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Allen, Theodore W., 1919-2005

Theodore W. Allen Papers

1946-2005
47 boxes 64 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1021
Part of: Jeffrey B. Perry Collection
Depiction of Theodore W. Allen
Theodore W. Allen

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

An anti-white supremacist, working class intellectual and activist, Theodore W. “Ted” Allen was one of the most important thinkers on race and class in the twentieth century. He developed his pioneering class struggle-based analysis of “white skin privilege” beginning in the mid-1960s; authored the seminal two-volume The Invention of the White Race in the 1990s; and consistently maintained that the struggle against white supremacy was central to efforts at radical social change in the United States. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Allen was raised in Kentucky and West Virginia, where he was “proletarianized” by the Great Depression. A member of the American Federation of Musicians and the United Mine Workers, and a member of the Communist Party, Allen moved to Brooklyn after injuring his back in the mines, and spent the last fifty years of his life at various jobs including factory work, teaching, the post office, and the Brooklyn Public Library. In the 1960s, having broken from the Communist Party, Allen set out on his own independent research course. Inspired by the work of W. E. B. Du Bois he wrote on the “white blindspot” and “white skin privilege” and began what became forty years of work focused on white supremacy as the principal retardant of class consciousness among European-American workers. Over his last thirty years, Allen wrote hundreds of published and unpublished articles and letters challenging white supremacy, capitalist rule, sexism, and U.S. Imperialism, as well as numerous poems.

The Theodore W. Allen Papers are a comprehensive assemblage of correspondence, published and unpublished writings, audio and video materials, and research by one of the major theorists on race and class of the twentieth century. The Papers offer important insights on the Old and New Left and their relation to the labor and Civil Rights/Black Liberation Movements and have much to offer students, scholars, researchers, and activists.

Gift of Jeffrey B. Perry, May 2018

Subjects

Communists--New York (State)Historians--New York (State)Labor movementRaceRacism

Contributors

Ignatiev, NoelSojourner Truth Organization

Types of material

Photographs
Berke, David M.

David M. Berke Collection of Nuremberg Trials Depositions

1944-1945
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 804

During the latter months of the Second World War, Edmund F. Franz served with the U.S. Army’s War Crimes Branch in Wiesbaden, Germany. Part of the team involved in war crimes investigation, Franz processed hundreds of pages of first-hand accounts by perpetrators, eye witnesses, concentration camp survivors, political prisoners, and prisoners of war that ultimately served the prosecution during the Nuremberg trials. At the war’s end, he returned home to Aurora, Ohio, eventually bequeathing a collection of depositions from his wartime work to a friend, David M. Berke.

The Berke Collection contains copies of approximately 300 pages of material gathered by U.S. Army investigators in preparation for the Nuremberg trials. The depositions, affidavits, and reports that comprise the collection are varied in scope, but most center on German maltreatment of prisoners — both political prisoners and prisoners of war — with a handful of items relating to larger issues in intelligence and counter intelligence. Gathered originally by the Office of Strategic Services, the Counter Intelligence Corps, and other Army units, the materials offer chilling insight into the brutality of the concentration camp system, “labor reform” prisons, and police prisons, and the sheer scale of wartime inhumanity.

Gift of Cathy Abrams

Subjects

Buchenwald (Concentration camp)Dachau(Concentration camp)Flossenburg (Concentration camp)Innsbruck-Reichenau (Labor reform camp)Ravensbruck (Concentration camp)Sachsenhausen (Concentration camp)World War, 1939-1945--AtrocitiesWorld War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons

Contributors

Franz, Edmund F.United States. Army. Counter Intelligence CorpsUnited States. Army. Office of Special Services

Types of material

Depositions
Davenport, Janina Smiertka

Janina Smiertka Davenport Papers

1918-1990
7 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 343
Depiction of Janina Smiertka, 1934
Janina Smiertka, 1934

Raised in a Polish American family from Greenfield, Mass., Janina Smiertka Davenport was the epitome of a life-long learner. After graduating from Greenfield High School in 1933, Davenport received degrees from the Pratt Institute in Food Management and from the Franklin County Public School for Nurses (1937). In 1938, she began work as a nurse in the U.S. Navy, receiving two special commendations for meritorious service during the Second World War. She continued her formal and informal education later in life, receiving degrees from Arizona State University in 1958 and UMass Amherst in Russian and Eastern European Studies (1982). Davenport died in Greenfield in March 2002.
The Davenport Papers contain a thick sheaf of letters and documents pertaining to her Navy service before and during World War II, along with assorted biographical and genealogical data, materials collected during educational trips to Poland and elsewhere, and approximately one linear foot of family photographs and photo albums.

Subjects

Nurses--MassachusettsPolish Americans--MassachusettsUnited States. NavyWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Davenport, Janina Smiertka

Types of material

Photographs
Bajgier Family

Bajgier Family Papers

1925-1986
2 boxes 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 400
Depiction of Joseph and Martha Bajgier at Bell Market, Chicopee, 1937
Joseph and Martha Bajgier at Bell Market, Chicopee, 1937

On March 13, 1903, Joseph Michael Bajgier was born in Odrzykon, Poland, the youngest of three sons in a farming family. Schooled only through the third grade, Joseph served as a young man in the First Air Division of the Polish Army before following his older brother in emigrating to the United States in 1927. Settling in Chicopee, Mass., with its large and active Polish community, Bajgier began work as a slaughterer of pigs for a meat processing company, but within a few years, he had saved enough money to purchase a small grocery store in Longmeadow. In about 1935, he returned to Chicopee, purchasing a grocery and deli, Bell Market, that his family ran for 36 years. Bajgier was deeply involved in the local Polish community as a member of the Polish National Alliance, the Holy Name Society of St. Stanislaus Parish, and an organization of Polish veterans in exile (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantow). He and his wife Martha (Misiaszek) had two sons, Casimir and Edward

The Bajgier collection documents the lives of a Polish family in Chicopee, Mass., from the time of immigration through the 1970s. The core of the collection surrounds the life of Joseph Bajgier, and includes a number of documents and a diary from the time of his emigration in 1927, a fascinating series of letters from relatives in Turaszowka, Poland before and after the Second World War, and several photographs of the family and their business in Chicopee.

Subjects

Chicopee (Mass.)--Social life and customsPolish Americans--MassachusettsWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Bajgier, Joseph M

Types of material

Photographs
Borkowski, Edward A.

Edward A. Borkowski Autobiography

ca.1980
1 folder 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 124 bd

124-page handwritten autobiographical account written in Polish by 100 year-old Edward A. Borkowski of Turner Falls, Massachusetts.

Subjects

Polish Americans--Massachusetts--Turners FallsTurners Falls (Mass.)--Social conditions

Contributors

Borkowski, Edward A

Types of material

Autobiographies
Brown, Robert E.

Robert E. Brown Southbridge (Mass.) Collection

1973-1977
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 029

During the mid-1970s, Robert Brown worked as a fifth grade teacher at the West Street School, Southbridge, Mass., while pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology at UMass Amherst under Joel Halpern. Part of Brown’s research involved conducting oral histories with Southbridge families identified as “ethnic,” including Albanian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, and Puerto Rican, as well as the only African American family in town at the time. Brown published his work in local newspapers and ultimately in the book, The New New Englanders (Worcester, Mass.: Commonwealth Press, 1980).

The Brown collection includes copies of his newspaper articles, profiles of the families he studied, and apparently complete transcripts of two oral history interviews. Also included are copies of two papers by Brown on Southbridge, possibly for an anthropology class, analyzing the education of Puerto Rican students and the lives of Rumanian Americans.

Subjects

African Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeGreek Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeImmigrants--MassachusettsItalian Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeRumanian Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeSouthbridge (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Brown, Robert E

Types of material

Oral histories
Buczko, Thaddeus

Thaddeus Buczko Photographs

ca.1960-1980
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 299

Former Massachusetts legislator, state auditor, and justice in the Essex Court, active in the Boston, Massachusetts-area Polish community. Fifty-five photographs including portraits of Judge Buczko with Pope John Paul II, Robert and Edward Kennedy, Carl Yastrzemski, Francis Sargent, Hubert Humphrey, and various Massachusetts politicians and friends.

Gift of John Buczko, 1990

Subjects

Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978John Paul II, Pope, 1920-Kennedy, Edward Moore, 1932-Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968Polish Americans--MassachusettsSargent, FrancisYastrzemski, Carl

Contributors

Buczko, Thaddeus

Types of material

Photographs
Czaja, Mrs. Joseph

Josephine Czaja Papers

1936-1987
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 189

Born in Poland, Josephine Latosinski emigrated with her parents to the United States as an infant in 1905. After study at the Booth and Bayliss Commercial College in Waterbury, Connecticut, she worked briefly as a secretary for a Waterbury firm, however in 1926, she married an electrical engineer, Joseph Czaja, and moved to Springfield, Mass. An active member of the Polish community and a talented musician, Czaja sang in the St. Cecilia Choir of Our Lady of the Rosary Church, was an officer in the church’s Ladies Guild, and she became a key member of the local Polish Women’s Club.

The collection consists of photocopies of news clippings, probably compiled into scrapbooks by Josephine Czaja, depicting her activities, her family, the Polish community of Springfield more generally, particularly the Polish Women’s Club.

Language(s): English`Polish

Subjects

Polish Americans--Massachusetts--SpringfieldPolish Women's ClubSpringfield (Mass.)--Social conditions

Types of material

News clippings
Kislo, Michael Z., 1896-1978

Michael Z. Kislo Notebooks

1954-1974
3 boxes 1.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 246

After emigrating from Dzieciekowo, Poland, Michael Kislo found work in a Northampton basket shop and later as a machinist at International Silver Company. He was a resident of Florence, Mass.

The Kislo collection contains nine volumes of Kislo’s writing (mostly in Polish and thematically religious, patriotic, personal, and autobiographical) and artwork (drawings and paintings with religious allusions, Polish costumes, weapons, imaginary animals and fanciful landscapes).

Acquired from Susan Kislo via Stanley Radosh, 1989
Language(s): Polish

Subjects

Art, Polish--Massachusetts--20th centuryFlorence (Mass.)--BiographyImmigrants--Massachusetts--FlorencePolish American artists--Massachusetts--FlorencePolish Americans--Massachusetts--FlorenceUnited States. Federal Bureau of Investigation

Contributors

Kislo, Michael Z., 1896-1978

Types of material

DiariesNotebooksWatercolors (Paintings)
Kopiecki, Sophie D. Zmijewski

Sophie D. Zmijewski Kopiecki Papers

ca. 1950-1990
8 boxes 12 linear feet
Call no.: MS 553

An active member of a number of women’s Polish American clubs in Massachusetts, including the Massachusetts Federation of Polish Women’s Clubs, Sophie Kopiecki was a schoolteacher and mother in the eastern part of the state. Documenting her contributions to the various clubs of which she was a member as well as her activities as a teacher, this collection includes publications, programs, memorabilia, and student assignments.

Gift of Barbara Kopiecki Stathis, Apr. 2008

Subjects

Polish American friendly societies--MassachusettsPolish Americans--Ethnic identity--History--20th centuryPolish Americans--Massachusetts

Contributors

Kopiecki, Sophie D. Zmijewski