Collections: mss

In the late 1990s, MassEquality was formed as a coalition of advocacy groups that sought to build legislative support for same-sex marriage and gay rights in Massachusetts. Formally incorporated as a 501(c)4 advocacy organization in late 2001, the coalition hired its first employee, Campaign Coordinator Marty Rouse, in late 1993, and achieved a landmark success that November when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that the state may not “deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.” On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to allow equal marital rights to same-sex couples. Since that time, MassEquality has continued to champion marriage equality nationally.
The MassEquality Records document the origins, operations, and activism of one of the leading organizations in New England advocating for marriage rights and civic equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation. The collection includes some material generated by the Freedom to Marry Coalition, a partner in the coalition, and a series of large banners and posters, some of which were displayed during the event celebrating the arrival of marriage equality in Massachusetts.

The farmer Nathaniel Maynard was born in Marlborough (Worcester County), Mass., on Feb. 27, 1780, the eldest of four children of Joseph Maynard and Lovina Barnes. By 1804, when he married Rachel (Hill) of North Brookfield, Nathaniel was already a resident of Leverett, where he had apparently moved with his brother William. Nathaniel and Rachel had four children: Ira B. Maynard (1810-1896), Alvin (1813-1818), Emeline Dudley (1815-1901), and Joseph Bartlett Maynard (1817-1881).

This small volume is a hybrid production. Roughly the first half of the volume consists of relatively standard exercises for learning arithmetic and business activities, including calculating weights, measures, currencies, finances, and interest rates. The remainder consists of accounts, recording a variety of work performed by Maynard, ranging from farm labor (sale of potatoes, plowing and planting, working with oxen, slaughtering, and chopping wood) to weaving (“sheeting”) and especially mending or making shoes.

Beginning in 1969, the New York-based journalist Anna Mayo wrote a column, “Geiger Counter,” for the Village Voice, that became a sounding board for the antinuclear movement of the 1970s. With roots in community resistance to Columbia University’s plans to install a Triga-type reactor in the middle of New York City, Mayo covered the “nuclear horror stories that the New York Times neglected,” as she later wrote, including Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. A change in ownership at the Voice and ongoing pressure from the nuclear industry led to her being forced out in 1989, although it did not end her commitment to the cause. She contributed to publications such as the Texas Observer, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Kursbach, and Liberation (Paris) until the time of her death in March 2016.

The Mayo Papers are an assemblage of writing, research notes, and and some correspondence documenting Anna Mayo’s career as an antinculear journalist. The files include information on major figures in the antinuclear movement, including John Gofman and Ernest Sternglass, and include a special emphasis on the accident at Three Mile Island.

The archaeological anthropologist Alan McArdle received his masters degree (1975) from UMass Amherst for a demographic study of 17th century Hadley, Mass., followed by a doctorate (1986) on late 19th century mortality change and industrialization in the region. He remained at his alma mater for most of his career, becoming Associate Director of Analytical Studies in the Office of Institutional Research, and has been active in local historic preservation efforts.

McArdle took extensive photographs of colonial cemeteries in Hadley, Mass., and in nearby towns Amherst, Belchertown, and Shutesbury, as well as additional images in Concord, Mass., and in Kennebunkport, Wells, and York, Maine.

Dr. Irma McClaurin is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is an award-winning author, poet, activist, anthropologist, HipHop Mom and mentor, and CEO of Irma McClaurin Solutions. A woman of many talents, Dr. Irma is a past president of Shaw University and a former Program Officer for Education and Scholarship at the Ford Foundation. She was also the founding executive director of the University of Minnesota’s first Urban Research Outreach-Engagement Center, including a 21,000 sf renovation, and an Associate Vice President with tenure in the Anthropology Dept. Dr. Irma was also the first Black faculty member to be tenured in anthropology through the ranks at the University of Florida, where she was an affiliate of African Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, Afro-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies. After serving as Deputy Provost at Fisk University, while on leave from UF, she became the inaugural Mott Distinguished Chair in Women’s Studies at Bennett College for Women. She founded its Africana Women’s Studies Program. Dr. Irma also was a Senior faculty and coach at the US government’s Federal Executive Institute and was Chief Diversity Officer at Teach For America. An acclaimed Zora Neale Hurston scholar, she appears in the PBS documentary “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space.” Dr. Irma has an MFA in English and an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 2023, her alma mater, Grinnell College, awarded her the Honorary Doctorate of Social Studies.

Once hailed by Sports Illustrated as “the most powerful man in sport,” Mark Hume McCormack directly engineered the growth of money and media in modern professional sport. After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a B.A. in French and receiving a law degree from Yale, McCormack joined the Cleveland-based law firm of Arter, Hadden, Wykoff, and Van Duzer in 1957. An accomplished golfer in college, McCormack remained close to the game, qualifying for both the British and U.S. amateur championships and the U.S. Open in the 1950s.  While working as a lawyer and entrepreneur, he leapt to prominence by striking a deal with a legendary handshake to represent Arnold Palmer in 1960. With that auspicious start, McCormack soon added golfers Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus to his roster of clients, followed by a long succession of notable international sports figures and celebrities from Formula-1 driver Jackie Stewart, Olympic skier Jean-Claude Killy, tennis stars Billy Jean King and Pete Sampras to Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II and models Kate Moss and Gisele Bundchen.  McCormack quickly added corporations and sporting events such as Wimbledon, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, and Rolex as clients in sponsorship, licensing, event management, and media deals. These clients became the basis of IMG Worldwide, Inc., forming one of the largest management, media, and marketing companies in the world. The author of a dozen books on management and sport, McCormack became a famous figure himself as a business man, negotiator, and deal-maker before passing away in 2003.

With a growing collection of approximately 2,500 boxes of records that represent the personal life of Mark H. McCormack and the intertwined corporate records of IMG, the McCormack Papers provide an inside look at the last 50 years of the business of professional sport. The collection contains correspondence, memos, drafts, reports, contracts, research files, marketing materials, and memorabilia. The collection is arriving in stages and is currently being processed. Some materials are restricted.

See the blog Mark H. McCormack Collection

Merchant who owned a dry goods and general merchandise shop in Easton, New York. Daybook representing purchases by hundreds of customers (some of whom were from among the region’s Quaker community) primarily from Easton, South Easton, and Cambridge, listed by surname, as well as lists of a wide variety of dry goods including some textiles identified by town of origin.

A psychic medium entertainer for more than 30 years, Gary McKinstry received his doctorate, Philosophy in Religion, at the Universal Life Church Modesto, California in 1999, and was ordained as a Universal Life Minister.  That same year, he with his wife Virginia established their company, GVM Productions. Certified as a professional Tarot Reader C.P.T.R. from the American Tarot Association, McKinstry went on to become a Certified Hypnotherapist with the Indian Mountain Meditation Center, New Bedford, Massachusetts, to learn the inner workings of the mind in 2000 and 2002. As a paranormal specialist from 2005–2008, McKinstry worked as an Extraordinary Case Manager for Orion Paranormal managing the process and research of ghost hunting cases.

McKinstry’s oral history with Marc Peloquin was recorded in six parts and covers a range of topics including: psychedelic vs. self-hypnosis, white and black magic, feminine energy vs. masculine energy, reading tarot and playing cards, and destiny.

I was born in Washington, D.C., in an unwed mother’s home. I spent my earliest months living with my maternal grandmother and two teenage aunts–one of whom was abusive. My mother married my step-father in 1960; I was eleven years old when I discovered he was not my biological father. My mother suffered from psychotic schizophrenia; my step-father was frequently violent in our home; my younger, half-brother struggled with a severe learning disability, early drug addiction, and later untreated paranoid schizophrenia. After years of physical and sexual abuse, I escaped my destructive, troubled family when I was fourteen–having previously run away twice. I became a ward of the state of Maryland (my family had moved into Prince George’s County when I was much younger). I lived with three foster families until I was nineteen. I was determined to use education as a way out of poverty and violence. I attended Prince George’s Community College, then the University of Maryland in College Park where I earned a BA in Hearing and Speech Sciences in 1982. I worked at the radical Maryland Food Collective from 1981 to 1984 which profoundly impacted my life: politically, socially, and sexually. In 1985, I moved to Plainfield, Vermont, where I attended graduate school at Goddard College, receiving an MFA in Writing and Women’s Literature in 1987. After teaching for five years in Boston, at Fayerweather Street School and at the Jamaica Plain Community Centers–Adult Learning Program, I went to Massachusetts College of Art, earning a BFA in Three Dimensional Fibers in 1997. I lived for a year in Germany, 1980-1981, and in Honduras, 1997-1998, where I taught cognitively disabled adults and 8th graders, respectively. In 2002, after living in Boston for four more years, I moved to Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, Virginia. During my long membership, I left twice for extended periods. In 2006-2007, I traveled for eight months in the U.S. and in New Zealand. In 2014, I spent seven months in Amherst and in Boston working on my papers, followed by four months of travel across country and back visiting loved ones as I wrote my autobiography. In the beginning of 2015, I again made Twin Oaks my home.

My collection consists of nearly 300 journals (which include copies of my letters sent), all correspondence received since 1972, many of my artist books, as well as some of my other art work. My bequest is also comprised of my educational documents, my personal health records, my photographs, some family papers, Twin Oaks ephemera, a family tree, a friendship web, a few favorite books, two interviews, etc. What I have written and saved since I was twelve years old fills 84 linear feet: it is my life’s work. I have given, and will continue to give, my papers to UMass Amherst for safekeeping and so that my life–as an incest and battering survivor, as someone raised working class, as a daughter of a mentally-ill mother, as a radical feminist, as a diarist, as an avid letter writer, as an artist, as a bisexual, as a woman who chose neither to be a wife nor a mother, as an attentive niece, as a communitarian, as a traveler, and as a devoted friend–will not be erased.

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.