Archive

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

Born in Oklahoma in 1941, Ellen Story served as the Associate Executive Director of the Family Council of Western Massachusetts for nearly 20 years before deciding to run for a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in a 1992 special election. While in office, she was an advocate for a variety of women’s and social issues ranging from pay equity for women and transgender rights to health services. After 24 years representing the 3rd Hampshire District, Story announced she would not seek another term in 2016.

The bulk of the collection consists of background research and publications related to various issues that went before the Massachusetts state legislature. Also included are reports, administrative and office files, and constituent files.

Founded in 1975 by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, The Abode of the Message is the headquarters for members of the Sufi Order International. Sitting on 430 acres, formerly the site of a Shaker Village in New Lebanon, New York, the Abode was settled by 75 adults and 20 children coming from all over the United States. The Sufi Order initiates spent the first several months preparing for the arrival of winter, a task that required much effort since buildings were in need of repair, there was no central heating system or updated electrical wiring, and few bathrooms. Within a year, the community prospered with the establishment of woodworking, stained glass, and sewing shops, a bakery, and a small school. Today, the community is smaller in number, but their mission remains the same: to collectively embody spiritual awakening.
The collection consists chiefly of publications produced by the Abode, including two newsletters Connections and The Messenger dating from the 1970s to the present. Also represented are other Sufi Order publications, such as Heart & Wing and Mureed’s Newsletter.

Long a favored destination for travelers due to its scenic coastline and rural landscapes, New England’s tourist industry evolved in parallel with transportation technologies. Rail lines opened summering opportunities in the interior of the region in the nineteenth century, and the expansion of roadways and the automobile after the First World War drove the industry further, leading to a proliferation of summer camps, inns, and tourist sites, even in remote locales, serving shorter-term vacationers from the working class through the moneyed elite.

This small collection of travel brochures gathered by Faith Brainard and her husband Homer W. Brainard in the 1920s and 1930s, documents camps, inns, hotels, and touristic sites throughout New England. Most of the brochures advertise accommodations or attractions in a natural setting, including room rentals at farms, hiking in the White Mountains, and the rivers and mountains of Vermont. The target audience for many of the brochures was women traveling alone, featuring the promise of clean accommodations and wholesome activities.

Born in 1948 to Robert Trigére and Jane Ellis, Trigére grew up in New York City and Argentina. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she remained close to both. Trigére attended the Lycee Francais de New York, a preparatory high school that taught in French. She was accepted to Sarah Lawrence College in 1969, which she attended for two years before transferring to the University of Boston to study Architecture. She moved to western Massachusetts in 1992 and became involved in a myriad of community organizations and projects. Notably, in 1997, Trigére helped found the Hatikvah Holocaust Education and Resource Center and served as the first director. Trigére was also active in several Jewish schools and educational centers as both an instructor and a leader. She and her husband, Ken Schoen, lived and operated a rare Jewish Bookstore out of the old firehouse in Deerfield, Massachusetts. She was on several committees dedicated to the preservation of the town, such as the Deerfield Historical Commission and she helped to create other community organizations such as the Deerfield Arts Bank. In 2016, Trigére was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died in 2018.

The bulk of this collection dates from the time when Jane Trigére finished her undergraduate studies in 1975 to her passing in 2018, although there are some photographs and correspondence from her childhood. The collection includes materials that relate to her education and employment, artwork and writing, and community involvement as well as correspondence and family materials. Within the family materials are items related to Pauline Trigére, a prominent fashion designer.

In 1993, UMass Educational Television was created by Dean Bailey Jackson and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Jay Carey to establish a creative media outreach project for the School of Education. Professor Liane Brandon was asked to be the Director with Associate Dean Jay Carey as Co-director. Working in collaboration with staff member Scott Perry, they designed UMass Educational Television to provide the public with innovative, original, educational programming using the resources of the School of Education and the University, and to serve as a hands-on learning laboratory for students and teachers. They became the only School of Education in the country to produce original educational programming for cable/home audiences. Despite the positive reception of the programs produced, funding for the UMass Educational Television was cut and production ceased in 2003.

The UMass Educational Television Collection consists of many of the original programs they developed and created: Try This At Home, Fresh Ink, Who Knows? Pet Tales, Valley Vignettes, Hi Mom!, and Fine Print. Show flyers, posters, production files, and awards provide insight into the creation and reception of programs.

Rae Unzicker’s exposure to the psychiatric system began at a young age. Growing up in an abusive home, her parents sent her to psychiatrists off and on for years before she was involuntarily committed. While there, she was quickly introduced to the chaotic and damaging atmosphere of a psychiatric institution, exposing her to mandatory drugs, seclusion rooms, forced feeding, and work “therapy” that required her to wash dishes six hours a day. Once she was release, Unzicker’s road to recovery was long, but after several suicide attempts and stays at other treatment facilities, she ultimately counted herself–along with her friend Judi Chamberlin, an early leader in the movement–a psychiatric survivor. Like Chamberlin, Unzicker embraced her role as an advocate of patient’s rights and for the radical transformation of the mental-health system. In 1995, President Clinton appointed her to the National Council on Disability; two years later she was elected president of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). Unzicker was widely known for her public appearances, conferences and speeches, and her writings, including numerous articles and contributions to the book Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric Survivors Speak Out. A survivor of cancer of the jaw and breast, Rae Unzicker died at her home in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on March 22, 2001 at the age of 52.

Although a small collection, Rae Unzicker’s papers document her activities as a leading advocate for the rights of mental health patients, including transcripts of speeches and videotaped appearances, correspondence and feedback related to workshops and conferences, press kits, and newspaper clippings. The most important materials, however, are her writings. It is through her poems and her full-length memoir, You Never Gave Me M & M’s, that Unzicker’s story and voice are preserved.

Born in 1937, Mae Upperman grew up Asbury Park, New Jersey, a town segregated by race and wealth. She was educated at Tufts University, receiving a B.A. in adult education and physical therapy, and Boston University, receiving a Master’s degree in education. Her career features work in several fields, each one with a focus on improving lives of vulnerable individuals in society. These contributions include: working as a physical therapist for the Visiting Nurses Association of Boston; working at the Action for Boston Community Development, a non-profit dedicated to helping Boston residents out of poverty; researching new initiatives in Head Start; and developing and managing a center-based early intervention program for children with developmental disabilities. Alongside Upperman’s professional achievements, she is also an artist, poet, and book collector.

The Mae Upperman Collection consists of more than 200 books by Black women authors and Upperman’s artwork, much of which depicts abstract Black figures. An article about Upperman and her collection appeared in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian in 2023.

Founded in 1975 by a group of Gilbert and Sullivan devotees, the Valley Light Opera is based in Amherst, Massachusetts. VLO presents one fully staged opera and one less formal production every year, and over the years the company has presented all fourteen of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas at least once.

This collection contains a wonderful visual record of VLO productions with hundreds of photographs capturing dozens of performances. The collection contains, too, records that document the company’s activities from the moment an opera is selected to be performed to last curtain call.

Sheila S. Walker, PhD, cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, has done fieldwork, lectured, and participated in intellectual and cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora, and her goal is to educate the public about this diaspora. Her edited book, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, resulting from her international conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World,” has a companion documentary, Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora. Her also edited volume, Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afro-sudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Conhecimento desde dentro: Os afro-sul-americanos falam de seus povos e suas histórias [Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Stories] (in Spanish and Portuguese, not yet English), features chapters by Afrodescendants from all the Spanish-speaking countries in South America. She co-produced the documentary, Slave Routes: A Global Vision for the UNESCO Slave Route Project. And her most recent documentary is Familiar Faces/Unexpected Places: A Global African Diaspora, which was shown at the United Nations as the 2018 Black History Month program for the UN International Decade for People of African Descent. It was sent for showings at UN Information Centers in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. Dr. Walker was a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and held an endowed chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College.

The Sheila S. Walker Collection highlights how the life experiences of an African American cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, focusing on the Global African Diaspora and relationships between the Diaspora and Africa and among African Diasporan societies, allude to, exemplify, and elucidate significant issues of her era. It provides archival materials of various sorts that characterize dynamics of the period both nationally and internationally. The Collection reveals information that does not fit the usual narrative, such as that Operation Crossroads Africa, founded by an African American minister, inspired the creation of the United States Peace Corps, a U.S. government institution helmed by a relative of the then president of the nation. Also, U.S. northern, urban African Americans continued to participate in Mutual Aid Societies, as were so important historically, and sometimes presently, in much of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Growing up in Elmont, Long Island and Teaneck, New Jersey, Tom Weiner attended Trinity College before facing the draft in 1971. After failing the physical and mental examination, Weiner studied alternative education in England, Europe, and Israel on a Watson Fellowship. Upon his return in 1972, he began study at NYU law school, but soon left the city for Northampton, Massachusetts. A life-long social justice activist, Weiner has worked as a sixth grade teacher for the past twenty-five years.

With a lottery number of 117, Tom Weiner knew for certain that he would be drafted immediately upon graduation from Trinity College. Decades later, Weiner was inspired to collect the stories of the men and women who came of age during the Vietnam War era. This collection consists of the oral history interviews, recordings and transcripts, Weiner collected, thirty of which appear in his book Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft.