Collecting area: Social change

The Yarn Finishers Union was one of several autonomous craft bodies affiliated with the Fall River-based American Federation of Textile Operatives (originally known as the National Amalgamation of Textile Workers). Active in several shops — including Durfee Mills, Tecumseh Mills, Union Belt Co., O.B. Wetherell and Son, and Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufactory — the Yarn Finishers included membership from different segments of the work force, including rollers, quillers, and harness markers.

This slender collection documents two years of labor activism by the Yarn Finishers Union in Fall River, Mass. The minutebook begins in May 1919 as the Yarn Finishers voted to strike over low and unequal wages, particularly those to “girls,” and includes references to elections, financial issues such as the proposition to institute a minimum wage scale, and to settling disputes. The minutes continue through the end of a much quieter year, 1922. The second volume consists of a record of union dues collected, arranged loosely by craft.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

One of the most prominent and vocal scientific critics of fluoridation, the biochemist John Yiamouyiannis (1943-2000) spent over three decades fighting the professional and political establishment. A graduate of the University of Chicago with a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Rhode Island (1967), Yiamouyiannis became interested in the health effects of fluoride while employed as an editor with the Chemical Abstracts Service. His growing opposition to fluoridation, however, led to conflict with his employers and after being placed on probation in 1972, he resigned. Becoming a key organizer in the antifluoridation movement, he served at various times as the Executive Director of Health Action, the Science Director of the National Health Federation, founder and president of the Safe Water Foundation, and editor of the journal Fluoride. He also ran for the Senate from Ohio and twice for the U.S. Presidency on small party tickets, never garnering more than a handful of votes. Yiamouyiannis died of cancer at his home in Delaware, Ohio, on Oct. 8, 2000, at the age of 53.

Offering important insight into the antifluoridation movement in the 1970s through 1990s, the papers of John Yiamouyiannis offer a perspective on an unusually prolific and determined activist. The collection contains a large quantity of research material and correspondence relating to Yiamouyiannis’s antifluoridation work, and perhaps most importantly an extensive series of transcripts relating to civil cases in which he was involved.

The physician Philip E. Zanfagna was a prominent early opponent of fluoridation of the public water supply. Born in Lawrence, Mass., in January 1909, Zanfagna earned his MD at Boston University and spent the bulk of his professional career as a specialist in allergic diseases at Lawrence General Hospital. Placed in command of a military hospital in Tennessee during the Second World War, he became immersed in pharmaceuticals research, through which he became aware of the health effects of fluoride. Over the next three decades, he emerged as a prominent opponent of fluoridation of the public water supply and of the suppression of debate over the topic within the scientific community. He published widely on the topic during the 1960s and 1970s and was recognized as an important antifluoridation activist, becoming a founder and first president of the International Society for Fluoride Research and a leading figure in the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association. Zanfagna died in June 1982 at the age of 73.

A small but interesting collection, the Zanfagna papers contain a small quantity of correspondence relating to antifluoridation activism and research, 1969-1972; a set of audiotapes of the Frankfurt Conference of the International Society for Fluoridation Research, October 1967; and a handful of research reports of fluoride toxicity. The collection also includes a paperback copy of Zanfagna’s best known book (co-authored with Gladys Caldwell), Fluoridation and Truth Decay (1974).

Sally Zinman, ca. 1985

At the age of 34, Sally Zinman woke up one morning believing that she was not Sally Zinman. Her family put her in the care of psychotherapist John Nathaniel Rosen from 1971 to 1973, during which time Sally suffered physical abuse at the hands of Rosen and his aides, including beatings, restraint, and seclusion. After leaving Rosen’s care–lying and pretending to have recovered so that she could get away–and recovering on an organic farm she bought in Florida, Zinman hired a private investigator to expose Rosen’s abuse. Motivated by her experience, Zinman decided to dedicate her life to fighting for the civil rights of mental patients. She helped found several self-help organizations, including the Mental Patients’ Rights Association in Florida, and–after moving to California–the Berkeley Drop-In Center, the California Network for Mental Health Clients, and the California Association of Mental Health Peer Run Organizations. She was also involved in several national organizations and activism efforts. Zinman remained an active and crucial figure in the psychiatric survivors movement until her death in August 2022.

The Sally Zinman Papers contain material from the earliest years of the psychiatric survivors movement to the present, including documents from the organizations and conferences with which Zinman was involved, newsletters, awards, documents related to her investigation into John Rosen, copies of speeches and presentations, photographs, and memorabilia.

Frankie “Ashbuloh” Ziths, born Frank Gumbs, Jr. on December 6, 1933 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, was a vital member of the Black Panther Party, joining in the late 1960s. Ziths served as the official New York photographer for the Party’s newspaper, The Black Panther, and covered the Panther 21 trial first for The Black Panther, then for Right On!, the East Coast Panther newspaper. As more of the members of the Harlem Branch were arrested and jailed or forced underground, Ziths kept the Branch’s business and programs moving forward until it closed in 1981. One of the programs Ziths took over was the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, which raised awareness and funds to support political prisoners in the US. Through the NCDPP, Ziths maintained long-standing correspondences with incarcerated fellow activists and sent them money, often from his own pocket. In the late 1970s, Ziths began honing his skills as a photographer and became a respected New York paparazzi, eventually working as one of the city’s most sought-after news photographers and a stringer for the Associated Press and The New York Times. Ziths died of lung cancer on December 31, 1990.

Prompted by his wife Barbara Dee Ziths (now Barbara Heller), who recognized the historical significance of the work of Black community activists in New York, Ziths began preserving material documenting the Panther 21 trial, and eventually the activities of the Harlem Branch of the Black Panther Party. Heller and Ziths saved all the material that was in the branch when it closed in 1981. The Frankie Ziths Collection includes administrative files, publications, posters, original artwork and layouts, and memorabilia from the Party’s Harlem Branch, documenting the ideological split of the Black Panther Party in 1971 and support for the Black Liberation Army; administrative files and correspondence from the NCDPP; Ziths own notebooks and journals, including notebooks recording his experiences at the Panther 21 trial; and Ziths complete archive of photographic negatives, slides, and prints, representing his career as a paparazzi and press photographer and documenting activism in New York and elsewhere in the East Coast Black Panther Party community.

Ervin H. Zube was the head of the University’s Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning department (LARP) from 1965-1977. His groundbreaking research on landscape architecture and assessment helped define the international importance and influence of the field and his consultancy work, most notably with the National Park Service, brought his intellectual achievements into practical application. Born on April 24, 1931 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Zube earned his B.S. at the University of Wisconsin in 1954. After a two year service in the United States Air Force, Zube enrolled in Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where he received his M.L.A in 1959. Zube held teaching positions at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley before beginning his ten year professorship at the University of Massachusetts in 1965. As the head of LARP, Zube established the Environmental Design program, which introduced a revolutionary cross-discipline approach to the study of landscape architecture. Zube became the director of the Institute for Man and the Environment in 1972 and restructured the institute to support academic research in new, important topics including community development and cooperation with the National Park Service, seeding important national and international institutions with progressively educated researchers. As a consultant, Zube helped the National Park Service develop their “master plan” for Yosemite and worked with numerous national and international institutions to manage and assess their environmental resources. Zube ended his career as a professor at the University of Arizona where he retired in 1983. He remained active in the field until his death in 2001.

The Ervin H. Zube papers include Zube’s lecture notes and academic correspondence, research materials and publications representing his work in landscape assessment and architecture, notes and reports from his consultancy work with many institutions and committees, correspondence from his role as a conference planner, as well as correspondence relating to his many book reviews. Zube’s papers also cover his research and teaching while at the University of Arizona and contain photographs from his research on the Connecticut River Valley.