Local 3654 of the United Steel Workers of America was organized in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Records include Minutes, by-laws, newsletters, grievances, company reports, and publications.
Founded in September 1989, the University Anti-Intervention, Disarmament & Conversion Project was developed by individuals in the UMass Amherst community who wanted to eliminate the university’s dependence on defense research. The purpose of the project was to serve as a resource center for students, faculty, and community activists working to break the link between the nation’s institutions of higher learning and the military industrial complex.
The collection consists of a resource guide created by the group.
Beginning in the 1970s, UMass Amherst began conducting oral histories to record the memories and experiences its community, and it has conducted several focused projects since, including projects tied to the 125th and 150th anniversaries of the university. The Department of Special Collections in the University Libraries regularly conducts audio and video interviews throughout the university and with members of the local community.
The interviews that comprise the this collection represent a lengthening history of oral historical work centered on the history of the UMass Amherst community. The topics of interviews range widely from administration, academic research teaching, state and local politics, student life, and activism
The Division of Continuing Education was established in 1970 as the de facto academic outreach arm of the University. Designed to improve access to the academic resources of the University for part-time students, this entailed both the development of a specialized admissions process and an integrated counseling, advising, registration, and records operation geared to the needs of part-time students. The Division continues to provide specialized services and programming for part-time students including Tutoring Enrichment Assistance Model for Public School Students (TEAMS) and the Arts Extension Service, which acts as a catalyst between the fine arts resources of the University and the people in the Commonwealth.
The record group documents the activities of the Division of Continuing Education (1970-2007), Everywoman’s Center — including the Women of Color Leadership Network (1971-2007), and the University Conference Services (1906-2007).
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.
Upholsterers were among the earliest trades in the United States to organize into a national union, with the first efforts dating to the 1850s. The most successful of their unions, the Upholsterers International Union of North America, was founded in Chicago in 1892 and affiliated with the American Federation of Laborers in 1900. One year later, UIU Local 58 was established to organize workers in Washington, D.C.
The minutebooks of UIU Local 58 document the history of the union from its formation in 1901 through the late 1930s.
A community development and service agency founded in 1914, the Urban League of Springfield works to secure equal opportunity for minority groups in such fields as employment, education, housing, health, and personal welfare.
This small collection is tightly focused on the period of the school busing (desegregation) crisis in Springfield, 1974-1975, and the League’s efforts to analyze and respond to the underlying issues in race relations and political engagement. The contents include surveys on racial attitudes and voting behavior in the city along with a selection of publications from the League and a set of board minutes and handouts.
A scholar of international politics, Ferenc Vali left his native Hungary during the revolution of 1956 after five years of imprisonment for his political activities. Born on May 25, 1905, Vali was educated at the University of Budapest and London School of Economics (PhD, 1932), and worked as a Professor of International Law at the University of Budapest until his arrest. Following his escape and a brief period as Fellow at Harvard, he joined the faculty in political science at UMass Amherst in 1961. A popular lecturer, he became the first member of the Political Science Department to receive emeritus status in 1975. He died at his home in Amherst in 1984.
The Vali collection includes both published and unpublished essays by Ferenc Vali on Hungary during the post-revolutionary years and idealism and realism in American foreign policy.
In the summer of 1967, members of University of Massachusetts Amherst campus groups, such as the Faculty Group on War and Peace and the Students for Political Action, joined with individuals from other area colleges and from the community at large to form the Valley Peace Center of Amherst for the purposes of opposing the Vietnam War, providing draft counseling, eliciting pledges from the government to avoid first use of nuclear and biological weapons, and reduction of the power of the “military-industrial complex”. The Center was active for more than five and a half years, drawing its financial support largely from the community and its human resources from student and community volunteers.
Correspondence, minutes, volunteer and membership lists, financial records, newsletters, questionnaires, notes, petitions, clippings, posters, circulars, pamphlets, periodicals, other printed matter, and memorabilia. Includes material relating to alternative service, boycotts, war tax resistance, prison reform, environmental quality, and political candidates.
The Valley Women’s Union was established in 1974 by members of the Valley Women’s Center, Northampton, Massachusetts, who were committed to political change benefiting women. They were concerned that the Valley Women’s Center had become a static umbrella organization and that many of its formerly vital functions had been absorbed by local social service agencies The VWU sought to unify groups that were working for political change beneficial to women.
Records include newsletters, agendas for meetings, reports, position papers, and mailings.
