Archive

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Founded in 1953 by a multi-racial collective of educators including Horace Mann Bond, then President of Lincoln University, and William Leo Hansberry, a professor of history at Howard University, the Africa American Institute has encouraged and supported African students in pursuit of higher education in the United States. From its early years, AAI provided financial and social support for African students studying in the U.S., but it has expanded its activities in scope with the goal of helping to building leadership for Africa within the academic, professional, business, and policy making classes. It has become a vibrant intellectual center for developing human capacity, drawing together thought leaders, researchers, and entrepreneurs interested in issues relating to the continent.

A massive body of material documenting the history of the AAI from its founding in the early 1950s to the present, the collection is a remarkable resource for study of American relations with Africa as the continent emerged from colonial domination. With a focus on the history of educational support and exchange between the continents, the collection contains a vibrant record of the growth of leadership in Africa.

Founded in 1977, the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) is an international organization dedicated to the study and preservation of gravestones of all periods and styles. Based in Greenfield, Mass., the AGS sponsors conferences, workshops and exhibits, and publishes an annual journal, Markers, and quarterly bulletin. Their mission is to promote the study of gravestones from historical and artistic perspectives, expand public awareness of the significance of historic grave markers, and encourage individuals and groups to record and preserve gravestones.

The AGS Collection consists of the central records of the organization plus a growing number of photographic archives of gravestone art donated by members and associates. Offering critical documentation of gravestones, tombs, and cemeteries throughout the country, but especially New England.

Collections include:

• AGS Printed Materials Collection
• AGS Ephemera Collection
• Friedrich Karl Azzola Collection
• Alford Marble Works Records
• Carol D. Andrews Collection
• Peter Benes Collection
• Alex Beron Collection
• Eric J. Brock Collection
• Warren F. Broderick Collection
• Alice Bunton Collection
• Frank Calidonna Collection
• Cemetery Inscriptions Collection
• Paul and Olive Colburn Collection
• Brian A. Conley Collection
• Michael Cornish Collection
• Edwin S. Dethlefsen Collection
• Robert W. Drinkwater Collection
• Edward H. Duane Collection
• Joseph Dudley Memoir and Diary
• L. Sidney Eslinger Collection
• Daniel and Jessie Lie Farber Collection
• Laurel K. Gabel Collection
• George and Kent Records
• Jonah B. Griswold Ledgers
• Roberta Halporn Collection
• William E. Harding Collection
• Historic Burying Grounds Initiative Collection
• Margaret R. Jenks Collection
• Sharon Keim Collection
• Allan I. Ludwig Collection
• Richard E. Meyer Collection
• Nanette Napoleon Collection
• Cora M. Ott Collection
• Carol A. Perkins Collection
• Portland Granite Company Records
• Susanne S. Ridlen Collections
• Barbara Rotundo Collection
• Robert Bayard Severy Collection
• Small Collections
• Thomas W. and Margaret Tenney Collection
• James Tibensky Collection
• Ralph L. Tucker Collection
• Una F. Weatherby Collection
• Elizabeth W. Whitaker Collection
• Gray Williams Collection
• John S. Wilson Collection
• Robert A. Wright Collection

Or View all

The AGS publications, Markers
and Newsletter of the AGS are digitized and available online through Credo

A weekly community newspaper from a small town in western Massachusetts, the Belchertown Sentinel began publication in 1915. Featuring a mix of news and features focusing on Belchertown and adjoining communities of Amherst and Granby, the Sentinel was edited and published by its founder, Lewis H. Blackmer, for fifty years. Since changing hands twice in the period 1965-1975, the Sentinel has been published by Turley Publications. In 2013, with the centennial of the paper drawing near, the publisher and the Belchertown Historical Society cooperated on a project to digitize 88 years of the Sentinel funded by a grant from the Community Preservation Committee.

The Sentinel collection consists of digital copies only of the newspaper from its founding through 2003.

The latest two years online

Husband and wife Paul Francis and Olive (“Tommie” Fox) Colburn were active members of the Association for Gravestone Studies from the 1980s. Natives of Lowell, Mass., and long-time residents of Berwick, Me., the Colburns shared an interest in New England gravestones and marker symbolism, with Tommie enjoying a particular specialty in metal-based markers.

The Colburn collection represents a cross-section of the couple’s work documenting and lecturing about New England grave markers and marker symbolism as well as Victorian funerary practice. Of note are a small number of items reflecting Victorian mourning culture, including images of funeral wreaths and arrangements, three mourning handkerchiefs, and a funeral card.

An author and activist, Steve Diamond worked for the newly formed Liberation News Service in 1968 covering stories like the student strike at Columbia University. After more than a year of internal strife resulting from ideological differences, the alternative news service split into two factions, with Marshall Bloom and Raymond Mungo leading a new division of LNS in rural New England. Diamond, among those who left for New England, settled into life in a commune on old Ripley Farm in Montague, Massachusetts. His experiences during the first year on the farm are recorded in his book, What the Trees Said. Diamond later worked as a writer and consultant for Green Mountain Post Films, editor of the Valley Advocate and Boston Phoenix, and as a contributor for The Atlantic Monthly, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Village Voice.

This collection consists chiefly of Diamond’s correspondence and writing, including drafts of his book chapters, stories, and articles; research notes; and diary entries. The collection also contains printed articles by and about Diamond, digital images, and audio recordings.

Ray Mungo’s Famous Long Ago (1970) and Steve Diamond’s What the Trees Said (1971) are classic visions of late 1960s counterculture and of life in New England communes. The communes on which Mungo and Diamond settled, Packer Corner and the Montague Farm, became the center of what might be considered a single extended community, embracing the Wendell Farm and Johnson Pasture and Tree Frog Farm in Vermont. The Farmers themselves were, and remain, a diverse group, including photographers, novelists, and poets, artists, actors, and activists.

An umbrella collection, the Famous Long Ago Archive contains a growing number of collections relating to the communes at Montague Farm, Packer Corners, Johnson Pasture, Wendell Farm, and Tree Frog Farm. These range from the papers of Steve Diamond, Raymond Mungo, and Jonathan Maslow to Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner (the latter of whom lived at Montague Farm), the records of the Liberation News Service, the Alternative Energy Coalition, and Musicians United for Safe Energy, to the photographic collections of Roy Finestone and Stephen Josephs. View all the Famous Long Ago Collections.

Collections include:

• Alternative Energy Coalition Records
• Antinuclear Activism Collection
• Susan Dalsimer Papers
• Stephen Diamond Papers
• Roy Finestone Collection
• Green Mountain Post Films Collection
• Anna Gyorgy Papers
• Stephen Josephs Collection
• Randy Kehler Papers
• Steve Lerner Papers
• Liberation News Service Records
• Jon Maslow Papers
• Kevin McVeigh Papers
• Montague Nuclear Power Station Collection
• Raymond Mungo Papers
• Musicians United For Safe Energy Collection
• Carl Oglesby Papers
• Stephen L. Saltonstall Collection
• Peter Simon Collection
• Paul Williams Papers

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

As a member of the Montague Farm community, Anna Gyorgy became a leader in the movement against nuclear energy. In 1974, she helped organize the Alternative Energy Alliance in Montague, Mass., and two years later, she was part of the coalition that founded the Clamshell Alliance. An author, ecofeminist, and peace activist, she has lived In Ireland, West Africa, and Germany since 1985 and remains deeply involved in international movements for justice and peace.

Tightly focused on Anna Gyorgy’s activism from the mid-1970s through late 1980s, the collection contains important documentation on the early antinuclear movement in western Massachusetts with some material on the international movement in the 1980s. In addition to a small run of correspondence, the collection includes writings, news clippings, publications, and ephemera relating to antinuclear activism during the 1970s and 1980s and to other related causes, including the Rainbow Coalition and Jesse Jackson’s run for the presidency in 1984.

Known among his peers for his wit, “Gerry” Jones was an active presence on campus as Secretary and Treasurer for the class of 1903, and as a member of the QTV Fraternity, the staff of the Index, and the class football and baseball teams. Jones went on to become a well-respected figure in the Amherst community, serving on the board of investment for the Amherst Savings Bank during the mid-1930s and as a representative to the General Court from Hampshire County.

The papers of Gerry Jones contain a mix of ephemera dating from his days as one an active member of the MAC Class of 1903. Beginning with a fine record book documenting meetings of the class from their freshman year through graduation, the collection includes menus, programs, and dance cards related to class events. Of particular interest is a menu from the first football banquet in 1902, celebrating one of the most successful teams of the MAC era, the one-loss team of 1901.

The Guru Ram Das Ashram was founded in Montague, Massachusetts, in 1972 by Steve Josephs under the inspiration of Yogi Bhajan. Affiliated with the 3HO (Healthy Happy Holy Organization) and the Sikh Dharma Brotherhood, the ashram provided instruction in Kundalini Yoga and Tantric meditation, and at one point, there were as many as 21 residents of the house. Yogi Bhajan married Josephs and his wife Alice in an arranged marriage in 1972, and the couple (then called Gurushabd Singh and Gurushabd Kaur) left the ashram in 1983.

The Josephs Collection includes 13 digital images depicting the Montague ashram and its residents. The collection includes images of Yogi Bhajan and the Josephs.

A veteran of the peace movement and founder of the Traprock Peace Center (1979), Randy Kehler was active in the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, the Peace Development Fund, and the Working Group on Electoral Democracy. Beginning in 1977, he and his wife became war tax resisters, withholding federal income tax to protest U.S. military expenditures, donating it instead to charity. As a consequence, their home was seized by the IRS in 1989, setting up a protracted legal struggle that resulted in Kehler’s arrest and imprisonment and the sale of the house. They remain tax resisters.

The Kehler Papers document the five year struggle (1989-1994) against the seizure and sale of the Kehlers’ home by the IRS. The collection includes meeting minutes, notes, correspondence, newspaper clippings; letters to the editor, essays, articles, plans and strategy documents for the vigil set outside the Kehler home; support committee information and actions; correspondence with government officials, the IRS, and the Justice Department; letters of support; documents from the legal proceedings; and political literature addressing the Kehlers’ situation.