Collecting area: Education

An agricultural and educational reformer born in 1868, Kenyon Butterfield was the ninth president of Massachusetts Agricultural College and one of the university’s most important figures. An 1891 graduate of Michigan Agricultural College and recipient of MA in Economics and Rural Sociology from the University of Michigan (1902), Butterfield entered university administration early in his career, becoming President of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1903 and, only three years later, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Possessed of a Progressive spirit, Butterfield revolutionized the college during his 18 years in Amherst, expanding and diversifying the curriculum, quadrupling the institutional budget, fostering a dramatic increase in the presence of women on campus and expanding the curriculum, and above all, helping to promote the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and developing the Cooperative Extension Service into a vital asset to the Commonwealth. Nationally, he maintained a leadership role in the field of rural sociology and among Land Grant University presidents. After leaving Amherst in 1924, Butterfield served as President at Michigan Agricultural College for four years and was active in missionary endeavors in Asia before retiring. He died at his home in Amherst on Nov. 25, 1936.

The Butterfield Papers contain biographical materials, administrative and official papers of both of his presidencies, typescripts of his talks, and copies of his published writings. Includes correspondence and memoranda (with students, officials, legislators, officers of organizations, and private individuals), reports, outlines, minutes, surveys, and internal memoranda.

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Center for International Education

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

The Center for International Education (CIE) was established in 1968 as a research and implementation organization within the Department of Educational Policy, Research, and Administration in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In partnership with the academic program in International Education, CIE helps to foster a community of learning and practice on campus and in international development settings, offering opportunities in the areas of International Development Education, Education Policy and Leadership, Nonformal/Popular Adult Education, Basic Education and Literacy, and Internationalizing U.S. Education. The Center has a long and successful history of grant and contract management for projects designing, implementing, and evaluating educational initiatives internationally, and does additional work locally, including Massachusetts Global Education for teachers, and educational and leadership trainings for transitioning students and for immigrant and refugee communities. Additional material from CIE is available through the university’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks.

The bulk of this record group consists of files associated with CIE projects, organized by country and topic, including projects in Central Asia, South Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, North America, and numerous projects in Africa. The records of CIE faculty member David R. Evans are heavily documented, particularly his work in Uganda. This material also includes multiple examples of “games” used by the Center in various teaching and training sessions to stimulate discussion and creativity. Additional records cover the administrative history of CIE, including founding materials and early files, reports and committee records, newsletters, photographs, and information about Center activities, celebrations, and visitors. A number of CIE publications, including their series, Technical Notes, are also available.

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

With a $50,000 grant from the philanthropist John Clarke, Gardiner Green Hubbard founded the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes in 1867, a school predicated on the importance of acquiring oral skills for children with hearing loss. Opened in Northampton, Mass., under the direction of Harriet B. Rogers, Clarke differed philosophically from schools such as the American School for the Deaf where sign language was used for instruction, stressing speech-reading and speech as the primary methods of communication. With notable supporters such as Alexander Graham Bell, Clarence W. Barron, and Calvin Coolidge and his wife Grace (a former teacher), the school became a pioneer in training teachers in auditory and oral methods and in recognizing the importance of early intervention and mainstreaming children into neighborhood schools. Working in partnership with Smith College, Clarke began offering a master’s degree in Education of the Deaf in 1962. Known as the Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech since 2010, the school has opened additional campuses in Boston (1995), Jacksonville (1996), New York (1999), and Philadelphia (2001).

The records of the Clarke School offer rich documentation of the history of oral deaf education in the United States and insight into the experience of deafness in America. The collection includes extensive correspondence of school administrators and teachers, organizational materials, records of the school’s programs, and an essentially complete run of the school’s annual reports and other publications.

The Council for Fair School Finance began its fight in 1978 when it filed a lawsuit (McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Education) to require Massachusetts to meet its constitutional obligation to provide a quality education for all schoolchildren. The suit was quickly suspended due to recently enacted school reform legislation. Within five years, the Council took up the suit once more, and again further reform legislation was enacted that prevented the suit from going to trial. Finally in 1993, the case was heard and decided in favor of the plaintiffs; three days later the governor signed the Education Reform Act of 1993. By the end of the decade, the promise of the McDuffy decision had not yet been fully realized and the Council filed a second suit (Hancock v. Commissioner of Education). In April 2004, Superior Judge Margot Botsford issued a report that found the state’s efforts to fix the problems identified in the previous case were insufficient and that the plaintiffs were entitled to remedial relief. The Supreme Judicial Court, however, did not uphold the recommendation and the motion for relief was denied.

The collection consists of administrative records, including documents created early in the Council’s history, minutes of Council meetings, media reports, research materials, and financial records.

The microbiologist and genomics researcher Shiladitya DasSarma, a UMass Amherst faculty member from 1986 to 2001, was born in Kolkata, India, in 1957. His father was a chemistry professor and his mother a high school English teacher; the family immigrated to the United States in 1966, shortly after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which opened US immigration to Asians. His father joined the faculty of West Virginia State College, and young DasSarma attended public school nearby, graduating first in his high school class. His first scientific publications were with his father, in coordination chemistry, when he was a teenager. At Indiana University, DasSarma majored in chemistry, did research in DNA mapping and transposition, and graduated with honors in December 1978. In the biochemistry program at MIT, he worked as a National Science Foundation fellow under Nobel laureate HG Khorana and earned his PhD in 1984. After postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, DasSarma joined the department of microbiology at UMass Amherst. His research focused on the molecular biology and genetics of halophilic Archaea, building on pioneering work he had started as a graduate student. In his fifteen years at the university, DasSarma was busy with teaching, mentoring, research grants, publications, patents, launching the company HaloGenetics, and was promoted to full Professor. He made news with his group’s work on the genome sequencing of the first halophilic Archaea and one of the first microbial genomes, in 2000. In 2001, DasSarma moved his research lab to the University of Maryland.

The Shiladitya DasSarma Papers document the life of a pioneering scientist from his childhood in India and West Virginia through his education and his UMass Amherst career. Consisting of correspondence, memorabilia, photographs, photograph albums, family scrapbooks, news clippings, publications, and material related to research and teaching, the papers also include materials from and about DasSarma’s parents and family history and DasSarma’s mother’s compilation of Indian folktales and stories.

Chester Davis was a scholar of African American education and media, one of the first core faculty members of the Afro-American Studies Department at UMass Amherst and a major architect of that department’s development, and an avid photographer. Davis was born in Gary, Indiana and attended Roosevelt High School. He was among the first African American graduates of the University of Chicago, where he earned his BA and MA, and then earned his PhD from Syracuse University. After several positions in academia, Davis joined the African American think tank Institute of the Black World, right after its establishment by Coretta Scott King in 1969. His work there influenced the growth of Black Studies programs across the US and he was soon recruited by the University of Massachusetts to help build its newly founded Afro-Am. department. Davis retired from the University in 1992 and moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where he passed away in 2016.

The Chester Davis Papers reflect his research, teaching, and administrative work as a member of the Afro-American Studies Dept. at UMass. In addition to UMass-related lecture notes, correspondence, and research materials, the collection documents his post-retirement activities in Tallahassee and a longstanding research project on Roosevelt High School, which includes a rich cache of historical materials. There is also a significant collection of Davis’s photographs, including prints, negatives, and slides. Davis was an avid amateur with an artistic eye and his topics range from family photographs to concerts, demonstrations, and other activities at the University.

Nina Yolande Du Bois (1900-1961), better known as Yolande Du Bois, was an American teacher best regarded for her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance. Her father was sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois and her mother was Nina (née Gomer) Du Bois. She was born on October 21, 1900, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She faced many health-related issues in her early childhood and also quarreled often with her parents. In her early adulthood, she enrolled at Fisk University in 1920 and graduated in 1924. While attending Fisk, she was in a relationship with Jimmie Lunceford, a prominent jazz musician. At her father’s insistence, she ended her relationship with Lunceford and would later go on to marry acclaimed Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen on April 9, 1928. Their highly-publicized wedding was the talk of many African-American socialites at the time, with every minor detail recorded by the press. However, Yolande and Countee soon grew distant in their marriage, resorting to counseling at first and then divorce following Countee’s coming out as gay to Yolande. With the divorce finalized in the spring of 1930, Yolande chose to pursue higher education and rewrite the course of her life.

After a period of illness, she began to teach English and history at Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. There, she met Arnette Franklin Williams, whom she married in September 1931 and then later divorced in 1936. She had one daughter with Williams, Yolande Du Bois Irvin Williams, whom she took care of following the divorce. However, during this period, Yolande also moved to New York City with her mother, where she began to take courses at Columbia University’s Teachers College, eventually earning her master’s. She then continued to work as a teacher and to raise her daughter in Baltimore until her death in March 1961. She was survived by her father and her daughter.

Yolande’s scrapbooks, photo albums, and other personal artifacts from her youth (approximately 1915-1929) reflect her travels, undergraduate experiences at Fisk University, outings with her family and friends, artistic pursuits, and more. These scrapbooks showcase trips to England, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere in Europe, across Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, as well as other sites of importance in her life. These scrapbooks capture snapshots of her time at Fisk University, from breakups to athletic events, and from classical music concerts to Zeta Beta Phi rush week materials. Each scrapbook showcases a different aspect of Yolande’s late teenage life as well as her early adulthood, coupled with notes, sketches, and illustrations from friends, postcards and fliers from all over the United States and Europe, and her personal takes on the world around her.

Publishers in Western Massachusetts engaged in a brisk trade in books intended for children during the antebellum years, producing chapbooks to teach reading, didactic works on morals and comportment, and toy books for reward and entertainment. Brief and most often simply produced, the books are noted for their diminutive size, stock woodcut illustrations and characteristic moralistic tone, but they are rich sources for understanding popular conceptions of childhood, education, religious life, and marketing in the book trade, among other subjects.

The majority of the works in the Early Children’s Literature Collection were products of the antebellum press in western Massachusetts, produced and distributed by printers such as John Metcalf (Wendell and Northampton), Anson Phelps (Greenfield), and A. R. Merrifield (Northampton). There are examples of chapbooks from other printers, most notably Mahlon Day of New York and the American Sunday School Union in Philadelphia.

Acclaimed writer, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and educator, Zelma (Zee) Inez Edgell was born in Belize City, Belize in 1940. Zee Edgell holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Polytechnic-Regent Street (now the University of Westminster) and a Master’s in Liberal Studies from Kent State University. Edgell has published four novels and several short stories throughout her illustrious career. Her breakout novel, Beka Lamb, published in 1982, was the first book to be released in a newly independent Belize (formerly British Honduras) and would gain international notoriety going on to win the Fawcett Society Book Prize. Before becoming a celebrated novelist Edgell spent her early years working as a journalist, first for Jamaica’s The Daily Gleaner and then as founding editor of the Belize-based newspaper The Reporter. Edgell also served as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau, a position she held under two different administrations. As an educator, Edgell taught for many years at Belizes’ St. Catherine Academy, an all-girls catholic school she attended as a youth. She lectured at the University College of Belize as well. Edgell would spend the remainder of her teaching career as a tenured professor in the English department at Ohio’s Kent State University beginning in 1992. While at Kent State, Edgell taught courses in creative writing, fiction writing, and post-colonial literature. In 2009, Edgell received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of West Indies. That same year she retired from teaching and moved with her husband to St. Louis to be closer to her children and grandchildren until she died in 2020.

The Zee Edgell Papers features not only a deeper look into the author’s professional life but her personal life as well. The collection includes personal letters, postcards, and notes between Edgell and her loved ones; professional correspondence between and her publisher; drafts of her short stories and book chapters; newspaper articles; letters from her global travels with husband Alvin Edgell during his tenure with CARE; documents related to her time serving as director of the Belize Women’s Bureau; and literature on Belizean history. There are also materials related to her time as a faculty member in Kent State’s English Department.

Situated at the confluence of the east and west branches of the Swift River in western Massachusetts, Enfield was the largest and southernmost of the four towns inundated in 1939 to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Incorporated as a town in 1816, Enfield was relatively prosperous in the nineteenth century on an economy based on agriculture and small-scale manufacturing, reaching a population of just over 1,000 by 1837. After thirty years of seeking a suitably large and reliable water supply for Boston, the state designated the Swift River Valley as the site for a new reservoir and with its population relocated, Enfield was officially disincorporated on April 28, 1938.

The records of the town of Enfield, Mass., document nearly the entire history of the largest of four towns inundated to create the Quabbin Reservoir. The core of the collection consists of records of town meetings and of the activities of the town Selectmen, 1804-1938, but there are substantial records for the Enfield Congregational Church. The School Committee, Overseers of the Poor, the town Library Association, and groups such as the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Bethel Masonic Lodge.