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Curtis B. Thorne Papers

ca.1976-1989

2 boxes 3 linear feet

Call no.: FS 153

Before joining the faculty of the microbial genetics department at UMass Amherst in 1966, Curtis B. Thorne worked as the branch chief at the biolabs in Fort Detrick from 1948-1961 and 1963-1966 where his research focused on Bacillus anthracis, the microbe that causes anthrax. During his tenure at UMass, Curtis applied for and received numerous grants for his continued research on the bacterium, including funding from the U.S. Department of Defense. While his research was centered on the genetics and physiology of the anthrax bacillus, with an emphasis on developing a vaccine, it garnered the unwanted attention of local peace activists in 1989. Protestors, who feared Thorne’s research was linked to germ warfare, picketed outside of his laboratory and demanded that the university reject Pentagon funding. Even though the university and the town of Amherst refused to limit Thorne’s research, he decided not to seek an extension of his contract with the Army in 1990, a decision he regretted having to make. Four years later, Thorne retired from UMass and was honored by his former students with a symposium and dinner. Thorne died in 2008 at the age of 86.

Thorne’s papers consist of lab notebooks and materials relating to the classes he taught at UMass Amherst. Many of the notebooks are related to his research on Bacillus anthracis as well as other microbes including Bacills thuringiensis. His papers do not contain any information related to the funding of his research or the controversy that later surrounded it.

Subjects

Bacillus anthracisBiological weaponsGeneticists--MassachusettsUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Microbiology

Contributors

Thorne, Curtis B

Related collections: Peace, Protistology, UMass (1947- ), UMass faculty

Tenney, Thomas W.

Thomas W. and Margaret Tenney Photograph Collection

1858-2003 Bulk: 1960-1979

228 boxes 126 linear feet

Call no.: PH 045

Finding aid

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Depiction of Submit Gaylord, 1766, Hadley, Mass. — Submit Gaylord, 1766, Hadley, Mass.

Long-time residents of Berkeley, California, Thomas W. Tenney and his wife Margaret took up photography in a serious way in the early 1960s. Photographing the Bay Area scene and publishing in the New York Times and elsewhere, Thomas Tenney became a full-time photographer by about 1960. His photographic interests ranged from urban landscapes and advertising signs to the popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Margaret Tenney, also a photographer, was a visual artist who worked in collage and monoprint. For over a decade, the couple took summer trips to New England to photograph colonial and early national gravestones, culminating in a public exhibition of their work in 1972 at the Bolles Gallery in San Francisco.

A vast array of the Tenneys’ photography, artwork, and collection of historic photographs, including thousands of photographs and negatives ranging from the mid-19th century to the early 2000s.

Subjects

California--PhotographsSepulchral monuments--ConnecticutSepulchral monuments--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--Rhode IslandSepulchral monuments--VermontSigns and signboards--Photographs

Contributors

Tenney, Margaret K.Tenney, Thomas W.

Types of material

Collages (Visual works)Drawings (Visual works)Paintings (Visual works)Photographs

Related collections: Connecticut, Gravestones, Massachusetts, Photographs, Rhode Island

Avakian, Arlene Voski

Arlene Voski Avakian Papers

1963-2010

13 boxes 19 linear feet

Call no.: FS 150

Finding aid

Depiction of Arlene Avakian — Arlene Avakian

Arlene Avakian arrived at UMass in 1972 as a graduate student working on the social history of American women, but quickly became a key figure in the creation of the university’s new program in Women’s Studies. As she completed her MA in History (1975) and EdD (1985), she helped in the early organization of the program, later joining the faculty as professor and program director. Through her research and teaching, she contributed to an engaging departmental culture in which the intersection of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were placed at the center, building the program over the course of 35 years into the nationally-recognized Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Avakian has written and taught on topics ranging from the lives and experiences of Armenian American and African American women to culinary history and the construction of whiteness. She retired in May 2011.
Documenting the growth and development of Women’s Studies at UMass Amherst, the collection includes valuable material on the creation of the department (and Women’s Studies more generally), second- and third-wave feminism, and Avakian’s teaching and research. The collection includes a range of correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of articles, along with several dozen oral historical interviews with Armenian American women. Also noteworthy is the extensive documentation of ABODES, the Amherst Based Organization to Develop Equitable Shelter, which established the Pomeroy Lane Cooperative Housing Community in South Amherst in 1994.

Subjects

ABODESArmenian American womenCornell University. Program in Female StudiesFeminismHousing, CooperativeUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality StudiesZoryan Institute

Contributors

Avakian, Arlene Voski

Types of material

Audio recordings

Brock, Eric J.

Eric J. Brock Collection

1957-1995

1 box 0.25 linear feet

Call no.: MS 693

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

A consulting architectural historian and urban planner based in Shreveport, Louisiana, Eric J. Brock was born in San Francisco, California, but with deep family roots in New York, New England, and the coastal Deep South. The author of sixteen books and several hundred popular and academic journal articles on Louisiana history, Brock is a member of the board and former president of the Oakland Cemetery Preservation Society of Shreveport, a former board member of the Louisiana Preservation Alliance, a member of Save Our Cemeteries of New Orleans, of Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries, and a current or former member of multiple preservation and museum organizations. Brock has a deep interest in cemetery preservation and in the multi-faceted role of cemeteries as archives of architectural, historical, genealogical, and artistic importance and as benchmarks of cultural change and development.

With an emphasis on New Orleans and Shreveport, the Brock collection consists primarily of articles and newsclippings on Jewish and other Louisiana cemeteries.

Subjects

Cemeteries--LouisianaJewish cemeteries--Louisiana

Contributors

Brock, Eric J.

Related collections: Gravestones

Tucker, Ralph L.

Ralph L. Tucker Collection

1951-ca.2000

20 boxes 10.5 linear feet

Call no.: PH 041

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Depiction of Erased stone, Salem, Mass. — Erased stone, Salem, Mass.

Known for his extensive research into Boston and Merrimac Valley area gravestone carvers, particularly Joseph Lamson and John Hartshorne, Ralph Tucker received the AGS Forbes Award in 1992 for his excellence in carver research. One of the attendees at the inaugural Dublin Seminar, and the first President of the Association for Gravestone Studies, Tucker served as editor of a column, “17th and 18th Century Gravestones and Carvers,” in the AGS Newletter from 1993-1999. Born on May 29, 1921 in Winthrop, Mass., Tucker attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, and Episcopal Theological School. He married Mildred R. Moore in 1946 and was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1947. Tucker spent two years as a missionary in China, returning to serve parishes in Utah, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. In addition to extending his ministry to hospitals and prisons, he participated in 1960s Civil Rights protests in Alabama and Boston. In 1985 he went to Zimbabwe as a missionary, retiring to Maine soon thereafter where he acted as interim pastor of Grace Episcopal Church in Bath. Tucker died March 28, 2010, and was survived by his wife, four sons — Ralph, Jr., Richard R., Roger W., and Paul M. Tucker, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The Tucker collection includes research notes and copies of published works stemming from Ralph Tucker’s decades of research on stone carvers and other gravestone-related topics, along with hundreds of images documenting carvers and stones in Massachusetts.

Subjects

Cemeteries--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--MassachusettsStone carving--Massachusetts

Contributors

Tucker, Ralph L.

Types of material

Photographs

Related collections: Gravestones

Bey, Hanif Shabazz

Hanif Shabazz Bey Memoir

ca. 1985

1 envelope 0.10 linear feet

Call no.: MS 695 bd

Depiction of Hanif Shabazz Bey — Hanif Shabazz Bey

Hanif Shabazz Bey is one of the “Virgin Island Five” accused and convicted of murdering eight tourists at a golf course in the U.S. Virgin Islands on September 6, 1972. The murders occurred during a turbulent period of rebellion on the Islands, a time when a movement to resist colonial rule was growing in the U.S. occupied Virgin Islands and elsewhere. The reaction to the crime, which was rapidly characterized as racially and politically motivated, from the authorities was both swift and revealing: over a hundred Black activists were picked up for interrogation and the island of St. Croix was put under martial law. Beaumont Gereau (Hanif Shabazz Bey) was one of five men apprehended and charged with the attack; each of the men accused was a known supporter of the Virgin Island independence movement. Detained and subjected to torture, the five men ultimately confessed to the crime and were tried for murder. Despite the many indications that the subsequent trial was profoundly flawed, the men were found guilty and sentenced to eight consecutive life terms.

“The Beginning of Hell” is a typed memoir by Hanif Shabazz Bey, a prisoner from the Virgin Islands held in the U.S. Written sometime after 1985, the memoir provides a personal account of Bey’s childhood in the Virgin Islands, his service in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and the social and political conditions of the Islands during the early 1970s that led up to his arrest and conviction for the murder of eight tourists in 1972. Bey details the torture and other harsh interrogation tactics employed by prosecutors, the trial, and its aftermath, including his confinement to prisons first in Puerto Rico and then the U.S. In prison, Bey chronicles inhumane treatment and conditions, his conversion to Islam, and his efforts to seek assistance to reduce his sentence.

Subjects

Prisoners' writingsPrisoners--United StatesPrisoners--Virgin IslandsPrisons--United States

Contributors

Bey, Hanif Shabazz

Types of material

Memoirs

Related collections: African American, Political radicalism, Prison issues, Vietnam War

Taylor, F. J. R. (Frank John Rupert), 1939-

Max Taylor Papers

1951-2007

2 boxes 2 linear feet

Call no.: MS 658

Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1939, F.J.R. “Max” Taylor became an internationally recogninzed specialist in phytoplankton. Educated primarily in his native South Africa, Taylor studied Zoology and Botany at the University of Cape Town, receiving his doctorate in 1965 for a dissertation on the phytoplankton communities in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Joining the faculty of the Departments of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Botany at the University British Columbia in 1964, he became full professor at the age of 35. At UBC, he continued to work on the phytoplankton of the Indian Ocean, preparing the seminal Indian Ocean Dinoflagellate Atlas (1976), which included some of the earliest electron micrographic illustrations of dinoflagellates. He was a pioneer in the study of the ecology of harmful algal blooms (red tides and brown tides), and he and Anand Prakash were the first to identify the causative dinoflagellate behind paralytic shellfish poisoning. His diverse research interests ran the gamut of ecological and evolutionary studies, from study of cryptomonad endosymbionts in Mesodinium to the feeding mechanism in Protoperidinium and the motility of the dinoflagellate transverse flagellum. An important figure in paleopalynology, he was also an early contributor to Serial Endosymbiosis Theory for chloroplasts and mitochondria. Named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1997 and recipient of the Yasumoto Lifetime Achievement Award by 9th Int Conf Harmful Algal Blooms (2000), Taylor was a cofounder of the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology (1975) and Founding President of International Society for the Study of Harmful Alagae (1998). He retired in 2005.

Consisting primarily of research notes, drafts of publications, and illustrations, the Taylor Papers offer primary documentation of the ecology and evolutionary biology of dinoflagellates.

Subjects

Algal bloomsDinoflagellates--EvolutionEcologyPhytoplankton

Types of material

Scanning electron micrographs

Related collections: Protistology

Brooks Farm

Summer Scenes, Brooke Farm, 1922

1922-1923

1 vol. 0.1 linear feet

Call no.: PH 037

Digital

Finding aid

Depiction of Haying at MAC — Haying at MAC

In 1922, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts appropriated $15,000 for the Massachusetts Agricultural College to purchase sixty acres of land lying immediately north of the existing Experiment Station. Known as the William P. Brooks Experimental Farm, the property was intended as a site for experimental work devoted to the dominant crops of the Connecticut Valley, tobacco and onions.

This small homemade photograph album documents a picnic and group outing at the Brooke (i.e. Brooks) Farm at Massachusetts Agricultural College in September 1922. Although the participants — over thirty of them — are unidentified, they took part in standard picnic activities, including a tug of war, three legged race, and rope jumping. The album contains labeled snapshots pasted onto thick brown paper, tied with a brown ribbon, and includes images of haying on the farm (with Stockbridge Hall in the background) and the homes of William P. Brooks and Prof. Arthur N. Julian.

Subjects

Amherst (Mass.)--PhotographsBrooks Experimental Farm (Amherst, Mass.)HayMassachusetts Agricultural College--PhotographsPicnics--Photographs

Contributors

Fay, Harry W.

Types of material

Photograph albumsPhotographs

Kaplan, Sidney, 1913-

Sidney and Emma Nogrady Kaplan Papers

ca.1937-1993

58 boxes 85 linear feet

Call no.: FS 149

Depiction of Sidney Kaplan, May 1972 — Sidney Kaplan, May 1972

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

An eminent scholar of African American history and activist, Sidney Kaplan was raised in New York City and graduated from City College in 1942. After wartime service as a Lieutenant in the Army, Kaplan returned to his education, completing an MA in history from Boston University (1948) and PhD at Harvard (1960), taking up the study of African American history at a time when few white scholars showed interest. Joining the English Department at UMass in 1946, Kaplan’s influence was widely felt at UMass Amherst and in the local community: he was among the founders of the Department of Afro-American Studies, a founder of the UMass Press, a founder and editor of the Massachusetts Review, and he was the editor of Leonard Baskin’s Gehenna Press. Over more than thirty years at UMass, he worked on diverse projects in history, literature, and the arts, often in partnership with his wife Emma Nogrady, a librarian at Smith College whom he married in 1933, ranging from studies of Poe and Melville to a biographical dictionary of African Americans and a study of Shays’ Rebellion. In 1973, they were co-authors of the first comprehensive study of depictions of African Americans in the visual arts, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (based on an exhibition planned for the National Portrait Gallery), and in 1991, the UMass Press published a collection of Sidney’s essays, American Studies in Black and White. A Fulbright lecturer in Greece and Yugoslavia and exchange Professor at the University of Kent, Kaplan was the recipient of the Bancroft Award from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History for best article of the year in the Journal of Negro History, and he was awarded the UMass Amherst Chancellor’s Medal in 1979, one year after his retirement. Sidney Kaplan died in 1993 at age 80 and was followed by Emma in 2010.

The Kaplan Papers document a long career devoted to the study of African American history and life. The extensive correspondence, research notes, and drafts of articles and other materials offer important insight into the growth of African American studies from the 1950s through 1970s as well as the growth of UMass Amherst into a major research university.

Gift of Paul Kaplan, May 2011

Subjects

African Americans--HistoryMassachusetts ReviewUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Afro-American StudiesUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of EnglishUniversity of Massachusetts Press

Contributors

Kaplan, Emma Nogrady, 1911-Kaplan, Sidney, 1913-

Related collections: African American, Antiracism, Civil rights, UMass (1947- ), UMass faculty

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Faculty and Staff

University of Massachusetts Amherst Faculty and Staff Collection

ca.1867-2008

175 boxes 84 linear feet

Call no.: RG 040/11

Finding aid

Depiction of Pres. Hugh P. Baker and<br />Cabinet of Faculty, 1936 — Pres. Hugh P. Baker and
Cabinet of Faculty, 1936

From its founding in 1863, UMass Amherst has grown from rural agricultural roots into a major research university, and the handful of instructors who present at the inauguration of the college has grown into a diverse faculty of over 1,100.

The Faculty and Staff Collection contains files accumulated by the University Archives relating to the faculty, staff, and administrators of UMass Amherst and its predecessors, the Massachusetts Agricultural College and Massachusetts State College. This list is not an exhaustive accounting of present or past members of the UMass community: although full-time, part-time, and visiting faculty are included, this listing includes only those for whom the University Office of Communications or University Archives collected information. Typically these files consist of some combination of resumes, notices of honors and awards, press releases and news clippings, articles about or by the subject, obituaries, and other miscellaneous information. In many cases, the subjects are represented by only one or two items.

Subjects

Massachusetts Agricultural CollegeMassachusetts Agricultural College--FacultyMassachusetts Agricultural College--StaffMassachusetts State CollegeMassachusetts State College--FacultyMassachusetts State College--StaffUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--Staff

Types of material

Clippings (Information artifacts)Obituaries