Collections: F

For the better part of four decades, Nancy E. Foster was active in the struggle for social justice, peace, and political reform. From early work in civil rights through her engagement in political reform in Amherst, Mass., Foster was recognized for her work in the movements opposing war, nuclear power, and the assault on civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Locally, she worked with her fellow members of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst and with interfaith coalitions to address problems of hunger and homelessness.

Centered in western Massachusetts and concentrated in the last decade of her life (2000-2010), the Nancy Foster Papers includes a record of one woman’s grassroots activism for peace, civil liberties, and social justice. The issues reflected in the collection range from the assault on civil liberties after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to immigration, hunger and poverty, the Iraq Wars, and the conflict in Central America during the 1980s, and much of the material documents Nancy’s involvement with local organizations such as the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. The collection also contains a valuable record of Nancy’s participation in local politics in Amherst, beginning with the records of the 1972 committee which was charged with reviewing the Town Meeting.

An East German Prosecutor General, Carlos Foth was a key player in the legal effort to investigate and punish Nazi war criminals. For two decades beginning as a law student in Berlin in 1947, Foth was part of a team dedicated to the prosecution of former Nazis, and he contributed to the creation of an antifascist internationalist system quite distinct from the weaker efforts in West Germany. Having assisted in high profile cases such as those stemming from the Koepenicker Blutwoche (the SA-led pogrom in Berlin in June 1933), Foth found himself at the center of investigations that highlighted the tensions between the East and West German systems. In a series of cases in the early 1960s, East German prosecutors uncovered former Nazis working in the West German judiciary, culminating in the 1963 “show trial” conviction in absentia of Hans Globke, National Security Advisor to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who had been the author of Nazi racial purity laws. As department head for international relations beginning in 1972, Foth was engaged in negotiations between the German legal systems and in 1979 he was invited to assist in the investigative phase of war crimes trials against the Khmer Rouge. He left office after reaching retirement age in 1988.

The Carlos Foth Papers offer important documentation of East German attempts to hold former Nazis accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity and they provide insight into the operation of the East German legal system and its relations with the west. In addition to materials on prosecutions of SA Brownshirts involved in political violence during the Köpenicker Blutwoche, the collection includes files relating to prosecutions of West German officials accused of Nazi-era crimes and materials relating to Foth’s role as a consultant to the 1979 war crimes trials against the Khmer Rouge.

An East German actor, writer, and film director, and an insightful analyst of German culture and film history, Jörg Foth was born in Berlin on Oct. 31, 1949. After completing military service and working briefly in television, Foth entered the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen „Konrad Wolf“ in Postdam, graduating in 1977. During his long ascent through the East German film system, he worked as an assistant director at the DEFA Studio and in GDR television and collaborated with Ulrich Weiss and others. His directorial debut came in 1984 with the children’s film Das Eismeer Ruft, however it was another six years before he was permitted to direct his second film, Biologie!, the only DEFA feature ever to deal with environmental issues. A few months after he was promoted to Director, the East German political system collapsed and the DEFA studios were closed. Foth has since worked as a freelance director and writer for both film and television.

The Foth collection provides unique insight into East German cinema; the diverse career of a noted writer, director, and actor; and more generally, the shifting artistic environment during the last years of the DDR. Along with writing and research materials from many of Foth’s films, the collection includes a range of writing, ephemera, and on topics ranging from film theory, the theater, and literature to Marx, Stalin, and Lenin.

Assembled by Lynnette E. Foucher, this collection consists chiefly of cookbooks produced by food companies between the 1920s-1970s. These cookbooks reflect the changing role of women in the home as well as new food trends and innovative technology. Taken together, the collection offers a glimpse into the way meal preparation changed in the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century and how this change transformed the way we eat today.

A native of Salisbury, Massachusetts, Robert Fowler (b.1805) was a prosperous shipbuilder and merchant with a trade extending from Nova Scotia to the Gulf South. He and his wife Susan Edwards, whom he married in 1830, had at least four children.

Kept by Robert Fowler between 1831 and 1854, the volume includes both diary entries (primarily 1841-1846) and accounts. With occasional commentary on local political matters, commerce, weather, and family matters, the diary is largely a record of Fowler’s spiritual concerns and his wrestling with doctrinal matters and the relationship of religion and daily life. An ardent temperance man, he commented on religious topics ranging from the Millerite movement to the resurrection, salvation, and the duty of prayer.

Beginning as an informal gathering in the home of Margaret Welch in 1959, Framingham Friends Meeting of the Society of Friends evolved organizationally into a formal worship group under the care of Cambridge Monthly Meeting in 1961 and then a preparatory meeting (1964). It was set off as an independent monthly meeting in 1979.

A newer monthly meeting, Framingham is well documented through a continuous set of meeting minutes from 1983-2022 (with some extending back to 1963) and a long run of newsletters and directories of members. The minutes often include official reports and other documents.

The poet and essayist Robert Francis settled in Amherst, Mass., in 1926, three years after his graduation from Harvard, and created a literary life that stretched for the better part of half a century. An associate of Robert Frost and friend of many other writers, Francis occasionally worked as a teacher or lecturer, including a brief stint on the faculty at Mount Holyoke College, but he sustained himself largely through his writing, living simply in “Fort Juniper,” a cottage he built on Market Hill Road in North Amherst. A recipient of the Shelley Award (1939) and the Academy of American Poets award for distinguished poetic achievement (1984), Francis was a poet in residence at both Tufts (1955) and Harvard (1960) Universities. He died in Amherst in July 1987.
The Francis Papers contains both manuscript and printed materials, drafts and finished words, documenting the illustrious career of the poet. Of particular note is Francis’s correspondence with other writers, publishing houses, and readers, notably Paul Theroux. Also contains personal photographs and Francis family records and a small number of audio recordings of Francis reading his poetry. Letters from Francis to Regina Codey, 1936-1978, can be found in MS 314 along with two typescript poems by Francis.

Listen to interviews with Francis on Poems to a Listener", 1977-1978

For the tercentenary of the Massachusetts court system, Paul J. Liacos, Chief Justice of the the Supreme Judicial Court convened a 45-member Commission on the Future of the Courts (also called Reinventing Justice) to examine the court’s role and responsibilities for the next century. The commission was charged both with creating a new vision for justice and for proposing a way for the system to move toward that vision. Responding to this initiative, Franklin County attorney Diane H. Esser and Thomas T. Merrigan, the First Justice of the Orange District Court, established a Franklin County Futures Lab Task Force Proposal to focus on the specific needs in Franklin County. Approved in December 1993 with Esser and Merrigan as chairs, the Task Force worked intensively with community partners, issuing a dozen recommendations on topics ranging from court house facilities to juvenile justice, substance abuse, Appropriate Dispute Resolution, and child care services. Although not all of the recommendations were implemented, the success of their model for court and community collaboration resulted in the creation on a ongoing position of Community Relations Coordinator in 1998. The project continues to evolve to meet community needs, but has continued to reflect the restorative justice values and principles engaged from the beginning.

The records of the Reinventing Justice initiative in Franklin County reflect an intensive, two-decade long effort to facilitate engagement between the courts and the community in western Massachusetts and build a vision for courts in the coming century. In addition to planning, administrative, and grant-seeking records, the collection includes significant documentation of process of engaging community members, and materials relating to their recommendations in restorative justice, substance abuse projects, facilities, and victim-offender mediation.

H.J. Franklin was an expert cranberry grower and a trained entomologist, whose research centered on the bumble bee. Franklin would wed these two interests in his career at the University, where he studied the cranberry pollination habits of the bumble bee and oversaw the cultivation of cranberries at the University’s Cranberry Experiment Station at Wareham, which Franklin founded and directed from 1909 until he retired in 1953. Born in Guildford, Vermont in 1883, Franklin moved to Bernardston, Mass. when he was eleven, eventually attending the University of Massachusetts, where he earned his B.S in 1903, and Ph.D in 1912. Franklin spent his career and life with cranberries, owning and managing his own bogs in three eastern Massachusetts counties and working with cranberry producers to develop the industry. Franklin died in 1958 in Wareham, Mass.

The H.J. Franklin Papers document his research on the bumble bee as well as his work with cranberry producers. In the collection are reports from the cranberry grower’s association, published articles by Franklin on cranberries and the Bombidae, and reports from the State Agricultural Board on cranberry production.

The Franklin/Hampshire Health Care Coalition is one of forty grassroots organizations in Massachusetts that allied to form the Massachusetts Campaign for Single-Payer Health Care (Mass-CARE) in 1995. Concerned about the inequities of the U.S. health care system, Mass-CARE has been a key sponsor of the Massachusetts Medicare for All act, which would establish a single payer health care system providing comprehensive health care for all residents of Massachusetts.

The records of the Franklin/Hampshire Health Care Coalition are a reflection of grassroots advocacy in Massachusetts for single payer health care. The collection includes minutes of meetings, background and informational materials, and other documents, including some materials from founding members Arky Markham and Alice Swift.