Collections: B

The founder of the the university’s International Program Office, Barbara Burn was widely recognized as an expert in international education. After attending the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, Burn received both her master’s degree and doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1955. She worked for several years on the faculty of the Foreign Service Institute and as a program specialist at the Asia Foundation before coming to UMass Amherst in 1968 to study the feasibility of developing an international programs office, after which she was appointed Director of International Programs and in 1988, Associate Provost. Under her leadership, the number of UMass undergraduates studying abroad increased ten fold. Burn died on Feb. 24, 2002, at the age of 76, leaving a son and a daughter.

The Burn Papers include detailed information regarding the establishment of the International Programs Office, including background information and sometimes extensive correspondence with universities around the world. Approximately three quarters of the collection consists of alphabetically arranged files on foreign universities and subjects pertaining to study abroad, with particularly interesting material in the 1970s and 1980s on exchanges with the People’s Republic of China.

A storeowner, farmer, and citizen of Granby, Mass., Bela Burnett was born October 4, 1778, the second of seven children of Jonathan and Mehitabel (Dickinson) Burnett. Having relocated from Southampton, New York, to Battleboro, Vermont, in 1770, Jonathan and Mehitable settled in Granby in 1774, purchasing the farm of Aaron Nash where in 2010, Burnett descendants still live. Burnett had at least five children by two marriages, first to Clarissa Warner (1801) and second to Sally Allen (1808). Burnett died in Granby on April 16, 1846.

The Burnett account book includes careful records of goods sold, customers’ accounts, and the form and method of payment (cash, credit, or barter), as well as some information on family members and boarders, along with a handful of miscellaneous items laid in, such as calculations, notes, and a remedy for yellow jaundice.

A knitter in a Northampton silk factory during the years of the Great Depression, Carroll Bush was a Socialist and officer with the American Federation of Hosiery Workers.

The Bush papers offer a small but fascinating glimpse into political radicalism and union organizing among Northampton silk workers during the Great Depression. An active Socialist and union member in the Textile Workers Union of America, Bush corresponded with other textile workers and union organizers in Massachusetts and entertained an interest in union agitation more generally. The collection consists entirely of letters received by Bush.

Daybook listing financial transactions of Butler, Mills, Smith and Barker Woolen Mill, a small woolen manufactory in Williamstown, Massachusetts owned by Henry Mills, Silas Butler, Asa Barker and Ebenezer Smith.

Accounts provide detailed information regarding costs of commodities, labor, and boarding in the town and document the impact of a small factory on the local economy where residents sold soap, oil, and wool to the mill, boarded its workers, took in weaving and hauled freight for the business. Includes mixed personal and business expenses, information about employees and production in the two woolen mills in town, and information concerning the cost of commodities, labor, and boarding workers in the town.

An agricultural and educational reformer born in 1868, Kenyon Butterfield was the ninth president of Massachusetts Agricultural College and one of the university’s most important figures. An 1891 graduate of Michigan Agricultural College and recipient of MA in Economics and Rural Sociology from the University of Michigan (1902), Butterfield entered university administration early in his career, becoming President of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in 1903 and, only three years later, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Possessed of a Progressive spirit, Butterfield revolutionized the college during his 18 years in Amherst, expanding and diversifying the curriculum, quadrupling the institutional budget, fostering a dramatic increase in the presence of women on campus and expanding the curriculum, and above all, helping to promote the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and developing the Cooperative Extension Service into a vital asset to the Commonwealth. Nationally, he maintained a leadership role in the field of rural sociology and among Land Grant University presidents. After leaving Amherst in 1924, Butterfield served as President at Michigan Agricultural College for four years and was active in missionary endeavors in Asia before retiring. He died at his home in Amherst on Nov. 25, 1936.

The Butterfield Papers contain biographical materials, administrative and official papers of both of his presidencies, typescripts of his talks, and copies of his published writings. Includes correspondence and memoranda (with students, officials, legislators, officers of organizations, and private individuals), reports, outlines, minutes, surveys, and internal memoranda.

View the digital collection.

The Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive (BFA) is an archival home for Black women and their allies. Founded by Dr. Irma McClaurin, Black feminist anthropologist, academic administrator, award-winning poet and author, past president of Shaw University and leader in higher education, the BFA seeks to identify Black women from all walks of life who are artists, activists, and academics but may not be well known, and document their wide array of contributions at many levels: community, state, national, and global. In addition to being an ongoing resource for academic and community researchers, the BFA also aims to be a training center, where Black archivists can actively participate in their own history and uplift and protect the endangered legacy of Black women.

The BFA is an umbrella collection, made up of a growing and diverse group of collections documenting Black women, allies, movements, and organizations. Highlights include the papers of renown anthropologists Sheila Walker and Carolyn Martin Shaw; Belizean writer Zee Edgell; activist and educator Cheryl Evans, who founded the Black Pioneers Project documenting the experience of Black students at UMass Amherst during the late 1960s; Lawrence (Larry) Paros, a UMass alum and forerunner of the Alternative Education movement in America, past director of the 1968 Yale Summer High School (YSHS); and the papers of Dr. Irma McClaurin, BFA founder, which include her photographs of iconic Black figures.

Collections include:

• Zee Edgell Papers
• Cheryl Evans Papers
• Irma McClaurin Papers
• Lawrence Paros Papers
• Carolyn Martin Shaw Papers
• Sheila Walker Papers

UMass Amherst Black Pioneers T-Shirt logo, 2016

Moved to action after a successful and illuminating 2016 reunion of Black alumni of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, alumna Dr. Cheryl L. Evans (1968) decided to take on the critical project identified by the group, collecting and documenting the stories of the Black alumni who attended the University between 1960 and 1970. Dubbing these students “Black Pioneers,” given the dearth, and then growth, of Black students on campus during the decade, Evans used her connections with alumni and her history as a Black student leader to reach out about recording experiences for preservation and research purposes. In collaboration with Special Collections and University Archives, Evans began the “UMass Black Pioneers Project,” and sent an online questionnaire to around 85 alumni in September 2018. The survey addresses alumni’s backgrounds, academic and social experiences on campus, occasions of racial discrimination and activism, and current perceptions of the University and advice for students. Participation was voluntary, and is ongoing.

The UMass Black Pioneers Project Records contain some planning materials and correspondence for the project, and primarily consist of written answers made in response to the “UMass Black Pioneers Survey.” In addition to the questionnaire, participants were able to send in physical materials, or upload digital content, such as resumes, or videos of their responses, and the collection contains a few of these. Several participants willing to be interviewed were also connected with UMass Public History graduate students for oral histories in the Fall 2018 semester. These videos are a part of the record group, and there are plans to conduct additional interviews.

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.