Collections: mss

Allen Hale Johnson, known professionally as Hale Johnson, was born on December 25th of 1937 to parents Louise and Lawrence Johnson. Hale reflects on his childhood, writing “The key is to have passion. What a gift that is. My parents gave me a little talent and I’ve tried not to abuse it. I feel lucky”. This appreciative nature and desire to nurture his creativity would go on to define all corners of Hale’s life – from his career, to his marriage, to the way he loved his golden retrievers.

He married his wife, Lorraine Karaffy on October 7, 1961 at Narrow Memorial Methodist Church of Maplewood, New Jersey. Hale spent some of the early years of his marriage stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey, with both the ins and outs of his experiences there as well as the dynamics of his relationship beautifully encapsulated within the abundance of correspondence within this collection.

Their lives, both as a unit and as individuals, were defined by their love for art, beautiful places, and each other. Lorraine went on to work as a florist, spending her free time giving back to the community through volunteer work at places like the Greenfield Public Library. Hale went on to have a successful career painting very detailed landscapes – booking one-man exhibitions with galleries such as, but not limited to, The Tilting Windmills, The Harrison Gallery, William Baczek Fine Arts, and The Greylock Gallery. The subject matter of these works typically revolve around Western Massachusetts, broadly New England, and coastal Maine, aiming to capture the richness of the landscapes, void of people.

Lorraine and Hale eventually settled at a home in Colrain, Massachusetts, which is where they would stay for the remainder of their adult lives. This property and the many people who would come to visit it over the years, are a recurring subject in his personal photographs.

Hale and Lorraine stayed together until her passing on November 10, 2019. Hale made a large donation of $500,000 in her name to the Greenfield Public Library, which at the time was undergoing a major reconstruction project. The reading room of the Greenfield Public Library is now dedicated to Lorraine Johnson due to this hefty contribution.

The A. Hale Johnson Papers consists of a mix of documents and ephemera spanning from the mid-19th century to 2022. Included in the collection is correspondence, records and photographs covering two main categories: his professional work as a landscape painter and his personal life, spanning from his time as a young man in the military all the way through his older years as an established member of his community.

The sociologist and writer Allan Johnson dedicated his career to exploring the impact of power and privilege in the U.S. and the overarching system of patriarchy. A serious poet and writer by the time he entered Dartmouth College, Johnson pursued studies in sociology, completing his dissertation on women’s roles in Mexico City at the University of Michigan in 1972. He joined the sociology faculty at Wesleyan University, but left academia to write. He later taught at Hartford College for Women, where he wrote a series of important works, including Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (2005), The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise (1997), and Human arrangements (1986), all of which earned several new editions. His first novel, The First Thing and the Last appeared in 2010, followed by Nothing Left to Lose (2011), and a memoir, Not From Here (2011). Johnson also developed a practice as a corporate trainer and public speaker around issues of race, diversity, and women’s studies. He died at home in Canton, Conn., on December 24, 2017, of metastatic lymphoma. He was 71.

A writer from an early age, Allan Johnson left a collection reflecting his notable range and depth. The collection includes significant contributions to sociology and the study of race, class, and gender, as well published and unpublished creative work, ranging from poetry from his college years to his memoirs and novels.

Ellen M. Jones was born in Lewis, N.Y., near the western shore of Lake Champlain, on Sept. 29, 1840. The daughter of a farmer originally from Vermont, Jones attended school in nearby Keeseville and witnessed a brother, Albert, go off to fight in the Civil War.

As a young woman living on her family’s farm in upstate New York, Ellen Jones kept a brief, rapidly written diary detailing local and family news as the nation edged into Civil War. In addition to concerns over her fragile health and the passing of local men and women, she includes a nicely detailed description of a Catholic wedding, 1858, a visit to John Brown’s grave in North Elba on July 4, 1860, and several brief allusions to her brothers and friends serving in the Union Army.

Rufus Jones: A Luminous Life documentary

The 2001 documentary Rufus Jones: A Luminous Life was produced by members of Wellesley Friends Meeting in Massachusetts. Documentary film maker Sharon Mullally recorded interviews with people who knew Jones as a colleague, teacher, or mentor, and with Quaker scholars about placing Jones’s life and legacy into context. Mullally and Barbara Attie served as Producers and Directors, and Frederic G. Corneel served as Executive Producer of the 40-minute documentary. A 28-minute broadcast version aired on PBS in 2002.

Rufus Matthew Jones (1863-1948) was a Quaker leader, mystic, philosopher, and activist, born in Maine. One of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century, Jones was widely published; helped found the American Friends Service Committee; was a world traveler, lecturer, and learner; helped instigate the Quäkerspeisung feeding program after World War I; and worked to heal the divide between two branches of American Quakerism that split in the mid-19^th century. Jones attended the Providence Friends School in Rhode Island and Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and having obtained an MA from Harvard, returned to Haverford as a professor of Psychology and Philosophy.

The Rufus Jones: A Luminous Life Collection consists of the raw, edited, and final versions of the materials used to create the documentary, Rufus Jones: A Luminous Life. It contains videotaped interviews with people who knew Jones as well as Quaker scholars, archival film footage and archival audio of Jones and the places he lived and worked, as well as several copies of the completed documentary. Formats include Betacam SP, DVCAM, and DVD.

One of the most respected historians of soccer in North America, Colin Jose was the official historian at the National Soccer Hall of Fame from 1997-2007 and subsequently at The Soccer Hall of Fame in Vaughan, Ontario. Born in England and a resident of London, Ontario, Jose has been a scrupulous researcher in the sport’s history for over four decades, doing research in an area in which documentation is often sparse. His nine books include The Encyclopedia of American Soccer History (written with Roger Allaway and David Litterer), two books on the North American Soccer League, and works on the early American Soccer League, soccer in Canada, and the history of the U.S. in the World Cup. The US Soccer Federation gives out an annual media award named in Jose’s honor.

The Jose collection contains a wealth of material documenting the history of North American soccer from the early 20th century to the present. The heart of the collection consists of an extensive series of books, magazines, and newspapers on the sport, including fine runs of Soccer News from the 1950s and photocopies of the ASL News (1930s-1960s). The collection also includes correspondence and promotional materials from the Soccer Hall of Fame, a variety of league and team media guides, game programs from various leagues (NASL, International Soccer League, 1960s-1990s), press releases from various teams (particularly from the Washington Darts in the 1960s-1970s), biographical files on players and coaches from the 1920s-1950s (approx 50 files), and research files on soccer in the Olympics, World Cup, USSF, ASL, and NASL. Most of the material from prior to 1960 is supplied in photocopy.

Father and son wood turners, manufacturers of ladders, and general wood workers from the Loudville section of Westhampton, Massachusetts. Includes names of customers and businesses (bulk of the accounts are with local lumber and furniture dealers S.M. Smith Co., E.H. Lyman, Medad Pomeroy, and Charles Loud & Co.), items sold (such as bureaus, tables, and lumber), furniture that they repaired, and supply items which they acquired (such as varnish, stain, glass, tacks). Also contains documentation of employee payment, flour, tow, sugar, and coffee purchases, and employee lost work days.

The organization Justice for Woody (JFW) was formed in December of 2001 in the weeks immediately following the death of Robert “Woody” Woodward, a political and environmental activist, social worker, teacher, and mountaineer. JFW seeks not only to honor Woody’s legacy, but also to advocate for a fair an independent investigation. The collection consists primarily of newspaper articles from various New England papers as well as Attorney General Sorrell’s Report and an independent analysis of it.

An artist, writer, and activist for the disabled, Paul S. Kahn was born on Nov. 6, 1945, into a second-generation family of Jewish immigrants in Auburndale, Mass. Early in life, Kahn rebelled against the perceived “powerlessness” of the neuromuscular disorder with which he was born, pursuing an artistic, academic, and activist life. While studying drawing, painting, and sculpture at Boston University and earning a MA in counseling at Northeastern (1982), Kahn became an activist in the independent living movement and a pioneer in advocating for personal care assistance. Living independently from 1979, he worked as staff therapist at the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, as leader of a support group for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and as a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Advisory Commission on Disability Policy. In 1980, Kahn met Ruth Stern, who would become his frequent collaborator and wife of 21 years. As Kahn’s physical condition weakened after 1987 and he became dependent upon a ventilator, his creative focus shifted increasingly from art to writing and editing. The last two decades of his life were remarkably productive, resulting in over twenty plays and dozens of published essays and poems, and he was the long-time editor of the newsletter Disability Issues. Kahn died on Jan. 1, 2010.

Paul Kahn’s papers are a reflection of the intensely creative life of a committed activist. The collection centers on Kahn’s literary work, including manuscripts of his plays, essays, and poetry, but it includes numerous examples of his artwork and a number of home movies and tape recordings from his childhood.

Founded in Amherst, Mass., by Paula Green and associates in 1994, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding addresses the global challenges of ethnic, religious, and political conflict. Often partnering with other regional, governmental, educational, or religious organizations, the Center regularly conducts courses, workshops, and other programs with the goal of addressing the root causes of conflict, preventing escalation, and fostering reconciliation. From their early efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo, they have branched out to more than twenty countries, including Afghanistan, Nepal, South Africa, and Palestine.

The Karuna Center collection is a record of an industrious organization committed to building peace internationally. The Center retains records of each international program, including copies of materials used during training and workshops and photographs and summary reports of their activities.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Denise Karuth and Fred Pelka are activists and historians of the disability rights movement based in Massachusetts. Both are graduates of SUNY Buffalo, while Karuth holds a masters in rehabilitation counseling from Boston State College and a masters in divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge. Karuth came into activism through her church’s involvement in the civil rights movement and her own experience as a student dealing with blindness and multiple sclerosis at the State University of New York at Buffalo. After moving to Boston, her activism continued in efforts by the disability community to secure accessible and affordable mass transit in Massachusetts, and she has been involved with a broad spectrum of disability campaigns and organizations, serving as a peer counselor for people with disabilities, as Executive Director of Boston Self-Help Center, as a consultant on disability issues for the Human Genome Initiative, as a grant writer at the Stavros Center for Independent Living, and as Chair of the Governor’s Commission on Accessible Transportation under Gov. Michael Dukakis. She has also been an advocate for people who are homeless and was a principal founder of the First Church Shelter of the First Church in Cambridge. Karuth’s lifelong partner Fred Pelka, himself a person with disabilities, became involved in disability rights activism in 1983 while working at the Boston Center for Independent Living, and has made an impact as an editor and prolific author since. A 2004 Guggenheim Fellow, he has written three books on disability issues: The ABC-CLIO Companion to the Disability Rights Movement (1997), The Civil War Letters of Charles F. Johnson, Invalid Corps (2004), and What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (2012). His fourth book, A Different Blaze, was published by Hedgerow Books in 2014, and is his first published poetry.

The Karuth and Pelka collection documents thirty years of social justice activism in Massachusetts centered on the movement for disability rights. Beginning in the1980s struggle for accessibility in transportation, the collection reflects the breadth of Karuth’s commitments and work on issues ranging from apartheid and US imperialism to homelessness and HIV/AIDS, and her work with organizations such as First Church in Cambridge, Amnesty International, Not Dead Yet, the Governor’s Council of Accessible Transportation, and the Boston Self Help Center. Pelka’s part of the collection contains extensive research and background material, notes, and drafts for each of his books, including lengthy transcripts of interviews with pioneers in disability rights.