Collecting area: Education

The Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education was established to investigate and review Massachusetts laws concerning elementary and secondary education. In order to determine the existence and extent of unequal educational opportunity services, the commission reviewed the state’s school systems as well as the educational laws, programs, and school systems of other states.

Consists of records of the Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education Records, including materials relating to the Boston Community Reorganization, a federal finance proposal, lottery distribution, and school finance reform.

The Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education was established to investigate and review Massachusetts laws concerning elementary and secondary education. In order to determine the existence and extent of unequal educational opportunity services, the commission reviewed the state’s school systems as well as the educational laws, programs, and school systems of other states.

Consists of records of the Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education Records, including materials relating to the Boston Community Reorganization, a federal finance proposal, lottery distribution, and school finance reform.

Author, English professor, and University of Massachusetts alumnus (class of 1941) Harold T. McCarthy taught at the University of Massachusetts from 1959 and into his retirement in the late 1980s. In addition to his books on Henry James (1968) and the expatriate perspective on the idea of America (1972), he wrote fiction and poetry as well as critical articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Richard Wright.

The McCarthy collection includes correspondence, typescript manuscripts, poems, travel journals, and class materials including syllabi and lecture notes.

Dr. Irma McClaurin is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an award-winning author, poet, activist, anthropologist, HipHop Mom and mentor, and CEO of Irma McClaurin Solutions. A woman of many talents, Dr. Irma is a past president of Shaw University and a former Program Officer for Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation. She was also the founding executive director of the University of Minnesota’s first Urban Research Outreach-Engagement Center, including a 21,000 sf renovation, and an Associate Vice President with tenure in the Anthropology Dept. Dr. Irma was also the first Black faculty member to be tenured in anthropology through the ranks at the University of Florida, where she was an affiliate of African Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, Afro-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. After serving as Deputy Provost at Fisk University, while on leave from UF, she became the inaugural Mott Distinguished Chair in Women’s Studies at Bennett College for Women. She founded its Africana Women’s Studies Program. Dr. Irma also was a Senior faculty and coach at the US government’s Federal Executive Institute and was Chief Diversity Officer at Teach For America. An acclaimed Zora Neale Hurston scholar, she appears in the PBS documentary “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space.” Dr. Irma has an MFA in English and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2023, her alma mater, Grinnell College, awarded her the Honorary Doctorate of Social Studies.

Miscellaneous Manuscripts is an artificial collection that brings together single items and small groups of related materials. Although the collection reflects the general collecting emphases in SCUA, particularly the history of New England, the content ranges widely in theme and format.

An educator and activist for understanding race awareness, racial bias, and racism, Robert B. Moore created white-on-white awareness training as a way to help white educators and other white people confront and understand the white chauvinism and distorted white self-image that American culture conditions and perpetuates. Born on February 18, 1947, in Haverill, Mass., Moore also lived in Bangor, Me., as a child. At UMass, he majored in government, graduating in 1969. He returned to pursue his doctorate in the School of Education and received his Ed.D. in February 1974. Moore’s dissertation, “A rationale, description and analysis of a racism awareness and action training program for white teachers,” formed the basis of his presentation and training program, “The Cultural Perpetuation of the Rightness of Whiteness,” which was used by him and other trainers from 1974 into the early 2000s. Moore worked as a consultant specializing in antiracist behavior and focusing on the impacts—social, economic, political, and more—of racism on both victims and oppressors, and he was also involved in SISA (Sisters in Support of Sisters in South Africa). His work took him all over the U.S. and into Canada and New Zealand. He died in New York in 1991.

The heart of the Moore Collection is a digitally recreated version of his original presentation, encompassing a slide show and a recording of Moore’s voice. Also included are a draft transcript of the presentation, some documentation of Moore’s life and work, and an appreciation by his colleague and friend Jim Edler. Moore’s and Edler’s dissertations are available in the Libraries’ ScholarWorks digital repository.

Mount Ida College was a regional, co-educational college with 1500 students, over forty majors, and a graduate program designed for working adults. The college began in 1899 when George Franklin Jewett and his wife Abigail Fay Jewett purchased a property on a hill in Newton Corner named Mount Ida and began a college prep and finishing school program, the Mount Ida School for Girls, that steadily grew, adding a junior college curriculum in 1917. Under the financial stress of the Great Depression, the school closed in 1935, but was purchased four years later by William F. Carlson and reopened on the newly acquired Robert Gould Shaw II estate in Newton Centre. Mount Ida officially became a college in 1967, began admitting men in 1976, and in the late 1980s it merged with Chamberlayne Junior College and the New England Institute of Funeral Service Education. However, after a period of protracted financial difficulties in the early 2000s, Mount Ida College closed its doors on May 17, 2018, and the land and campus buildings were purchased by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The Mount Ida College Records contain the historical records of the college, including photographs, yearbooks, course catalogs, student scrapbooks and memorabilia, publicity materials, the college’s web and social media presence, and artifacts that document Mount Ida’s athletic programs. The records of the New England Institute of Funeral Service were moved with the program itself to Cape Cod Community College.

The National Debate Tournament is one of the national championships for collegiate debating in the United States, seeking to exemplify excellence in scholarship, research, and argument. Originating at West Point in 1947 with twenty-nine teams, the Tournament now includes over eighty teams, with the site of the finals rotating annually among member schools.

The collections consists mostly of tournament booklets, ballots, correspondence, committee minutes, and tapes of the debates with accompanying transcripts.

An educator and scholar of educational assessment, Monty Neil is the Executive Director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). For his doctorate at Harvard in the mid-1980s, Neill examined the impact of the 1974 desegregation order affecting Boston’s public schools and the ongoing search within the city’s African American community for quality and equity in education. He completed his dissertation, The Struggle of Boston’s Black Community for Quality and Equality in Education: 1960-1985, in 1987.

The 33 audiocassettes in this collection include interviews with 29 activists and educational and political leaders in Boston, predominantly from the city’s African American community, include in-depth discussions about the busing crisis in Boston during the late 1970s and early 1980s, its aftermath, and the ongoing search for educational equity and quality. The tapes were recorded between January and April 1986 as part of Neill’s dissertation research.

Established in 1901, the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE) was the first association of English teachers in America. Through conferences, executive board meetings, and the regular publication of The Leaflet, NEATE aimed to bring together New England’s English teachers to study the methodology and history of the field, as well as observe innovations and new practices in the world of education.

While the collection is expected to grow, it currently consists of meeting minutes, conference records, correspondence between members, issues of The Leaflet, two published histories of the organization, and two early record books of NEATE ranging in date from 1901-1938.