The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Social Change Periodicals

Social Change Periodicals Collection

1969-2006
14 boxes 21 linear feet
Call no.: MS 306
Depiction of Peace and Freedom, Mar. 1980
Peace and Freedom, Mar. 1980

Assembled to bring together short and broken runs of periodicals produced by activists and movements for social justice, the Social Change Periodicals Collection touches on a wide variety of topics. Much of the original collection came from subscriptions held by the Everywoman’s Center at UMass Amherst, however the collection has grown to include materials supplied by many other donors. The bulk of periodicals come from the period 1965-1990 and the subjects covered range from feminism to gay rights, and political radicalism, to peace, prison, labor, antiracism, and the counterculture more generally. The collection has been organized thematically into 19 series.

Subjects

African Americans--Suffrage--PeriodicalsCentral America--Politics and government--PeriodicalsDisarmament--PeriodicalsFeminism--PeriodicalsGay liberation movement--PeriodicalsLabor--United States--PeriodicalsLesbians--PeriodicalsNonviolence--PeriodicalsPeace--PeriodicalsPrisons--United States--PeriodicalsRadicalism--United States--PeriodicalsSocialism--PeriodicalWomen--Periodical

Types of material

Periodicals
Noffsinger, Mark G.

Mark G. Noffsinger Collection

1964-1969
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 135

Mark G. Noffsinger’s tenure as Associate Dean of Students at UMass Amherst was relatively brief, but tumultuous. Brought in during the fall semester 1964 as coordinator of student activities, he was promoted to Director of the Student Union in 1966 and Associate Dean of Students in 1968. Although he earned a reputation as a supporter of the student press, he became a focal point of controversy during the school year 1967-1968, when he prohibited the sale of the underground “hippie” newspaper, Mother of Voices on campus. Published by UMass students, the paper drew wider fire when John Norton and David Bourbeau were arrested and convicted on charges of selling obscene matter to a minor. The Mother of Voices folded in March 1969. After resigning in 1969 to accept a position at Baldwin-Wallace College, Noffsinger went on to a distinguished career as a university administrator before his death in 1994.

Tightly focused on the controversy in 1968 over banning sale of the Mother of Voices in the UMass Student Union, the Noffsinger collection includes a folder of newspaper clippings relating to underground press publications at UMass and other colleges in the Commonwealth, along with a run of the offending periodical retained by the office of the Dean of Students’ office. Additional copies of the periodical are located in the Social Change Periodicals Collection.

Subjects

Freedom of the pressMother of VoicesUnderground press publications--MassachusettsUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Dean of Students

Contributors

Noffsinger, Mark G
Brauner, Sigrid, 1950-1992

Sigrid Brauner Papers

1969-1992
11 boxes 16.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 124

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

Sigrid Brauner was born in Hofheim, Germany, earning her BA from the University of Frankfurt before immigrating to the United States. Brauner completed her PhD in German literature at the University of California Berkeley in 1989 and later the same year joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature. Brauner, who served on the executive committee of the Women’s Studies Program, remained at UMass until her death in December 1992.

The papers reflect Sigrid Brauner’s interest in race and gender as well as her research in anthropology and theology. “Witches: Myth and Reality,” the popular course Brauner taught during the fall 1992 semester, is represented in the collection along with other notes for research and teaching. Professional correspondence as well as political and social change periodicals comprise the remainder of the Brauner Papers. A fair portion of the collection is in German.

Subjects

Social change--PeriodicalsUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures

Contributors

Brauner, Sigrid, 1950-1992
Valley Women's History Collaborative

Valley Women's History Collaborative Records

1971-2008
15 boxes 10 linear feet
Call no.: MS 531

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.

Gift of Susan Tracy, 2006, 2009

Subjects

Abortion--Massachusetts--Pioneer Valley--History--20th centuryBirth control--Massachusetts--Pioneer Valley--History--20th centuryFeminism--Massachusetts--Pioneer Valley--HistoryFeminists--Massachusetts--Pioneer Valley--Political activity--HistoryMary Vazquez Women's Softball LeagueWomen--Massachusetts--Pioneer Valley--Political activity--History

Contributors

Valley Women's History Collaborative

Types of material

Oral histories
Fletcher, Bill, Jr.

Bill Fletcher, Jr., Papers

1968-2016
9 boxes 11.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1212

An activist and advocate for social and racial justice since he was a teenager, Bill Fletcher, Jr., born in New York in 1954, graduated from Harvard, and went to work as a welder in a Massachusetts shipyard. He soon became active in the labor movement, as a worker, an organizer, and a union staff member, and in electoral campaigns. Fletcher became a union staff person in Boston in 1986 with District 65-United Auto Workers.  In 1990, he and his family moved to Washington, D.C. where he held a series of positions with the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, the Service Employees International Union, and the national AFL-CIO. He has also held positions with the George Meany Center for Labor Studies/National Labor College and with TransAfrica Forum, for which he served as president and CEO. Fletcher is author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And Twenty Other Myths About Unions; he is coauthor of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941 and Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice. He has also published two murder/mystery novels, The Man Who Fell From the Sky and The Man Who Changed Colors.  He serves on the editorial board of BlackCommentator.com and has contributed to numerous publications. As a writer, scholar, speaker, and activist, as well as an organizational consultant and a mentor, Fletcher continues his advocacy work. He lives with his wife, Candice, in Maryland.

The Bill Fletcher, Jr., Papers document the activities and interests of a lifelong radical and includes speeches, correspondence, material on the Black Radical Congress, and materials from an array of left-wing organizations. In addition to materials directly connected to Fletcher’s work, there are also pamphlets and other publications that he collected.

Gift of Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Subjects

Black Radical CongressLabor movementLabor unionsRaceRacism

Types of material

CorrespondenceDrafts (documents)MemorabiliaPamphletsPeriodicalsSpeechesWritings (documents)
Naughton, George B.

George Naughton Collection

1969-1991 Bulk: 1972-1978
4 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: FS 015
Depiction of Coevolution Quarterly cover
Coevolution Quarterly cover

George Naughton was born in 1951 into an academically inclined family. His father, Thomas, was a writer and magazine editor and his mother a music teacher; his grandfather Julius Seelye Bixler was a college professor and president of Colby College (1942-1960); and his great-great-grandfather Julius Seelye served as the fifth president of Amherst College (1876-1890). Naughton grew up in the 1960s in Old Saybrook, Conn. He graduated from Mount Hermon School in 1969 and from New College in Sarasota, Fla., with a BA in General Studies, in 1973. For the next few years, Naughton lived, worked, and meditated in Cambridge, Mass., and California, then in March of 1978 moved to Amherst and took a job at UMass. From 1978 until his retirement in 2011, he worked in University Information Systems in Whitmore Administration Building. Now president of the Amherst Historical Society, Naughton is also active in the Pelham Historical Society and lives in Pelham with his wife, Cindy.

Naughton’s lifelong interests have included mathematics, science fiction, cultural alternatives, and books, and he accumulated a wide collection of print material on a variety of topics. The Naughton Collection is a reflection of many of those interests and comprises underground comics as well as pamphlets, periodicals, and ephemera on spirituality, new age thinking, counterculture, politics, the environment and sustainability, and intentional communities.

Types of material

BrochuresComic booksMagazinesNewslettersPeriodicals
Goldspinner, Jay

Jay Goldspinner Collection

1973-2012
3 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 909

1977 Spring Equinox cover of WomenSpirit

All social change and cultural movements have their associated resources for the exchange of information, ideas, stories, and art. Particularly in the women’s movement, the effort to create newsletters, journals, and other forms of information dissemination was a proactive step taken to assert women’s stories and to locate the power of the press within women-run communities. These periodicals, both large and small in scale, reveal the ways women connected to each other and to larger spiritual and cultural concepts. Local artist, activist, and feminist Jay Goldspinner was engaged with many of these communities, particularly those characterizing the spiritual elements of the women’s liberation and feminist movements, and collected and saved their periodicals. Her collection includes journals focusing on feminist linguistics, goddess myths and spirituality, Wiccan and witch traditions, progressive politics, and women’s spirituality and community in local and international settings. Each is a unique window into discourses of women’s history, feminist movements, and social change work.

The Jay Goldspinner Collection consists of issues of feminist and progressive periodicals, journals, and newsletters from over five decades, along with correspondence, ephemera, and scrapbooks from Goldspinner’s life, especially her work as a storyteller. Published titles represented include Always in Season, Goddessing, The Lonesome Node, The People’s Voice of Franklin County, Themis/Thesmophoria, Wicked Word, and an almost complete run, including the two indexes, of the seminal magazine of feminist spirituality, WomenSpirit.

Subjects

Feminism--PeriodicalsFranklin County (Mass.) --PeriodicalsGoddess religion--PeriodicalsNeopaganism--PeriodicalsSpiritual feminism--PeriodicalsWicca--PeriodicalsWitchcraft--PeriodicalsWomen and spiritualism--PeriodicalsWomen's rights and spiritualism--Periodicals

Types of material

Periodicals
Steindl-Rast, David

Brother David Steindl-Rast Papers

ca. 1928-2015
60 boxes 75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 892
Depiction of Brother David at Mount Savior Monastery, ca. 1956
Brother David at Mount Savior Monastery, ca. 1956

Brother David Steindl-Rast was born Franz Kuno in Vienna, Austria, in 1926. He discovered The Rule of St. Benedict as a young man, which sent him on a search for an authentic version of Benedictine practice. This search brought him through the Second World War in Vienna, where he earned a Ph.D from the University of Vienna in 1952 and to the Mount Savior Monastery in Elmira, New York, where he became a monk in 1953. Along with his friend Thomas Merton, Brother David is one of the most important figures in the modern interfaith dialogue movement, leaving Mount Savior in the mid-1960s to study Zen Buddhism with Hakuun Yajutami, Shunayu Suzuki, and Soen Nakagawa. He was the first Benedictine to learn directly from Buddhist teachers and received Vatican support for his bridge-building work in 1967. Through Merton, Brother David met Thich Nhat Hanh, who introduced him to the peace movement and grounded Brother David’s spirituality in a tradition of activism. When not in seclusion, Brother David has served as a teacher of contemplative prayer, the intersection of Zen and Catholicism, and gratefulness as a spiritual practice. Through many books and articles, lectures, and residencies in spiritual centers like Tassajara and the Esalen Institute, Brother David has developed an influential philosophy and much of the current popularity of mindfulness and Zen-influenced living and activism owes a debt to his teachings.

The Brother David Steindl-Rast Papers include Brother David’s extensive published and unpublished writings, sermons, memoirs, personal journals, correspondence, photographs, recordings, and videos of his teachings. His papers extend back to his youth in Vienna, documenting his childhood and experience during the war, including a complete run of Die Goldene Wagen, the children’s magazine published by Brother David’s mother Elisabeth Rast.

Subjects

Benedictines--United StatesBuddhism--RelationsChristianity--RelationsPeace movements--United StatesPeace--Religious aspectsSpiritual life--BuddhismSpiritual life--Catholic church

Contributors

Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968Steindl-Rast, David

Types of material

Photographs
Soler, José A.

José A. Soler Papers

1972-2014
20 boxes 26.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 864
Depiction of José Soler (center) at District 65 rally
José Soler (center) at District 65 rally

A scholar of labor studies and activist, José Soler was born in New York City to a Dominican mother and Puerto Rican father and has been an activist in the cause of Puerto Rican independence and human rights since the 1970s. While a student at the University of New Mexico (BA 1972), Soler emerged as a leader in the Chicano rights organization, the Brown Berets, and while living in Puerto Rico in the late 1970s, he joined the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. Soler has subsequently worked in the labor movement as a shop steward, union organizer with UAW District 65, and labor journalist. As a committed Marxist and prolific writer and editor, he has taken part in causes ranging from anti-imperialist work in the Caribbean and Central America to the anti-apartheid struggle, and he has served on the Executive Board of the US Peace Council. From 1993 until his retirement in 2015, Soler worked as Director of the Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center at UMass Dartmouth where he has continued to work on behalf of public education and human rights and national self-determination.
The Soler Papers chronicle over forty years of a life-long activist’s interests and participation in left-wing political, labor, and social justice movements. There is a particular focus on topics relating to socialism and the pro-independence movement in Puerto Rico, anti-imperialist movements in South and Central America and Africa, and issues affecting Puerto Rican and Hispanic workers in the United States, New England, and the New York City area. Published and promotional materials such as periodicals, magazines, newsletters, and pamphlets make up the bulk of the collection, with extensive coverage of the concerns of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, PSP), the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), as well as New Jersey chapters of the unions Communications Workers of America (CWA) and District 65, which eventually joined the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). An additional seven boxes were added to the collection in June 2016, which remain unprocessed. The new materials offer additional documentation from the Dubin Labor Education Center and Soler’s work and interests in education (testing, privatization, and unions), labor, Marxist-Leninism, and various events in the United States and Latin America.

Gift of Jose Soler, 2015, 2016

Subjects

Communications Workers of AmericaLabor unions--New York (State)--New YorkPartido Socialista PuertorriqueñoUnited Automobile, Aircraft, and Vehicle Workers of America. District 65

Types of material

Photographs
Wulkan, Ferd

Ferd Wulkan Collection

1968-1985
8 boxes 12 linear feet
Call no.: MS 841

A 1968 graduate in mathematics from MIT, Ferd Wulkan has been a fixture in activist circles for many years. A member of SDS in college and a rank-and-file clerical union leader at Boston University, Wulkan moved to Amherst in 1989. His passion has been the intersection of the labor movement with other progressive movements; he served for 15 years as a field representative with Locals 509 and 888 of SEIU, working with non-faculty professional personnel at UMass Amherst and Boston, and then as a representative and organizer for the Massachusetts Society of Professors from 2004 to 2016. In 2007, Wulkan became organizing director for the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), a grassroots advocacy organization for affordable and accessible public higher education.

The Wulkan Collection consists of a fascinating array of material from Leftist and radical political movements during the late 1960s and early 1980s, with an emphasis on the Cambridge-Somerville area. In addition to a rich assemblage of formally published pamphlets and magazines, the collection includes a large number of fliers, handouts, informally published works, and underground newspapers on Socialist, Feminist, and anarchist topics and relating to the war in Vietnam, the labor movement, civil rights, and Black Power. The collection also contains three unprocessed boxes of material related to the clerical/technical union at Boston University. This union was affiliated with District 65, UAW, and District 65 had been part of the Distributive Workers of America, and affiliated with the United Auto Workers in the early 1980s. Related to this collection is a thesis by Leslie Lomasson, who worked at BU and completed her Master’s at UMass Amherst: “We Built the Union Ourselves: A Feminist Model of Unionism at Boston University” (1994).

Subjects

Cambridge (Mass.)--HistoryFeminism--MassachusettsRadicals--Massachusetts--CambridgeSomerville (Mass.)--HistoryUnderground press publicationsVietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements

Contributors

Black Panther Party