalist, educator, and author, best known for his biographies of President John F. Kennedy, Douglas MacArthur and Winston Churchill. This collection consists primarily of letters from Manchester to his mother written during his service with the 29th Marines in World War II. Manchester later described his war-time experiences in a memoir entitled Goodbye, Darkness.

A leader in the English Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris translated the ancient French romance, Amis and Amile, in 1894, one of a number of romances he published in his literary efforts to restore the middle ages.

This holograph copy of Morris’s short story was prepared for the Kelmscott Press in 1894 and printed in a run of 500. The first American edition appeared later that year, published by Thomas Bird Mosher.

in 1944, William Nash graduated as valedictorian of Illinois Institute of Technology in civil and mechanical engineering and five years later he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Pursuing a career in naval engineering, Nash worked as a research engineer at the Naval Ship Research and Development Center in Washington, D.C. (1949-1954) and as a structural researcher at Bethesda Naval Institute (1953-1957), where he participated in the deepest recorded naval dive and reverse engineering of recovered Soviet submarines off the coast of Norway, the details of which remain classified. After nine years teaching mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, Nash joined the Department of Civil Engineering at UMass in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. During his career, Nash also served as a consultant for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, Lockheed International, General Electric and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Nash Papers contain correspondence, publications, and research notes documenting William Nash’s varied academic work and teaching as an engineer, along with selected work of his students.