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Huntington, Catharine Sargent

Catharine Sargent Huntington Papers

1847-2003 Bulk: 1890-1984
29 boxes 15 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1164
Finding aid
Part of: Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers

Actress, producer/director, theater company founder, teacher, activist, avid gardener, and devoted family-member, colleague and friend, Catharine Sargent Huntington was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on December 29, 1887. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1911, and taught English and Theater at The Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut from 1911 to approximately 1917. By the end of 1918 she had begun her theater career in earnest, working as a dramatic coach in the Boston area. In January 1919, she became the Radcliffe College representative to the Wellesley unit of the Y.M.C.A., working in France on war reconstruction before returning to Massachusetts to continue her work with the theater, particularly experimental theater, which was to endure for the next 60-plus years through her patronage, and her many performances, productions, and theater companies.

Spanning as it does almost a century from the late 1800s to the late 1900s, this collection captures Catharine Sargent Huntington’s many interests, professional and personal activities and connections, and close family relationships, through more than 2,300 pieces of personal and business correspondence; photographs; photographic negatives; theater programs; scripts; original manuscripts of her poems, speeches, stage notes, and theater production scenarios; newspapers and newspaper clippings; estate and will information; organizational documents of the many organizations she helped direct; personal financial documents; and other printed material and items of ephemera.

Gift of Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, Inc., December 2021.

Subjects

Huntington family

Contributors

Huntington, Catharine Sargent, 1887-1987

Types of material

Photographs
Related collections: Arts & literature, Family, Massachusetts, Massachusetts (West), New England, Performing arts, Women
WMUA (Radio station : Amherst, Mass.)

WMUA Records

1947-2022 Bulk: 1985-2014
9 boxes 4.5 linear feet
Call no.: RG 45/30 W6
Finding aid

Unidentified DJ in the WMUA master control room, ca. 1985

WMUA is UMass’ student/community run non-commercial FM radio station. In continuous operation since 1948, initially as an AM station, it serves the campus and surrounding communities in the Pioneer Valley and can be heard from the Connecticut to the Vermont border. Beginning in 1948, as students were first establishing the station, WMUA has been a constant presence on campus, weathering budget cuts, leadership upheavals and the rise and fall of radio as a dominant medium.

The records of WMUA document the history of a particularly long-lived organization at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst and reflect the changing culture of the campus. In addition to some administrative and financial records, the collection includes a number of promotional materials, newsclippings, photographs and recordings that reflect the history of the organization. Also noteworthy is a history of WMUA written in 1963 to commemorate its 15th anniversary as well as several oral histories with station alum from different eras. There are also press clippings, ephemera, press releases and recordings from the acclaimed Magic Triangle Jazz Series.

Additionally, there are hundreds of analog and digital recordings of shows that span three decades of the station’s history, with the bulk from 1987-2012. A separate, growing, inventory of the recordings is also available which includes descriptions, dates, and formats of the recordings.

A documentary about WMUA in the 1960s was produced by Stuart Goldman, an alumnus of the station, in 2021.

WMUA | Glenn Siegel, 2008-2013,

Subjects

College radio stations--Massachusetts--Amherst (Mass.)FM broadcastingPublic affairs radio programsStudent activities--Massachusetts--Amherst (Mass.)WMUA (Radio station : Amherst, Mass.)

Contributors

Siegel, GlennUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstWMUA (Radio station : Amherst, Mass.)

Types of material

CorrespondenceFinancial recordsFliers (printed matter)Manuals (instructional materials)PostersRadio programsSchedules (time plans)
Restrictions: none none
Related collections: Arts & literature, Folk music, Jazz, Media, Music, Oral history, Performing arts, UMass (1947- ), UMass history, UMass students
Goldscheider, Eric

Eric Goldscheider Collection of Benjamin LaGuer

1983-2009 Bulk: 2000-2009
8 6.83 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1176

2006 Valley Advocate article on LaGuer written by Goldscheider

Collection of material on Benjamin LaGuer, a Bronx-born, Puerto Rican resident of Leominster, Massachusetts who was arrested for raping and beating his elderly neighbor there in 1983. He maintained his innocence, rejecting a plea that could have released him after a couple of years. His case went to trial, and he was convicted in 1984 by an all-white jury. He was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after fifteen years. LaGuer fought to prove his innocence and while in prison, earned a bachelor’s degree from Boston University. LaGuer and his case brought together a diverse group of supporters, including Leslie Epstein, John Silber, Noam Chomsky, Ellen Story, and Deval Patrick, whose support was used against him when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts.

Eric Goldscheider was an instructor and freelance journalist who wrote for the Valley Advocate, Greenfield Recorder, Springfield Republican, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and several university publications. Goldscheider met LaGuer when he taught a Journalism 101 class at North Central Correctional Institute in Gardner, MA in the early 2000s. They remained in close contact after the class and Goldscheider took an increasing interest in LaGuer’s case and wrote several articles advocating for his release.

LaGuer was denied parole several times because he refused to admit guilt, and passed away from liver cancer on November 4, 2020, alone in a prison hospital. Goldscheider passed away 18 months later on May 9, 2022.

The collection consists of material that Goldscheider amassed on LaGuer’s case throughout their 20+ year friendship. It contains correspondence, legal documents, clippings, and audio-visual materials, including several dozen phone conversations between Goldscheider and LaGuer recorded on compact cassette.

Gift of Eric Goldscheider

Subjects

Prisoners--Massachusetts

Contributors

Benjamin LaGuerEric Goldscheider

Types of material

Compact CassettesCorrespondenceLegal documentsPhotographsVideotapes
Restrictions: none none
Related collections: Civil rights, Prison issues, Social change
Postler, Klaus

Klaus Postler Collection

1981-2013
14 boxes
Call no.: MS 1122

Klaus Postler was a visual artist and curator who lived and worked in New England. Born Michael Edward Postler on March 23, 1951, he grew up in Yonkers, New York, and Connecticut. He was an avid collector of paper ephemera, which he included in his large-scale paintings and collages. From the late 1970s he was an enthusiastic participant in the international mail art movement, labelling his enterprise the Social Artists Reality Empire (S.A.R.E.). One of the exhibitions he curated was the Ray Johnson Memorial Mail Art Show at UMass Amherst, in 1996, for which he put out an open call and received mailed responses from around the world. Postler traveled in Europe and forged relationships with artists there, especially in Germany. In addition to his art practice, he worked for many years picking apples and pruning trees at New England orchards. Postler pursued his education at a number of institutions, with some difficulty due to his dyslexia, and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1998 through the University Without Walls program at UMass Amherst. He was a MacDowell Colony fellow in 2000, and returned to UMass to earn his MFA in studio art in 2005. Late in his life he cared for the estate of the artist Robert Mallary. He died on January 6, 2013, at his studio in Conway, Massachusetts.

The Klaus Postler collection contains a variety of sketchbooks that also functioned as diaries, as well as daybooks and dream journals; slides of his work; and photographic prints. Also included is an assortment of mail art, some created by Postler but mostly work sent to him by other artists, which Postler included in exhibitions he curated in Brattleboro, Vermont, and at UMass Amherst. Thomas Jahn, known as Horsefeathers, is a prolific contributor of mail art. The collection also includes documentation from posthumous gallery shows and a commemorative book about his work published by his partner, Eileen Claveloux.

Gift of Eileen Claveloux, September 2020

Contributors

Postler, Klaus

Types of material

Sketchbooks
Related collections: Arts & literature, Disability, Massachusetts, New England, Social change, Vermont, Visual culture
Rheinberger, Max C. , Jr.

Max C. Rheinberger, Jr. Papers

1928-2004 Bulk: 1958-1970
4 boxes 3.45 linear feet
Call no.: 1129
Finding aid

Max C. Rheinberger, Jr., 1968

Named Handicapped American of the Year in 1968, Max C. Rheinberger, Jr., worked as a community leader to uplift those with disabilities by bringing awareness to and actively deconstructing barriers to access. Rheinberger himself was a quadriplegic as a result of contracting polio in 1952. During rehabilitation he completed a degree in accounting before embarking on a lifelong career as a businessman and distinguished figure in his community.

Beginning with the founding of his first business in 1956, Rheinberger worked to empower those with disabilities by providing rehabilitative training for those who were otherwise deemed “unemployable.” He was involved in various civic organizations, including Duluth’s City Council, Duluth’s Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota’s Rehabilitation Association, and the Executive Board of the National President’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. His efforts and role as a leader brought him recognition as a disability rights figure at both a local and national level.

The collection includes newspaper clippings, certificates and awards, publications, correspondence, and a scrapbook, detailing his work in disability rights activism as well as his personal endeavors.

Gift of Marianne Rheinberger, 2020

Subjects

People with disabilities--Civil rights--United StatesPeople with disabilities--EmploymentVocational rehabilitation

Contributors

Rheinberger, Max C.

Types of material

AwardsClippings (information artifacts)CorrespondencePhotographs
Related collections: Disability, Social change
Quaker Miscellaneous Manuscripts

Quaker Miscellaneous Manuscripts

1745
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1172
Finding aid

Quaker Miscellaneous Manuscripts is an artificial collection that brings together various single items or small groups of related materials relating to Quakers and Quakerism. The materials included within the collection are items that are not formally part of the New England Yearly Meeting records but may relate to or supplement that collection.

Subjects

Quakers--Religious lifeSociety of Friends--History
Related collections: Massachusetts, New England, Quakers
Bell, Upton

Upton Bell Collection

1915-2015
15 boxes
Call no.: 1120

Upton Bell is the son of Bert Bell, National Football League Commissioner from 1946 to 1959. Growing up inside the early NFL, Upton witnessed his father’s leadership: implementing a proactive anti-gambling policy; negotiating a merger with the All-America Football Conference (AAFC); bringing professional football successfully to television; creating the NFL Draft; and initiating the Sudden Death rule, which launched the meteoric rise in the popularity of professional football. Bell’s mother, Frances Upton, was a Broadway actress and movie star of the 1920s and 1930s and funded Bert Bell’s creation of the Philadelphia Eagles. Bell’s grandfather, John C. Bell, helped found the NCAA and served on the Walter Camp Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee which negotiated with President Teddy Roosevelt to save college football.

Upton Bell’s career in professional football began in the early 1960s working at the Baltimore Colts training camp and ticket office, advancing to head scout by the late 1960s. Bell served the team through two NFL Championships and two Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl V in 1971. After leaving the Colts, Bell was hired as general manager of the Boston Patriots, encouraging their name change to the New England Patriots. He then bought the Charlotte Hornets, a team in the short-lived World Football League. Soon after the WFL folded, Bell began a broadcasting career in Boston, where for more than 40 years he has been a host and commentator covering the country’s top newsmakers. He is a three-time AP Talk Radio Award winner and author of Present at the Creation: My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America’s Game (University of Nebraska Press, 2017).

Bell’s collection of sport artifacts and memorabilia from his and his father’s careers in professional sport includes hundreds of items, with a selection of items, including the Baltimore Colts Super Bowl ring, on permanent exhibit in the Special Collections reading room.

The digital exhibit “Upton Bell Collection: In the huddle of football history” includes essays on family history, Upton Bell’s career, and a selection of digitized items.

Gift of Upton Bell, 2018.

Subjects

Football--HistoryNational Football League--HistorySuper Bowl--History

Contributors

Bell, Bert, 1894-1959Bell, UptonUpton, Frances

Types of material

CorrespondenceMemorabiliaNewspaper clippings
Related collections: Sport
New York Anti-Klan Network

New York Anti-Klan Network Records

1977-1983
4 boxes
Call no.: 1160
Finding aid

Sandy Smith, one of the Communist Workers' Party activists killed at the Death to the Klan March, Nov. 1979

The National Anti-Klan Network (NAKN) was founded in Atlanta, Georgia by Rev. C.T. Vivian and Anne Braden in 1979, following attacks by armed members of the Ku Klux Klan during a march organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Decatur, Alabama, and the murder of five demonstrators of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, North Carolina in November 1979. The organization grew throughout the 1980s, working with other anti-Klan organizations to spread awareness of the continued violence and growing influence of the Klu Klux Klan.

In 1984, NAKN leadership began examining and reconsidering what the organization stood for, trying to ensure it was focused on working to end white supremacy. In 1985, after this year-long reassessment, the National Anti-Klan Network changed their name to the Center for Democratic Renewal to articulate their broader goals towards fighting racism.

This small collection contains correspondence, contact lists, anti-Klan handouts, and sources of information used by the New York chapter of the Anti-Klan Network, some of which pertain to the NAKN. It also includes newspaper clippings documenting KKK activity and other examples of racism in the early 1980s, and numerous reports of KKK activity and newsletters from other anti-klan groups. There is also a series of color slides used as part of an organizing slide show entitled “Greensboro Massacre – Turn the Country Upside Down to Avenge the CWP5” that documents the Greensboro murders of the Communist Workers’ Party activists and anti-racist/labor organizing.


              

Gift of Jeff Perry, 2021.

Subjects

Activists--United StatesCivil rightsGreensboro Massacre, Greensboro, N.C., 1979Political activists--United StatesRacism against Black people

Contributors

Speigel, Mike

Types of material

Color slidesCorrespondenceHandbillsNewslettersNewspaper clippingsOfficial reports
Restrictions: none none
Related collections: African American, Antiracism, Civil rights, Political activism, Political radicalism, Social change
Seager, David

David Seager New Left and Anti-War Academic Repression Collection

1971-1994 Bulk: 1993-1994
2 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: 1168
Finding aid

David Seager’s 1995 PhD history thesis, “Repression in Academia: New Left and Antiwar College Teachers and Political Dissent in the Vietnam War era, 1964-1975” is one of the few in-depth studies of academic repression during the Vietnam era. Besides Ellen Schrecker, who has written extensively on academic freedom and repression in higher education, there has been a dearth of material written about the personal and career consequences faced by American college and university teachers who spoke out against the Vietnam War. For his thesis, Seager did extensive primary and secondary source research and directly interviewed 35 instructors and corresponded with 38 additional ones throughout 1993 and 1994.
               
The project was fully self-funded by Seager who had very little financial support. Early in the research project, his advisor passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack. He worked with a competent replacement, but they were not involved with the original concept and Seager was, in a sense, orphaned. Seager planned to expand the thesis with additional post-graduate work, but he was instead caught in a desperate financial bind with no help from a true mentor, a growing pile of job rejections, and a need for income, so the project ended with the thesis.

Subjects

Vietnam War, 1961-1975

Contributors

Seager, David R.

Types of material

Audiocassettes
Restrictions: none none
Related collections: Draft resistance, Education, Oral history, Political activism, Political radicalism, Social change, Vietnam War
Committee to Defend Johnny Imani Harris

Committee to Defend Johnny Imani Harris Collection

1973-1993 Bulk: 1974-1980
12 boxes 5.43 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1171
Finding aid

Committee to Defend Johnny Imani Harris pamphlet

Administrative records of the Atmore-Holman Brothers Defense Committee and the Committee to Defend Johnny Imani Harris and Stop the Death Penalty, which supported efforts to free Imani (aka Johnny Harris) from death row in Alabama in the late 1970s early 1980s. Originally sentenced to five life terms for 4 small robberies and an alleged rape in 1970, Imani was eventually given the death penalty under Alabama’s capital offenses law due to an inadequate defense by his court appointed lawyers. Harris was put in the brutal Atmore Prison, where he experienced extreme racism, poor medical care, overcrowding, and slave wages. In 1972 the inmates organized a group called Inmates for Action (IFA) and led a work stoppage of over 1,200 prisoners. The prisoners were beaten by guards and the strike leaders were placed in isolation. Two years later, in 1974 an IFA member was beaten to death by guards. The prisoners reacted by capturing a cellblock and taking two guards hostage. In the ensuing take-back by the prison, a guard and IFA leader were killed. Harris and others were charged with the guard’s death. Imani was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death.

The Committee worked throughout the 1970’s and 1980s for Harris’ freedom through endorsements, fundraising, and networking to national and international groups. Thanks to the participation of Amnesty International and other groups, Harris’s murder conviction was dismissed in 1987 after a new trial and he was given parole.

This collection, donated by Tom Gardner, represents the efforts of both the Atmore-Holman Brothers Defense Committee and the Committee to Defend Johnny Imani Harris and Stop the Death Penalty. It contains correspondence, legal filings, press releases, contact lists, fliers, financial documents, and material representing efforts by the Committee to raise awareness and generate financial and name support. There is both mainstream and left wing media coverage of the cases represented in clippings, magazines, and newspapers. Gardner wrote several articles on the case, which are represented in their final printed form and in hand and typewritten drafts. Gardner also took copious notes about the Committee’s work on legal pads. The collection also documents Gardner’s parallel involvement in the larger left-wing movement and its attempts to link labor struggles and racism through pamphlets, correspondence, publications, booklets, and newsletters. The collection offers a unique window into the political atmosphere of the post-civil rights era in Alabama and the South more generally, and how struggles for equal treatment under the law for Black Americans were not over.

Gift of Tom Gardner, 2022

Subjects

African American prisonersDeath row inmatesPolitical prisoners--United StatesPrisoners--United StatesPrisons

Contributors

Johnny Imani HarrisThomas N. Gardner

Types of material

CorrespondenceFliersMailing listsPamphletsPosters
Related collections: African American, Civil rights, Prison issues, Social change, Uncategorized
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