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Spriggs, Marshall

Marshall Spriggs Collection

ca. 1970-1980
2 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1250

Marshall Spriggs was an educational activist at UMass/Amherst while an undergraduate from 1969 through 1974. He eventually became the chair of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Undergraduate Student Senate , the voice of undergraduates in their institution’s educational policy. After leaving Amherst, he served as a reading teacher in New York City and as an Assistant Community Representative with the Massachusetts Office for Children. In the late 1970s, he became the Managing Editor of the Boston People’s Yellow Pages published by Vocations for Social Change in 1980. The PYP attempted to catalog all the groups doing progressive political work in the Boston area. In the 1980s and beyond, he served as the Publications Director for statewide legal services, a founder of an international environmental organization, and filled various posts at Harvard University and MIT.

The Marshall Spriggs Collection features social change publications including the People’s Yellow Pages, Black Bart Brigade: The Outlaw Mag, AFSC New England Regional Office printed material, and What’s Left in Boston as well as articles on educational reform, student power, and racism.

Gift of Marshall Spriggs.

Subjects

Peace movements--United States--PeriodicalsStudent movements—United StatesVietnam War, 1961-1975-- Protest movements

Types of material

NewslettersPeriodicals
Related collections: Antiracism, Counterculture, Draft resistance, Education, Massachusetts, New England, Peace, Printed materials, Social change, Vietnam War
Tierney, Rachel

Rachel Tierney Papers

1962-2013
1 small document box
Call no.: FS 220

Rachel Allen was born on September 25, 1941 in Fall River, MA to Peg and Elmer Allen. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with degrees in Nursing, B.S., Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, M.S., and finally a PhD in Public Health Policy and Management. Dr. Tierney enjoyed an important career spanning over 40 years, notably as Professor of Nursing at UMass Amherst. Dr. Tierney was a leader, initiator, and innovator in her field of nursing including implementing new roles and programs, moving the nursing profession forward, and the first to advance nurse practitioners on the board of registration of nursing. She was the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Living Legends in Massachusetts Nursing Award, the Outstanding Alumni Nursing Education Award, and the Elvira Whiting Ball Award for Improving the Lives of Older Adults. Rachel also had a full life outside of her professional obligations actively serving on several community groups including the Alzheimer’s Association, Pioneer Valley Chapter, the West Springfield, MA School Committee, and the Pioneer Valley Area Health Education Center Advisory Board. She was a longtime member of P.E.O. International, a sisterhood of women who are purposeful and passionate about celebrating, supporting, and motivating women.

The Rachel Tierney Papers consist of one small box containing “The Kids” typewritten newsletter from UMass School of Nursing (1962); School of Nursing publications, memory books, correspondence, and notes; and “Nurses’ Attitudes about Caring for Patients with AIDS” dissertation (1990), published as Rachel Chandler.

Subjects

Nursing
Related collections: UMass (1947- ), UMass alumni, UMass faculty, UMass history, Uncategorized, Women
Williams, Mariama

Mariama Williams Papers

ca. 1990-2000
2 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1238

Mariama Williams Ph.D. (Economics) is the Senior Advisor to the Global Afro-descendant Climate Justice Collaborative. Williams has extensive international experience advising governments and NGOs on climate finance, trade, debt and development issues as part of various United Nations task forces, a program coordinator at the South Centre, and a Senior Associate for Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN). She broke new ground in introducing a feminist analysis into the climate finance policy debate as coordinating lead author (2018-2020) for the Chapter on Climate Investment and Finance, Working Group III – Mitigation, the Sixth Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2022).  Among her many publications, she authored Gender and Climate Finance: Coming out of the Margin (Routledge). Williams is currently a member of the Caribbean Action Network, the Gender and Trade Coalition and on the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Law and Economics (ILE, Jamaica). She also has a Master of Science in yoga therapy and is a certified yoga therapist and an experienced registered yoga teacher with the Yoga Alliance.

The papers of Mariama Williams currently consist of more than 50 computer disks containing files that document her work over more than a decade.

Gift of Mariama Williams, 2024.

Subjects

Climate change mitigation—Finance
Related collections: Environment, Social change, Social justice, Women, Women & feminism
Boston Bluegrass Union

Boston Bluegrass Union Records

1995-2002
32 digital objects
Call no.: MS 1273
Digital
Part of: Folk New England Collection

The Boston Bluegrass Union (BBU) is run by an all-volunteer Board of Directors, with a mission to educate people in the Northeast about bluegrass music.  Formed in 1976, the BBU hosted its first concert on October 3, 1976, with Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys. The BBU is the premier source for bluegrass music activities in the Northeast, presenting concerts, festivals, education programs, and informal music get-togethers. Over its nearly 50 years, the BBU has become the central resource for everything bluegrass in Boston and has, in part, been responsible for creating the vibrant market for bluegrass that exists today in the Boston area. Since its founding, BBU has presented over a thousand shows featuring top national and regional artists, making it one of the longest running such series in the country.  The list of bluegrass bands that have been featured over the years includes such acts as Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Ralph Stanley , Jim and Jesse, Tony Rice, the Country Gazette, The Johnson Mountain Boys, The Seldom Scene,  J.D. Crowe and the New South, Hazel Dickens, Laurie Lewis, the Lynn Morris Band, the Good Old Persons, the Lonesome River Band, IIIrd Tyme Out, Special Consensus, Dry Branch Fire Squad, and the Claire Lynch Band. While BBU was first focused on concerts, their signature event is now the annual Joe Val Bluegrass Festival, presented Presidents Weekend at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel.  The Joe Val Festival had its origins in 1985 as a fundraiser to assist the ailing Joe Val with his medical expenses. His untimely passing and his remarkable talents continue to be honored with the three-day festival which bears his name. The event features a star-studded Main Stage, a Showcase Stage which shows off the talents of up-and-coming regional bands, the Joe Val Kids Academy, over 50 workshops, vendors, and round the clock jamming. The festival was awarded the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Event of the Year in 2006. 2026 marks the 40th edition of the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival, the 100th anniversary of Joe Val’s birth, as well as the 50th anniversary of the BBU’s founding.  

The Boston Bluegrass Records currently consists of 32 issues of the group’s newsletter, Bluegrass Breakdown, event flyers, and concert recordings. Additions to the collection are expected.

Gift of Boston Bluegrass Union, 2025.

Subjects

Bluegrass music--New EnglandBluegrass musicians--New EnglandFolk music--New England

Types of material

Newsletters
Related collections: Arts & literature, Folk music, Massachusetts, Massachusetts (East), Music, New England
Animating Democracy

Animating Democracy Records

1996-2022
23 boxes 34.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1272
Finding aid
Part of: National Arts Policy Archive and Library

Stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Animating Democracy was a program of Americans for the Arts from 1996 to 2022. Its goal was to inspire, inform, promote, and connect arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. It worked to bring national visibility to arts for change work, build knowledge about quality practice, and create useful resources. By demonstrating the public value of creative work that contributes to social change and fostering synergy across arts and other fields and sectors, it advanced the arts sector as an integral and effective part of solutions to the challenges of communities and toward ensuring a healthy democracy. Animating Democracy placed high value on learning from and building capacity and visibility for practitioners’ work on the ground. At the same time Animating Democracy brought to bear Americans for the Arts’ strengths in research, policy, professional development, visibility, and advocacy specifically to advance and elevate arts for change work on field, cross-sector, and national levels. To advance its goals, Animating Democracy collaborated with other organizations and field leaders who worked at the heart of arts for change in order to draw on expertise and diverse perspectives in the design and implementation of its programs and services.

The records of Animating Democracy include subject files, print publications, photographs and videos, which provide insight into the development of the initiative, its programs and impacts, its underpinning values, and collaborative and inclusive ways of working to achieve its goals of arts for community, civic, and social change.

Gift of Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon, 2025.

Subjects

Arts and society--United States

Contributors

Americans for the Arts (Organization)
Related collections: Arts & literature, Arts management, Social change
Naughton, Bobby

Bobby Naughton Papers

1967-2018 Bulk: 1970-1980
17 boxes 19 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1278
Bobby Naughton playing a vibraphone in a recording studio. He is holding three mallets.
Undated photograph of Bobby Naughton playing the vibraphone in a recording studio

Robert Joseph “Bobby” Naughton was an American vibraphonist, pianist, and composer in the avant-garde/21st Century modern/improv tradition of jazz that evolved in the 1960s and early 1970s. Originally a pianist, Naughton became known as a vibraphonist. Besides writing and recording his own compositions, he collaborated with other artists including trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and his New Dalta Ahkri Ensemble, Sheila Jordan, Perry Robinson, Anthony Braxton and the Creative Music Orchestra. Naughton was an integral member of the Connecticut creative music network of the 1970’s.

Born in Boston on June 25, 1944 to William and Rose Mary Naughton, Bobby studied piano from the age of seven through his teens and played in several rock, blues, and lounge bands. He served in the U.S. Army and studied painting in art school. In the late 1960s, he began playing vibraphone, accompanying Sheila Jordan and clarinetist Perry Robinson where he participated in New York’s legendary loft jazz scene. In 1969, Naughton recorded for the first time. His debut album, Nature’s Consort, was released on his own Otic record label, where he continued to release music throughout his career. In 1976, along with Wadada Leo Smith, he became involved with the non-profit Creative Musicians’ Improviser’s Forum (CMIF), a collective that supported musicians, presented concerts, and was loosely based on Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Some of Naughton’s other credits include composing music for the silent film Everyday by German artist Hans Richter, playing in the Jazz Composers Orchestra in 1972, and touring Europe with Anthony Braxton and the Creative Music Orchestra in 1978 and 1982.

In the 1980s, seeking a steady income and health insurance, Naughton moved to Providence, RI and began working as a locksmith. He recorded again in 2008, with drummer Laurence Cook and bassist Joe Fonda, leading to the album Pawtucket. Naughton died at the age of 78 in 2022.

The centerpiece of Naughton’s collection is a trove of live recordings recorded on 7″ and 5″ reel to reel tapes, cassettes, and CDs made between 1967-2018. These recordings document every period of Naughton’s career and his various collaborations. The recordings are supplemented with sheet music, posters, clippings, administrative paperwork, some photos, 1/4″ and 1/2″ reel masters of Naughton’s albums, and copies of his released albums on vinyl and CD.

Gift of Ed Hazell, 2024

Subjects

Free jazzImprovisation (Music)JazzJazz musicians--ConnecticutVibraphone music (Jazz)Vibraphone with jazz ensemble

Contributors

Braxton, AnthonyJordan, SheliaRobinson, PerrySmith, Wadada Leo, 1941-

Types of material

AudiocassettesAudiotapesCD-RsClippings (information artifacts)Color slidesCompact discsMagazine clippingsMagazines (periodicals)Open reel audiotapesPosters
Restrictions: The copyright for Naughton's music is held by Ed Hazell.
Related collections: Arts & literature, Connecticut, Jazz, Music, New England, Performing arts
O’Carrol, Chris and Smith, Karen Manners

Chris O'Carroll and Karen Manners Smith Alternative Communities and Religions Collection

1965-2009 Bulk: 1975-1980
2 boxes 1.67 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1275

Karen Manners Smith (“Sister Meredith”) and Chris O’Carroll (“Brother Jerome”) were both members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement (Process Church) from 1969-1974. Following their departure from the Process Church, Manners Smith and O’Carroll (then “Charles C. Smith”) moved to Amherst, Massachusetts where O’Carroll worked for The Valley Advocate, the alternative newsweekly and the UMass Magazine in the late 1970s and 1980s. 

The Process Church was founded in 1966 by Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston, former members of Scientology. While it was initially based in the United Kingdom, the Process Church also spread to the United States, where it attracted over one hundred members. In 1972, American poet and singer Ed Sanders published The Family, a memoir accusing the Process Church of working with convicted murderer Charles Manson and the Manson Family. While no connection between the Manson Family and the Process Church was ever officially established during police investigations, the Process Church faced a public decline in reputation. In the late 1970s, the Process Church split, with members loyal to MacLean joining the newly established Foundation Faith of God (“The Foundation”) in 1980. In 1983, the organization rebranded to the Best Friends Animal Society, where it continues to operate in Kanab, Utah, and throughout the United States. 

The bulk of this collection is comprised of periodicals and marketing materials, collected by O’Carroll for his research on new religious movements during his time in Amherst, Northampton, and Pelham. Most of the material pertains to the Process Church (including the Foundation Faith of God), though there are also news clippings, magazines and pamphlets about other movements, mostly from new age magazines based in Western Mass as well as materials on Scientology, Ekankar, and Transcendental Meditation. The collection also contains small pamphlets and flyers from various Christian publishing houses, with topics ranging from the dangers of Rock n’ Roll to the Satanic Rules of the Earth. 

Donated by Karen Smith and Chris O'Connor, 2025

Subjects

Cults--United StatesReligions--United StatesReligious literature--United States

Types of material

BookletsJournalsMagazinesNewspaper clippingsNewspapersPamphletsPeriodicals
Restrictions: none none
Related collections: Counterculture, Religion, Social change, Spiritual change, Uncategorized
Overton, Patrick

Patrick Overton Papers

1985-2017
2 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1276
Part of: National Arts Policy Archive and Library

Patrick Overton started his work in community cultural development in 1976 as director of Thespian Hall, the oldest theater in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains. Owned by the Friends of Historic Boonville, Overton developed the theater and associated programming as a catalyst to create a Community Arts Program in Boonville, Missouri. During this time, he became involved in state, regional, and national arts organizations. He was the founding President of the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA), serving as its first Executive Director (1984-1989) and served as Director of the Front Porch Institute. Overton received his Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Missouri where he was a Gregory Fellow and served as a tenured Associate Professor of Communications & Culture Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri (1987-1999). He also held a Master of Divinity Degree and a Master of Arts in Religion and was an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He devoted his ministry to serving as a bi-vocational pastor to churches in the rural and small community setting.

The papers of Patrick Overton feature content related both to his work in community cultural development–correspondence, his testimony on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, conference materials, reports–and his work as a minister. Also included are copies of his books, The Leaning Tree and Rebuilding the Front Porch of America.

Gift of Lindi Overton, 2025.

Subjects

Arts--United StatesArts—ManagementCommunity arts projects
Related collections: Arts & literature, Arts management, Religion
Jenkins, Jamie LeShaé

Jamie LeShaé Jenkins Collection

2016-2025
Call no.: MS 1257
Part of: Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive

Jamie LeShaé Jenkins is a freedom-obsessed artist, educator, and archivist whose transformative work bridges ancestral wisdom, Afrofuturism, and community liberation. Rooted in the understanding that our histories are our blueprints for freedom, Jamie has dedicated her career to excavating, preserving, and amplifying the revolutionary genius of the African diaspora.

As a field researcher and curriculum designer, Jamie has journeyed to the source—immersing herself in the Indigenous technologies and spiritual sciences of Belize, Brazil, Burkina Faso, KMT (Egypt), Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, and Mexico. These pilgrimages inform the Afrofuturistic framework of Ms. J’s Classroom, her creative laboratory where freedom-based art, activism, and education converge to imagine and create new possibilities for our communities.

Jamie’s scholarship is grounded in praxis. Armed with a B.A. in History from Clark Atlanta University and an M.A.T. from National University, she moved from teaching high school history in Atlanta and New York to becoming a national social justice coach and curriculum strategist. From 2016-2025, she served as Founding Executive Director of Building Opportunities & Opening Minds (BOOM), a nonprofit education ecosystem that has delivered liberatory learning experiences and over $300,000 in scholarships to Black and Brown youth in the Dallas area.

In 2025, Jamie expanded her archival practice through the “Daughter of Dallas” initiative, a digital and documentary project that excavates and illuminates the untold stories of Black women artists and advocates in her hometown. She weaves oral histories, multimedia storytelling, and community engagement into a living archive that refuses to let our stories disappear.

Jamie’s multidisciplinary work has been exhibited at The African American Museum (Dallas), Abron Arts Center (New York), The Black Woman Is God (San Francisco), and others, with features in Natural Hair the Movie, Building the Bridge, and the Positively Gam Podcast. Through every medium and platform, she continues her life’s mission to honor the sacred work of preserving and amplifying the genius of activists, elders, and ancestors whose shoulders we stand upon.

Jamie’s collection within the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archives serves as both mirror and map—reflecting the brilliance of Black women’s intellectual and creative traditions while charting pathways for future generations of scholars, artists, and freedom fighters to continue the work of liberation.

Subjects

African American women--Biography

Contributors

Jamie LeShaé Jenkins

Types of material

Digital
Related collections: African American women, Black feminist, Education, Uncategorized
Greenhill, Mitch

Greenhill/Folklore Productions Collection

1958-1981
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1271
Part of: Folk New England Collection

Born in 1944 and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Mitch Greenhill was a regular at Club 47, first performing there in 1961. Growing up, he was exposed to the music of a wide range of folk legends who his father, Manny Greenhill, produced, including Rev. Gary Davis, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, and many others. These experiences formed the basis for his book Raised by Musical Mavericks. As a musician, Greenhill recorded two albums for Prestige, which were reissued on a Fantasy twofer titled Shepherd of the City Blues; and three later collaborations with Mayne Smith, with whom he spent a number of years in the band The Frontier. Their work as a duo included tours of Britain and Italy, as well as festivals and concerts in North America. He also worked as a session musician for Rosalie Sorrels, Jack Elliott, and a number of film and television projects. In 1976, Greenhill joined the family business, Folklore Production (now FLi), which he now runs as president, along with his son Matt. The company has represented the likes of Doc Watson, Taj Mahal, The Klezmatics, and Lúnasa, among many others. It publishes compositions by Joan Baez, John Fahey, Rev. Gary Davis, Jesse Fuller and others; these include songs recorded by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead.

The collection includes five scrapbooks featuring news clippings, photographs, and flyers documenting key figures in folk music history, such as Doc Watson and Rev. Gary Davis, as well as letters to Greenhill’s father, Manny Greenhill, who founded Folklore Productions in 1957.

Gift of Mitch Greenhill, 2025.

Subjects

Folk music--New EnglandFolk musicians--New EnglandFolklore Productions

Contributors

Greenhill, Manuel, 1916-1996

Types of material

ClippingsCorrespondence (Letters)PhotographsScrapbooks
Related collections: Folk music, Music, New England, Performing arts
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