Collections: O

Stephen Baery Oates was born on January 5, 1936, in Pampa Texas, and earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He was a member of the UMass Amherst History Department from 1968 to 1997, when he retired. He authored consequential, award-winning biographies of major 19^th and 20^th century figures among his seventeen books on American history. As Paul Murray Kendall Professor of Biography, Dr. Oates held one of the first academic chairs in biography in the country. His many awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellow, Christopher Award, Barondess/Lincoln Award, and a Distinguished Teaching Award from UMass among many others. Dr. Oates was a popular guest lecturer at colleges, universities, societies, and associations throughout the country, and made numerous appearances on radio and television, most notable in Ken Burns’ epic PBS documentary The Civil War. He consulted on projects for various commercial and university presses, as well as for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Oates was a member of the Society of American Historians, American Antiquarian Society, and Phi Beta Kappa. He died on August 20, 2021.

The papers of Stephen B. Oates document his career as a biographer and faculty member at UMass Amherst. Materials include research notes, correspondence, articles, drafts and proofs of publications, lectures and address, fellowship and grant applications, book reviews, teaching and course notes, awards and photographs.

Upon his death in 1822, Obadiah Brown bequeathed $100,000 from his sizable estate to support the Friends Boarding School in Providence, R.I., with much of the rest endowing a charitable fund that bears his name. A committed Quaker and philanthropist like his father Moses, Obadiah stipulated that the annual income from his benevolent fund be directed “principally for the benefit of our religious society” and assist in spreading “our Religious Principles where they are little known.” Independent of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends and administered by twelve trustees, the Fund over the years has supported Quaker education, the publication and distribution of religious literature, and other projects that provide “benefits to the Religious Society,” including work in peace and social justice. The Trustees also administer a separate fund with similar purpose established by 1914 bequest from Sarah J. Swift.

Beginning with records documenting the establishment of the Benevolent Fund, the collection documents nearly two centuries of philanthropic support for Quaker causes. In addition to copies of Brown’s will and the incorporating documents and by-laws, the collection includes a nearly comprehensive set of Trustees’ minutes and treasurer’s reports, with some supporting documents.

A resident of New Ipswich, N.H., Clark Obear was an ardent supporter of the temperance and antislavery movements, and was deeply involved in the affairs of his church and community. A teacher in Hillsborough County schools, Obear also worked as a farmer and insurance agent, and served in public office as a deputy sheriff, a Lieutenant Colonel in the militia, a fence viewer and pound keeper, and for several years he was superintendent of schools. Obear and his wife Lydia Ann (Swasey) had two children, Annabel and Francis.

The four diaries in this collection contain brief, but regular entries documenting Clark Obear’s daily life in New Ipswich, N.H. during the middle years of the nineteenth century. Despite their brevity, the diaries form a continuous coverage of many years and offer details that provide a compelling sense of the rhythms of life in a small New Hampshire village. Of particular note, Obear carefully notes the various lectures he attends in town and the organizations of which he is part, including reform movements like temperance and antislavery.

A student of Bronislaw Malinowski, the Polish ethnographer Jozef Obrebski was a keen observer of cultural change among eastern European peasantry in the years before the Second World War. After working with the resistance in Warsaw during the war, Obrebski went on to do additional ethnographic research in Jamaica (with his wife Tamara), taught at Brooklyn and Queens College and C.W. Post University, and from 1948-1959, he was senior social affairs officer with the United Nations. He died in 1967.

The Obrebski collection consists largely of ethnographic data collected by Obrebski in Macedonia (1931-1932), Polesia (1934-1936), and Jamaica (1947-1948), including field and interview notes, genealogies, government documents relating to research sites, and ca. 1000 photographs; together with correspondence (1946-1974), drafts of articles, analyses of collected data, and tapes and phonograph records, largely of folk music; and papers of Obrebski’s wife, Tamara Obrebski (1908-1974), also an ethnologist and sociologist.

Don Ogden is a poet, writer and activist who lives in Leverett, Massachusetts. The collection consists of newspaper clippings, pamphlets, an unpublished book, and letters that document primarily anti-war protests in Amherst dating from 1972-2000.

Reflective, critical, and radical, Carl Oglesby was an eloquent voice of the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s. A native of Ohio, Oglesby was working in the defense industry in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1964 when he became radicalized by what he saw transpiring in Vietnam. Through his contacts with the Students for a Democratic Society, he was drawn into the nascent antiwar movement, and thanks to his formidable skills as a speaker and writer, rose rapidly to prominence. Elected president of the SDS in 1965, he spent several years traveling nationally and internationally advocating for a variety of political and social causes. Oglesby died of lung cancer on September 13, 2011.

In 1972, Oglesby helped co-found the Assassination Information Bureau which ultimately helped prod the U.S. Congress to reopen the investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A prolific writer and editor, his major works include Containment and Change (1967), The New Left Reader (1969), The Yankee and Cowboy War (1976), and The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories (1992). The Oglesby Papers include research files, correspondence, published and unpublished writing, with the weight of the collection falling largely on the period after 1975.

Rob Okun, in his office.

Rob Okun is a progressive social activist, writer, and editor who has worked for equality between men and women for over 50 years. Following his awakening to the preponderance of men in leadership roles throughout the anti-Vietnam War movement, he became interested in feminism, masculinity, and gender inequality. He began to work towards promoting healthy ideas of masculinity and challenging harmful stereotypes about men through his work with Steven Botkin and the Men’s Resource Center (MRC), which was founded by Botkin in Amherst, Mass in 1982. Okun was the editor of Voice Male, the newsletter of the MRC, and also served as Executive Director. Following Voice Male’s transition to an independent magazine, he remained its editor. In addition to his work with the MRC and Voice Male, he edited the book Voice Male – The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement which was released in 2017 and has written op-eds and commentaries in newspapers and on websites. His writing is syndicated by Peace Voice and has appeared in The San Diego Union Tribune, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Boston Globe, Albany Times Union, Alternet, Ms., Counterpunch, Women’s eNews and more.

In addition to his work with the MRC and Voice Male, Okun served as Director of the nearly decade-long traveling art exhibition, book, and documentary film project known as Unknown Secrets – Art & the Rosenberg Era. The project dealt with the origins of the Cold War through the story of the arrest, trial, and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiring to pass atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union and were both electrocuted in June of 1953. The tragedy was examined in the exhibit via the images and words of dozens of artists such as Picasso, Sue Coe, Arthur Miller, David Wojnarowicz, Adrienne Rich, and many others. Okun coordinated showings of the exhibit, fundraised, was the editor of the book about the exhibit, and was a co-producer/director of a 30 minute documentary film, produced by Green Mountain Post Films. A Zoom celebration of Rob’s career at the Men’s Resource Center and as editor of Voice Male magazine was held in January of 2024 and is available via You Tube.

Okun’s papers document his extensive efforts related to the Rosenberg era art exhibit through correspondence with galleries, project members, universities, donors, artists, advisory board members, and funding agencies, as well as grant proposals, posters, photographs, drafts, clippings, press releases, pamphlets, and more. The collection also includes copies of the Rosenberg anthology.

Okun’s work with the Men’s Resource Center and Voice Male is represented through clippings, correspondence, photographs, pamphlets, writings, drafts, and more. Copies of the magazine—from its newsletter days up through its redesign as a four-color magazine, and copies of the Voice Male anthology—are also part of the collection.

The abundant waterfowl at Oldham Pond, Plymouth County, Mass., has long been a lure for hunters. During the nineteenth century, both hunting and recreational shooting of geese and ducks grew in scope throughout the Commonwealth, with the development of at least two formal hunting camps at Oldham.

The Oldham Camp records contains a detailed tally of waterfowl shot at Oldham Pond, along with an “Ancient history of Oldham Pond” by Otis Foster, 1906, chronicling changes in hunting practices and the advent of blinds and decoys. These records include annual summaries of geese taken at the camp (1876-1895) and summaries of both geese and ducks (1896-1919). More valuable are detailed records of “daily bags,” 1905-1915, providing daily kill totals for each species (primarily ducks). An addendum by Edgar Jocelyn, 1927, provides additional historical detail on the hunting stands at Oldham Pond and changes in methods of attracting ducks. There are, as well, narrative annual summaries of the hunting seasons, 1905-1908 and 1912. Tipped into the front of the volume is a typed letter from the renowned Cope Cod decoy maker A. Elmer Crowell (1852-1951), July 2, 1926, reminiscing about hunting at Wenham Lake and promising to begin work on the decoys.

Ranked amongst the great violinists of his generation, Julian Olevsky served as Professor of Violin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1967-1985. The collection consists of annotated scores belonging to Julian Olevsky, the bulk of which contain parts for the violin and piano.

A writer, scholar and leader in organized labor for over 50 years, Peter B. Olney began his career in the early 1970s by organizing the machine shop where he worked in Roxbury, Massachusetts into the United Electrical Workers, fully committed to helping the workforce take control of their own lives and destiny. Through periods of extraordinary cultural, technological and industry upheaval, with a particular focus on the immigrant workers community, Olney followed where that commitment led, becoming an “industrial salt” in Boston and Cambridge, bringing a union into non-union facilities or strengthening the union’s position in union facilities; an organizer and researcher at the ILGWU in Southern California; an organizer/coordinator at the Furniture Workers’ office of the IUE in Huntington Park, CA; an organizer at the Janitors’ office of the SEIU in Los Angeles and active in Justice for Janitors; a founding member of the LAMAP (Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project); the Director of Organizing at the ILWU (International Longshoremen Warehouse Union) for 16 years; Associate Director of the ILE (Institute for Labor and Employment) at the University of California for 3 years; and a member of the faculty at the Building Trades Academy at Michigan State University. He has a Masters in Business Administration from UCLA and regularly contributes to ongoing discussions, publications and scholarship, online and in print, about the changing face of the Labor Movement with particular focus on organizing strategies, class struggles, immigration and the political climate.

Drawing from the records of these many organizations, the Olney Papers provide insights into labor organizing during a period of American history characterized by huge cultural shifts and rapid technological development, and include correspondence, memorandums, notes, white papers, articles, newspaper/magazine clippings and other printed matter, corporate reports and presentations, and a wide variety of  internal administrative documents. Of particular note are strategic planning documents for the organizations with which Olney was engaged.