Advances in color printing technologies combined with decreasing costs of publication led to a flowering of illustrated sheet music between 1890 and the 1920s.
This small collection is comprised of illustrated sheet music dating primarily from the first quarter of the twentieth century. Representing a cross-section of popular music at the time from minstrel tunes to patriotic marches, most of the songs were selected either for their representation of African Americans (usually in stereotypical and racist caricature) or as examples of pro-war propaganda during the First World War.
Subjects
African Americans--Pictorial worksWorld War, 1914-1918--Pictorial works
Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.
Born in New York City in 1920 on the day his Russian immigrant parents first set foot in the United States, Meyer Weinberg was a political radical, civil rights activist, and a distinguished scholar of desegregation in education. Working his way through the University of Chicago, receiving both a BA (1942) and MA (1945), Weinberg began his career at Wright Junior College, where he harnessed his zeal for social justice to the problem of integration in Chicago’s schools. Active in the civil rights movement, he became a key figure in providing data for desegregation efforts nationally, serving as Chair of the Education Committee of the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) from 1963 to 1967, and as an expert witness in numerous desegregation cases. After moving to City College in Chicago (1971) and then Northwestern (1972-1978), he accepted a faculty appointment at UMass Amherst in the School of Education (and later in Afro-American Studies), also working as Director of the Horace Mann Bond Center for Equal Education (1978-1992). Weinberg’s eighteenth book, A Short History of American Capitalism, appeared just before his death on Feb. 28, 2002.
A large and varied collection, the Weinberg Papers document both the academic and political commitments of Meyer Weinberg from the late 1940s until his retirement from UMass. The focus throughout is his interest in school desegregation, particularly in his native Chicago, but the collection extends to other areas in civil rights activism.
Subjects
African Americans--EducationChicago (Ill.)--HistorySegregation in education
The town of Shutesbury was founded as “Roadtown” in 1735 and was incorporated as a town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1761. The town celebrated its 250th Anniversary in 2011 and planned a year’s worth of events, lectures, and celebrations.
This collection comprises the flyers and notes for several of these events and includes commemorative albums and town histories. A perfect example of a small New England town, these materials are a snapshot of the history of Shutesbury and a celebration of the town’s legacy.
A noted South Shore cranberry grower, Kenneth Greenwood Garside was a graduate of Harvard (Chemistry, 1927) and MIT (MS, Gas and Chemical Engineering, 1929). After working for several years in the electric industry, he relocated to Duxbury, Mass., in 1937 to taking over operations of 406 acres of cranberry bog. Over the next twenty-five years as a grower, Garside served as Director of the New England Cranberry Sales Co. and as a board member of the National Cranberry Association, and after dissolving his partnership in the Duxbury Cranberry Company in 1956, he served as acting General Manager of Ocean Spray during the aminotriazole crisis of 1959-1960. Following his retirement from the bogs, Garside taught science in schools in Florida and Maine. He died at Blue Hill, Maine, in 1987.
The Garside Papers contain nearly forty years of letters between the Massachusetts cranberry grower Kenneth G. Garside and his daughter Anne G. Cann. Rich and well-written, these letters reflect Garside’s work and touch on his many interests, from cranberry culture to politics, family, and education. The collection also contains photographs and an assortment of cranberry business-related ephemera.
Myra Gallond (1849-1924) was the eldest daughter of the proprietor of a successful boarding house and livery stable on South Prospect Street in Amherst, Mass. After marrying Henry E. Paige, a veterinary surgeon and brother of Massachusetts Agricultural College faculty member James B. Paige, Myra maintained her own boarding house on South Prospect.
This diminutive autograph album was assembled in Amherst, Mass., between 1867 and 1874, presumably at the boarding house Myra Gallond’s family operated on South Prospect Street. Gallond’s long association with nearby Massachusetts Agricultural College included taking in boarders from the school and working there briefly as a housekeeper, and she was the sister-in-law of one of the college’s best known faculty members. Several of the College’s earliest students appear in the album, including three of the first international students, Saitaro Naito (Japan), Gabriel Codina (Spain), and Elesbam Fiuza Barreto (Brazil) and several from the Pioneer Class of 1871.
Peter Simon in mirror photographing Jennie Blackton at the Bitter End Cafe, 1968
Peter Simon’s life and work as a photojournalist follows the quintessential arc of the counterculture, baby boom generation. The son of Richard Simon, founder of Simon and Schuster, Peter grew up in the New York City suburb of Riverdale and attended Boston University, graduating in 1969. While a student at BU, he began documenting the political turmoil in the US when he became photo editor for the radical student newspaper, the BU News, and later as a press photographer for the Cambridge Phoenix. In 1970, Simon left Boston to form Tree Frog Farm, a back-to-the-land commune in Guilford, Vermont, and after leaving there in 1972, he immersed himself in the New Age, forming a close relationship with spiritual leader Ram Dass. Among the most constant threads connecting his work throughout these changes was music. Simon’s sisters, Carly, Lucy, and Joanna have all been involved in music, and through a partnership with longtime friend Stephen Davis and his association with Rolling Stone magazine, Simon enjoyed unique access to many of the most important musicians of his generation. He spent time on the road with the Grateful Dead; went backstage and at home with Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and many others. His early forays into the world of reggae with Bob Marley and other Jamaican recording artists resulted in one of his nine books, Reggae Bloodlines. Simon’s other photographic interests are as wide-ranging as his background. A visitor to Martha’s Vineyard since the 1950s and a resident since 1974, his work reflects the changes and cultural richness of that island; his family’s friendship with Jackie Robinson has driven his lifelong documentation of baseball, and he is in high demand for portraits, weddings, and other work for hire.
The Peter Simon Collection houses the original negatives for Simon’s complete body of work as a photo journalist and also includes many photographs taken by his father Richard, an avid amateur photographer, which documents the Simon family and life in Riverdale and Stamford, Connecticut, where the family had a summer home.
Subjects
Boston (Mass.)--PhotographsCommunal living--VermontCounterculture--United States--20th centuryMartha's Vineyard (Mass.)--PhotographsMusicians--PhotographsSimon, Carly--PhotographsVietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements
Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.
A native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of the University of Wisconsin (1970) and Loyola University of Chicago Law School (1973), Norman Blumenthal moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 1976 to accept a position as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for an oil and gas exploration company. After twelve years in the corporate sector, Blumenthal entered private practice, shifting focus to the protection of employees, consumers, and securities buyers from unfair business practices and pursuing both class action and individual cases. Among other notable cases, Blumenthal led a class action suit against the city of Escondido, Calif. (Coshow v. City of Escondido, 132 Cal. App. 4th 687), arguing that their decision to fluoridate the city water supply in 2001 amounted to “mass medicating the entire community” without consent using chemicals that were known to be carcinogenic. In 2005, the court upheld the City’s fluoridation plan.
The Blumenthal collection represents the extensive legal and research files employed by the plaintiffs in Coshow v. Escondido and the appeals that ensued, including correspondence, litigants’ files, depositions, exhibits, “expert documents,” research materials and drafts, “extras.”
Subjects
Antifluoridation movementDrinking water--Law and legislation--CaliforniaFluorides--Physiological effect
Jean Bergantini Grillo was the Cambridge and Boston Phoenix’s Senior Editor from its first issue in 1969 through 1972. When the original staff of the Phoenix was let go after the paper’s sale in the summer of 1972, Grillo helped start The Real Paper with the rest of the fired staff. While at the Phoenix, Grillo was an art critic and covered feminist issues and activism. She graduated from Rhode Island College in 1966 with a degree in English and after working at the Phoenix, continued an active career as a journalist, art critic, television writer and playwright.
The Jean Bargantini Grillo Collection contains a complete run of the Phoenix from its first issue as the Cambridge Phoenix in 1969 until the original staff moved to the Real Paper in 1972. There are also several early issues of The Real Paper until Grillo left the paper in late 1972. There is also a small group of reporter’s notebooks used by Grillo in 1971 and 1972, index cards from her rolodex, and a proof for a political cartoon created for the Phoenix by William D. Steele.
Gift of Jean Bergantini Grillo, 2016
Subjects
Counterculture--United States--20th centuryJournalism--Massachusetts--20th centuryPolitics and culture--Massachusetts
War on Poverty cartoon from New Haven ERAP Newsletter, July 23, 1965
The Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) was a community organizing project sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It began in 1963, with SDS activists working in low-income urban neighborhoods to help residents come together to identify and agitate for shared needs. While practical goals included education and advocacy for welfare rights, youth programing such as free school lunches, and increasing minority participation in local politics, the program as a whole had grand aspirations of abolishing poverty and ending racial inequality through an interracial and community organized movement of the poor in America. The largest and longest lasting projects were located in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and Newark, but multiple cities had ERAP groups. While none achieved an ongoing interracial movement of the poor, all had lasting effects in bringing minority and urban resident voices to the SDS platform, in teaching the skills, obstacles, and possibilities of community organizing, and in encouraging individuals, both from SDS and local neighborhoods, to participate and engage with diverse people in seeking social change.
New Haven ERAP Records are a small but rich collection, mainly consisting of three summer of 1965 issues of the ERAP Newsletter from the New Haven Project. Additional materials include a clipping from the April 30, 1965, Life issue featuring photographs of New Haven ERAP members working in a “slum called The Hill”; two printed photographs from Life not used in the article; and a written report and supporting research interview on the failure of the New Haven corporation Community Progress, Inc., to provide good services and comply with the requirements of the Economic Opportunity Act and the Community Action Program Guide.
Gift of Liz Blum, November 2016
Subjects
Activists—United StatesCommunity development, Urban -- United StatesSocial service—United StatesStudent movements – United StatesStudents for a Democratic Society (U.S.)
Julius Erving during basketball workshop at UMass, 1980
The once active photo morgue of the Alumnus Magazine, the Alumnus Magazine Photograph Collection captures diverse aspects of campus life during the 1970s and 1980s, including portraits of campus officials, sports events, commencements, a visit to campus by Julius Erving, and assorted campus buildings and scenery.
Subjects
University of Massachusetts Amherst--AlumniUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--Students
