The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collecting area: Printed materials

Broadside Press

Broadside Press Collection

1965-1984
1 box, 110 vols. 3.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 571
Depiction of Broadside 6
Broadside 6

The printed works are temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request printed materials from this collection.

A significant African American poet of the generation of the 1960s, Dudley Randall was an even more significant publisher of emerging African American poets and writers. Publishing works by important writers from Gwendolyn Brooks to Haki Madhubuti, Alice Walker, Etheridge Knight, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez, his Broadside Press in Detroit became an important contributor to the Black Arts Movement.
The Broadside Press Collection includes approximately 200 titles published by Randall’s press during its first decade of operation, the period of its most profound cultural influence. The printed works are divided into five series, Broadside poets (including chapbooks, books of poetry, and posters), anthologies, children’s books, the Broadside Critics Series (works of literary criticism by African American authors), and the Broadsides Series. . The collection also includes a selection of items used in promoting Broadside Press publications, including a broken run of the irregularly published Broadside News, press releases, catalogs, and fliers and advertising cards.

Gift of the Friends of the W.E.B. Du Bois Libraries, Aug. 2008

Subjects

African American poetsAfrican American writersBlack Arts MovementPoetry

Contributors

Broadside PressBrooks, Gwendolyn, 1917-2000Emanuel, James AGiovanni, NikkiKnight, EtheridgeMadhubuti, Haki R., 1942-Randall, Dudley, 1914-Sanchez, Sonia, 1934-

Types of material

BroadsidesEphemeraPosters
Brown, Ken

Ken Brown Collection

1971-2021
Call no.: MS 1141

Ken Brown, born March 12, 1944 in Dayton, Ohio, is a filmmaker, photographer, cartoonist, designer and collector. He was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he briefly attended UMass Amherst, before moving to Cambridge where he also attended Boston University. In the late 1960s he joined the thriving arts scene in Boston, where his most notable contribution was his film work, now known as Psychedelic Cinema. This live music project was projected onstage at the Boston Tea Party while musical acts like the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix played. Brown made experimental films, using tricks like double exposure and stop motion, with a Super 8mm camera. He also worked as a film teacher in the early 1970s.  

In 1975 his career took a fortuitous turn when he started to sell postcards featuring his own drawings. This venture was so successful that he expanded the postcard line to include photographs and collages, mining his own collections, which are characterized by kitsch. From there he expanded the business further to include rubber stamps, eventually adding t-shirts, coffee mugs, tea towels, and wrapping paper to the line; he worked with local businesses to put his art and designs on the products. His unconventional business model attracted the attention of the Harvard Business School, which conducted and published a study of his work. He also continued to make films, which have been featured on MTV and Sesame Street. Since 1985 he has lived in New York City with his wife and frequent collaborator, artist and filmmaker Lisa Crafts. He continues to take photographs and make films about life in the city. 

The collection comprises a wide variety of the products Brown has produced and marketed throughout his career. It includes near-complete runs of his postcards, rubber stamps, and wrapping paper; a selection of t-shirts, tea towels, placemats and magnets; published books; and a variety of editioned screen prints made from his cartoons and drawings. The collection also contains ephemera documenting Brown’s career and early artwork in an anti-nuclear publication. The collection is expected to grow over time to include drawings, films, and recent digital photographs.

Acquired from Ken Brown, October 2021

Contributors

Brown, Ken, 1944-

Types of material

Postcards
Driscoll, Stephen P.

Stephen P. Driscoll Collection of Political Ephemera

1839-2021
76 ca. 120 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1169

The Hon. Stephen P. Driscoll, UMass 1973, 1975 MEd, has had a lifelong fascination with American government and politics. He was a co-founder of the National Stonewall Democrats, a delegate to national conventions, and a member of the Executive Committee of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

Assembled over many decades, Driscoll’s massive collection of political ephemera reflects his keen eye and broad interests, and encompasses every era in American government and politics, both state and federal, from George Washington to Joe Biden. Included in his collection are thousands of items and artifacts—including buttons, posters, flyers, pennants, sculpture, clothing, electronics, audio-visual items, toys, trinkets of all kinds, and much, much more—which offer tantalizing glimpses into American history, society, and material culture.

Gift of Stephen Driscoll, 2021.

Subjects

Campaign literatureCampaign paraphernaliaElections--United States
Early Children's Literature

Early Children's Literature Collection

1810-1894
42 items 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: RB 017
Depiction of The New Picture-Book (1837)
The New Picture-Book (1837)

Publishers in Western Massachusetts engaged in a brisk trade in books intended for children during the antebellum years, producing chapbooks to teach reading, didactic works on morals and comportment, and toy books for reward and entertainment. Brief and most often simply produced, the books are noted for their diminutive size, stock woodcut illustrations and characteristic moralistic tone, but they are rich sources for understanding popular conceptions of childhood, education, religious life, and marketing in the book trade, among other subjects.

The majority of the works in the Early Children’s Literature collection were products of the antebellum press in western Massachusetts, produced and distributed by printers such as John Metcalf (Wendell and Northampton), Anson Phelps (Greenfield), and A. R. Merrifield (Northampton). There are examples of chapbooks from other printers, most notably Mahlon Day of New York and the American Sunday School Union in Philadelphia.

Acquired variously.

Subjects

Children's literature--MassachusettsToy and movable books

Contributors

Metcalf, John, 1788-1864

Types of material

Books
Ellis, James, 1935-

James Ellis Theatre Collection

1700-2005
ca.8,000 vols.
Call no.: MS 779

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

During a long career as Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, James Ellis wrote on the Victorian stage and the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. A founding member of the Valley Light Opera Company, he was also an actor and director of theatricals in the Pioneer Valley.

The Ellis Collection contains approximately 8,000 published works on the Anglo-American stage, 1750-1915, including individual plays and anthologies of English and American playwrights; biographical works on performers; works on the theatre in London, the provinces, and America; periodicals, playbills, prints, broadsides, and ephemera; and works that provide cultural context for interpreting the stage. Although the collection includes some works from the 18th century, it is deepest for the English stage in the period 1850-1900.

Gift of James Ellis, 2009-2013

Subjects

Actors--Great BritainActors--United StatesAmateur theater--Great Britain--19th centuryTheater--Great Britain--19th centuryTheater--United States--19th century

Contributors

Ellis, James, 1935-

Types of material

BroadsidesLithographsPhotographs
Feinberg, Kenneth R., 1945-

Kenneth R. Feinberg Collection of Classical Music Programs

1967-2024
24 boxes 10 linear feet
Call no.: MS 766
Depiction of Program, Metropolitan Opera, 1969
Program, Metropolitan Opera, 1969

Attorney and UMass alumnus Kenneth R. Feinberg, well known as a mediator, special master of compensation funds, and dedicated public servant, is a longtime devotee of opera and classical music. Since his days as a law student in New York in the late 1960s, continuing through his career practicing law in Washington, D.C., Feinberg has regularly attended operas, concerts, musical theater, and other musical performances. He has also served as president of the Washington National Opera and led a private opera appreciation group.
This extensive collection of more than 1,000 items encompasses a wide range of composers, productions, concerts, companies, and venues, mainly in the United States, with some European performances represented. Documenting more than five decades of concert- and opera-going, and arranged in rough chronological order according to Feinberg’s numbering system, many of the programs are searchable by composer in an accompanying card index created by Feinberg (more recent programs are simply filed chronologically). There is also a small amount of related ephemera, including some vintage programs. Additions to the collection are ongoing.

Gift of Kenneth R. Feinberg, Nov. 2012-2024

Subjects

MusicMusical theaterOperaSymphony orchestras

Contributors

Feinberg, Kenneth R., 1945-

Types of material

Card filesEphemeraPlaybills
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)
Foucher, Lynnette E.

Lynnette E. Foucher Cookbook Collection

1902-2000
429 items 8 linear feet
Call no.: MS 684
Depiction of 1929 cookbook
1929 cookbook

Assembled by Lynnette E. Foucher, this collection consists chiefly of cookbooks produced by food companies between the 1920s-1970s. These cookbooks reflect the changing role of women in the home as well as new food trends and innovative technology. Taken together, the collection offers a glimpse into the way meal preparation changed in the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century and how this change transformed the way we eat today.

Subjects

Convenience foods--United States--History--20th centuryCooking, American--History--20th centuryCooking--Social aspectsDiet--United States--HistoryFood--Social aspectsWomen consumers--United States--HistoryWomen in advertising--United States--History

Contributors

Foucher, Lynnette E

Types of material

Cookbooks
Fraser, James H. (James Howard), 1934-2013

James H. and Sibylle Fraser Collection

1934-1990
2 boxes, books 20 linear feet
Call no.: MS 655

An author, scholar, and librarian, James Fraser had a voracious intellectual appetite that ranged from visual culture to the inter-war avant garde to Communist-era eastern Europe. Born April 30, 1934, Fraser earning his doctorate in Library Science at Columbia University and enjoyed a career of nearly 50 years in academic libraries. A specialist in international children’s literature, he and Sibylle von Holstein, his wife of 56 years, became known for building research collections at a number of university libraries, drawing upon their extraordinary knowledge of 20th century book arts, graphic design, photography, political ephemera, and East German culture, among other areas. Fraser was also an energetic exibitions curator, often based upon material he had collected. Jim Fraser died at home after a short illness on Nov. 25, 2013.

The product of two active and eclectic collectors, the Fraser collection contains over 1200 imprints on art and design in Communist-era eastern Europe, East Germany, 1960s radicalism, and other subjects, along with ephemera on radical movements in both the United States and Europe.

Gift of James and Sibylle Fraser. 2006-2013.
Language(s): German

Subjects

Art and design--Germany (East)Germany (East)--HistoryUnited States--Politics and government--1963-1969

Contributors

Fraser, Sibylle
Gittings, Barbara and Kay Tobin Lahusen

Gittings-Lahusen Gay Book Collection

ca.1920-2007
ca.1,000 items
Call no.: RB 005

Barbara Gittings and her life partner Kay Tobin Lahusen were pioneers in the gay rights movement. After coming out during her freshman year at Northwestern University, Gittings became keenly aware of the difficulty of finding material to help her understand her gay identity. An inveterate organizer, she helped found the New York chapter of the early Lesbian organization, the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) in 1957, and she became well known in the 1960s for organizing the first gay rights demonstrations at the White House and Independence Hall. Gittings later worked with organizations from the American Library Association to the American Psychiatric Association to address systematic forms of anti-gay discrimination.
The Gittings-Lahusen Gay Book Collection contains nearly 1,000 books on the gay experience in America collected by Gittings and Lahusen throughout their career. The contents range from a long run of The Ladder, the DOB magazine co-edited by the couple, to works on the psychology and sociology of homosexuality, works on religious and political issues, novels and histories by gay authors, and examples of the pulp fiction of the 1950s and 1960s.

Subjects

Gay rightsHomosexuality
Restrictions: Collection currently unavailable due to renovation in SCUA