Collections: mss

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

A lifelong activist for social and environmental justice, Kevin McVeigh was among the founders of two prominent antinuclear and environmental organizations in Northern California, the Pelican Alliance (1978) and Interhelp (1981). After relocating to Massachusetts, he continued in environmental activism, founding the Green River Center in Greenfield in 1987, but in response to the intense public health crisis, he gradually shifted his focus to become an advocate for persons with HIV/AIDS. As a founder of the AIDS Community Group of Franklin County (Mass.), he has coordinated AIDS services for Tapestry Health, a not-for-profit organization providing affordable health care to in Western Massachusetts.

The McVeigh Papers document a career as a committed antinuclear activist and advocate for persons with HIV/AIDS. The collection includes organizational materials from each of the groups McVeigh helped found: The Pelican Alliance, Interhelp, the Green River Center, the AIDS Community Group of Franklin County, and Tapestry Health, as well as correspondence, newspaper clippings, journals and magazines related to the issues concerning, notes from HIV/AIDS caregivers’ conferences, materials relating to men’s support groups, and other material related to environmental protection and anti-war activism. Finally, the collection includes audio files of an oral history (approximately two hours) conducted with McVeigh in July 2010, and a small collection of antinuclear books from small publishing houses.

A pioneer in African American history, August Meier was a model of an engaged academic, a prolific writer, active participant in the civil rights struggle, and staunch member of the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE. While pursuing graduate work at Columbia under Henry Steele Commager, Meier taught at a succession of Historical Black Colleges, including Tougaloo (1945-1949), Fisk (1953-1956), and Morgan State (1957-1964). His dissertation, completed in 1957, became the first of eleven books he wrote or edited, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915 (1963), with much of later work conducted in collaboration with Elliott Rudwick and John Bracey. Meier joined the faculty at Kent State University in 1967 and remained there until his retirement in 1993. His much-anticipated monograph on the history of the NAACP had not been completed at the time of death in 2003.

Organized in two discrete parts, the Meier collection bookends a long career in the study of African American history. The first part of the collection is centered on Meier’s association with the Pioneer Youth summer camp in Rifton, N.Y., and his growing consciousness of the fundamental problems of race and class in American society, with some materials from his wartime years as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. The second part of the collection includes books collected by Meier during his academic career, mostly on African American history and culture. Titles range from works on the Civil Rights movement to literature and poetry of the late nineteenth century and Harlem Renaissance, works on slavery and antislavery, race theory, the South, and African American education and religion.

View the book titles

Formed in the wake of investigative journalist Jessica Mitford’s 1958 book exposé of exploitative funeral industry practices, The American Way of Death the Memorial Society of New Hampshire was registered as a non-profit organization on Dec 12, 1963 in Epping, NH as a watchdog and consumer advocacy organization for consumers of funeral services. Like similar organizations around the country, the Memorial Society was federated with other similar organizations to create the Continental Association of Funeral and Memorial Societies (CAFMS). When Canadian groups separated from CAFMS, the federation name changed to Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA), and later (2000) the Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA). As part of their work, they: conducted surveys of funeral home prices, generated newsletters, informational pamphlets, and end of life planning documents, organized informational programs, lobbied local and state legislatures to reform laws around funeral and burial practices. Their tax exempt status was revoked in 2011 after not filing 990 tax forms for three consecutive years.

This small collection consists of records from the early 1990s to early 2000s and contains meeting minutes, financial reports, and materials produced by the group such as: newsletters, pamphlets, planning documents, and funeral home surveys.

See also:
Funeral Consumer’s Alliance of Western Massachusetts

In 1982, Steven Botkin, who had done his doctoral work in the social justice program at UMass Amherst’s School of Education, co-founded the Men’s Resource Connection (MRC) in Amherst, Mass., to promote healthy ideas of masculinity and male leadership by challenging harmful stereotypes involving violence, sexism, and oppression and creating a local network of men as well as of men and women. In 1983 MRC started a newsletter, Valley Men, which became the magazine Voice Male, with a circulation of 10,000. Incorporated as a nonprofit in 1988, MRC developed programs to serve and educate men, with a focus on violence and domestic violence in particular, notably Men Overcoming Violence (MOVE), later called Moving Forward. In 1993 the MRC changed its name to the Men’s Resource Center of Western Massachusetts, and by 2005 it was known as the Men’s Resource Center for Change. Both a social service agency and a social justice organization, MRC made an impact in communities around and far beyond western Massachusetts. It offered workshops, classes, support groups, trainings, and consultations for adult men and youths, on issues relating to violence, anger, surviving abuse, emotional well-being, race, fatherhood, sexuality, and more. In 2016, after several years of financial struggle in the wake of the recession of the late 2000s, MRC announced its plans to merge with Men’s Resources International (MRI), founded by Botkin in 2004, to form MERGE for Equality, Inc. Voice Male, now a national magazine, has a robust online presence as an independent publication.

The MRC Records span most of the organization’s history and include correspondence and memos, background reading and training material, fliers and other ephemera, annual reports, newsletters and copies of Voice Male, clippings (including Voice Male articles organized by subject), and audio and video tapes.

Firm based in Portland, Maine, that supplied “merchandize” to local merchants in Maine, as well as in several locations in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and northeastern Massachusetts. Firm undertook international “adventures” as well. Ledger includes general accounts for merchandise, bills receivable and payable, cash, profit and loss, storage, and truckage, as well as accounts generated with certain ships.

Of the six letters that make up this collection, five date from 1862-1863 and are addressed to Frank Metcalf, teacher and soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. These letters are from friends and family in New York, and relay local news, in particular updates on area schools and students. The final letter dated June 30, 1866 is from Hannah J. McLintock, to her brother, John.

Photocopies of typescripts of plays by Mexican playwrights, such as Carlos Ancira, Wilberto Canton, Marcela del Rio, and Margarita Urueta.

Adolph and Helen Meyer, Mass. Federation Presentee Ball, at Hotel Statler Hilton Boston, 1959 Nov.

A founding member of the Massachusetts Federation of Polish Womens’ Clubs, holding every post in the organization, Helen (Gorecka) Meyer (1908-2003) was incredibly active in the Polish community in Boston, Cambridge, and later Cape Cod. Born in Poland, Helen came to America at the age of three, living with her parents in Lynn and Wilmington, before moving to Cambridge. She married Adolph Meyer in 1928, and both were important business owners (establishments included the White Eagle Restaurant in Cambridge, the Log Cabin Restaurant in Waltham, South Boston Liquors, and Al’s Bottled Liquors) and community members. Honored by the Mass. Federation of Polish Womens’ Clubs in 1963 as their “Woman of the Year,” Helen was also actively involved in the St. Joseph and Sacred Heart Societies of St. Hedwig’s Parish, local and national Polish Roman Catholic Union groups, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Presentation Balls.

Compiled from Helen Meyer’s papers by her nephew Stan Bartosiak, this collection of personal, family, and community papers – including published materials, photographs, slides, correspondence, audiovisual material, news clippings and ephemera – documents the Polish community in the Boston area from the 1930s through the 1990s. Some records concerning the Meyer, Gorecka, and connected families are from earlier. Various Polish clubs and organizations are represented through society badges, souvenir programs, financial records, correspondence, and photographs, with the Kosciuszko Foundation Presentation Balls particularly well documented. Additional audiovisual recordings document Bartosiak and his work an educator.

Opposition to fluoridation of public water supplies in Massachusetts swelled in the 1950s, culminating in passage of a law in 1958 mandating that towns that wished to fluoridate would first put the proposal to public referendum. The primary force advocating for this law was the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association, an organization founded and directed by Norman and Mary-Louise (Shadman) Meyer of Wellesley and which remained the leading anti-fluoridation group in the Boston area for twenty years. Having met and married while students at Harvard (1943) and Wellesley, respectively, the Meyers were tireless supporters of civic activities ranging from educational and environmental causes to public television (through the Citizens for Public Television in Boston), and disability (Norman served as director of the Protestant Guild for the Blind in Watertown), and they were stalwart members of the Wellesley town meeting. Norman Meyer died in Tortola in 1986, with Mary-Louise following in 1999.

The Meyer collection is a rich assemblage of letters and other materials documenting the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association and the struggle against fluoridation in Wellesley, Newton, and other communities in eastern Massachusetts. Central figures in the movement, the Meyers maintained a wide correspondence with other activists throughout the region and published and disseminated information on the dangers of flourides in the water supply.

Originally a proponent of fluoridating the water supply, the dentist Robert J.H. Mick became an ardent opponent following animal studies he conducted in the late 1940s. Although he alleged that he was threatened with court martial for his views while serving in the Army in Germany between 1953 and 1956, Mick has remained a high profile professional critic of fluoridation, famously offering a $100,000 prize to any one who could prove that fluoridation of water was healthy. The prize remained unclaimed. Mick ran as a Republican for congress in New Jersey in 1970, largely as an antifluoridation crusader.

The Mick Papers contain a small quantity of correspondence, talks, and affidavits relating to a deacdes-long career in the antifluoridation movement, as well as publications and other materials relating to fluoridation of water supplies.