Collections: mss

The Valley Women’s Union was established in 1974 by members of the Valley Women’s Center, Northampton, Massachusetts, who were committed to political change benefiting women. They were concerned that the Valley Women’s Center had become a static umbrella organization and that many of its formerly vital functions had been absorbed by local social service agencies The VWU sought to unify groups that were working for political change beneficial to women.

Records include newsletters, agendas for meetings, reports, position papers, and mailings.

During the early phases of second wave feminism (1968-1978), the Pioneer Valley served as a center for lesbian and feminist activity in western Massachusetts, and was home to over 400 hundred, often ad hoc, groups, such as the Abortion and Birth Control (ABC) Committee, ISIS Women’s Center, the Mudpie Childcare Cooperative, and the Springfield Women’s Center.

The records of the Valley Women’s History Collaborative document the activities of these groups as well as the efforts of the founders of the Women Studies program and department at UMass Amherst to preserve this history. Of particular value are the many oral histories conducted by the collaborative that record the history of women’s activism in the Pioneer Valley, especially as it relates to reproductive rights.

Tinsmith and plumber from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Mentions items he repaired and cleaned (stoves, furnaces, pots, pans, tinware, glassware, and crockery), goods sold (lamps, wash basins, kitchen utensils, shovels, fuel, and furnaces), occasional mention of payment with goods, lists of suppliers, and lists of customers, many of whom were prominent people in the community.

Friends began to gather for worship in Vassalboro, Maine, in 1780, shortly after Quakers began to settle the Kennebeck Valley to escape the American Revolution. Their numbers grew sufficiently to be granted states as a monthly meeting in 1787, and they have subsequently been the sponsor for a number of worship groups and preparatory meetings in central Maine, as well as the source from which five monthly meetings have been laid off.

The records of Vassalboro Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) are spotty and incomplete, but include minutes of meetings for business from 1950s through 1980s, sporadic financial records, and a substantial, but incomplete series of newsletters from 1987-2010.

Serving as a Quaker quarterly meeting for central Maine, Vassalboro Quarterly was set off from Falmouth Quarter in 1813. Over the years, it has coordinated nearly two dozen monthly meetings extending as far north and east as Cobscook. Farmington Quarter was set off from it in 1841, but returned in 1952.

The records for Vassalboro Quarterly are substantially incomplete, but document the Quaker meeting from the 1970s through 2000s. Among other records are a highly incomplete set of minutes (and “records,” which are the materials distributed during meetings); a more complete, but still partial run of newsletters; and the records of Ministry and Counsel from the mid-1990s through mid-2000s.

An Ecuadorian-born community activist, Carlos Vega moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, with his family in 1955. Settling in the working-class “Flats” neighborhood at a time when many of Holyoke’s factories were relocating to the southern United States or Asia, the Vegas were one of the few Spanish-speaking families in the city, but when Carlos began to work on a local tobacco farm at the age of 14, he encountered the new influx of migrants from Puerto Rico who had been lured to the Connecticut Valley as agricultural laborers by the Department of Labor. With the Puerto Rican economy declining in the 1960s, many of these farm workers settled permanently in Springfield and Holyoke, but they soon discovered that the declining economy there combined with racism and urban decay blocked their hopes for upward mobility. Radicalized by the anti-colonial, anti-war, and Civil Rights movements of the late 1960s, Vega emerged as an important community organizer in the 1970s, working with Fair Share, New Unity, Urban Ministry, and other progressive organizations. With a backdrop of riots, arson, and racial tension, these organizations focused on issues relevant to the Puerto Rican community, particularly voter education and registration, fair housing, and education. In 1982, Vega helped found Nueva Esperanza, a non-profit community development organization whose mission was to restore and maintain blighted buildings in South Holyoke. He worked with Nueva Esperanza for over 30 years, continuing until 2010 after a brain cancer diagnosis in 1995.  He survived until April 2012.

The materials in this collection reflect Vega’s interests in left wing movements in Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, South America and Africa from the 1960s through 1980s and include leaflets, pamphlets, books, and newsletters. The approximately 300 items offer sometimes scarce documentation of internationalist liberation movements such as the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the EFLNA in Eritrea. Of particular note is a small collection documenting Vega’s participation in the 1974 Venceremos Brigade and a collection of clippings, newsletters, notes, fliers, conference material, and newspapers from various groups such as New England Action Research, Friends of the Filipino People, The Latin American Student Association, and the Ethiopian Students Union of North America. Some printed materials are cataloged and housed with the rare books collection.

View the book collection

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

After receiving his doctorate from the University of Rhode Island for a study of the physiology and ecology of tintinids in 1984, Peter G. Verity joined the faculty at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. As a Professor of Biological Oceanography, Verity was interested broadly in the ecology of plankton and trophic interactions in the pelagic food web, studying the process of eutrophication and dissolved oxygen in the water column among other topics, and conducting a significant long-term analysis of nutrient variation in estuarine waters. Becoming deeply concerned about the future of oceanic environments and the accelerating decline of coastal ecosystems as a result of his research, Verity took on an increasingly active role in educating teachers about environmental issues. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nick Williams Award for Coastal Sustainability from the Center for a Sustainable Coast. Verity died unexpectedly at home on Dec. 31, 2009.

An important resource for marine ecology and scientific study of the environment, the Verity Papers contain an array of correspondence, research and grant proposals, manuscripts of papers, reprints, and notes of meetings.

An alumnus of both the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Boston College, Victor Aronow was involved with the anti-draft and anti-war movement during the Vietnam War, and the movement against U.S. involvement in Central America. Aronow was also involved with socialist, anarchist, and other leftist movements and organizations. Some of these organizations include the United States Socialist Labor Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the New America Movement. Most of his activism was focused in Massachusetts, but he also engaged with organizations that offered support to Central American movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Aronow practiced law, serving as defense counsel for Arthur Montour also called Kakwirakeron in U.S. vs. Kakwirakeron, as well as a member of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense team.

Aronow’s collection consists of a series of subject files containing magazines, books, leaflets, correspondence, clippings, newspapers, and fliers from a range of national and international leftist organizations. Aronow was a member of The Boston Draft Resistance Group, Newton Draft Counseling Center, and the American Friends Service Committee. As a member, Aronow collected files from these groups including correspondence, publications, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings, and his personal notes. While practicing law, Aronow gathered court records for cases he worked on, including both his work as a member of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense team, where he worked defending the rights of the Oglala Sioux tribe members who were involved in the attempted liberation of Wounded Knee in 1973, as well as a member of the defense counsel in U.S. vs. Kakwirakeron in 1990. The collection contains files gathered from multiple trials related to Wounded Knee including correspondence between lawyers and defendants, court records and legal filings, newsletters, press releases, funding appeals, and fliers.

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

Emerging out of the College Art Association, the Art Libraries Society of North America, and other related organizations, the Visual Resources Association was established formally in 1982 to further research and education in the field of image management. A broadly multidisciplinary organization, they have played an important role in public and professional discussions of issues on intellectual property rights relating to visual materials and have been instrumental in the development of protocols for dissemination of digital materials and standards of cataloging supporting the ideal of broad public access to cultural information.

The records of the VRA chart the gradual origins and growth of a professional organization dedicating to establishing standards for visual materials and promoting access to cultural information. The records begin prior to the official establishment of VRA, when the group was a semi-formal association of interested professionals, and documents the expanding disciplinary scope of the organization, its adaptation to the evolving demands of a digital environment, and its increasing commitment to expanding public access and literacy in visual materials.

Eastern Europe’s socialist republics of the Cold War era strove to establish national cultures that reflected communist objectives and withstood Western influences. In order to promote collectivist ideals, state authorities supervised the production of literary works, motion pictures, television programs, sound recordings, and other forms of cultural content. To centralize the manufacturing of music records for its national market of sixteen million citizens, the GDR maintained a state-owned record company. Formally under the supervision of Ministerium für Kultur (Ministry of Culture), VEB Deutsche Schallplatten (German Records, NOE) provided the GDR audience with classical, traditional, and popular music as well as literary and educational recordings.

Mandated to cover a broad spectrum of content, Deutsche Schallplatten established separate divisions to develop artists and repertoire, releasing the vast majority of its works on five major labels:

• Amiga: popular recordings for all age groups
• Eterna: classical and political recordings
• Litera: literary recordings like audio books for adults and children
• Nova: recordings that reflected socialist lifestyles
• Schola: educational recordings for use in schools

Apart from the producers affiliated with these labels, the company’s creative division also included graphic designers who crafted cover art and musicologists who documented the growth of the respective catalogs. Counting managers, administrators, technologists, and the sizeable workforce of its industrial plants, Deutsche Schallplatten after the mid-1970s had around 800 employees. Yet, in the course of German reunification and the privatization of nationally owned enterprises, the enterprise lost its cultural relevancy and failed economically. Ultimately, competing firms acquired the catalogs of Amiga and Eterna, which encompassed the master tapes of and exploitation rights to Deutsche Schallplatten’s commercially most viable recordings.

As the former monopolist underwent its eventual dissolution in the early 1990s, a time when public interest in GDR culture hit an all-time low, most of its material legacy was to be discarded. Aware that a unique cultural heritage was earmarked for destruction, the former music producer Volkmar Andrä intervened to preserve decommissioned recordings and files. With assistance from Sven Kube, an academic historian who has reconstructed Deutsche Schallplatten’s evolution, these materials were transferred to UMass Amherst.

Comprised chiefly of sound recordings and text files, but featuring other media types, this collection offers unique insights into the music life of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the early 1960s and the country’s demise in 1990.