Collections: F

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.

Personal, financial and legal papers of Flint and Lawrence families of Lincoln, Massachusetts including wills, estate inventories, indenture documents, receipts of payment for slaves and education, correspondence; and records of town and church meetings, town petitions and receipts relating to the construction of the meeting house. Papers of Reverend William Lawrence include letter of acceptance of Lincoln, Massachusetts ministry, record of salary, a sermon and daybook. Personal papers of loyalist Dr. Joseph Adams, who fled to England in 1777, contain letters documenting conditions in England in the late 1700s and the legal and personal problems experienced by emigres and their families in the years following the Revolutionary War.

Born in Middleton, Massachusetts, in 1824, Charles L. Flint worked his way through Harvard, graduating in 1849, taught for a short time, then returned to Harvard in 1850 to enter the Law School. In 1853, he left his law practice to become secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, remaining in that position for 27 years. He had a part in the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a member of the Boston School Committee, and as one of the founders of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, he served as secretary of the Board of Trustees for 22 years. Selected during a budgetary crisis, Charles L. Flint agreed to serve as President of Massachusetts Agricultural College without a salary. For four years he gave lectures at the college on dairy farming. Upon the resignation of President William Smith Clark in 1879, Flint was elected President, though he served only until the spring of 1880.

The Flint collection contains an assortment of photographs; reports as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, 1854-1881; and printed versions of published writings.

Photocopies of two typescript company histories for the Florence Manufacturing Company: “50 Years of Brush Making (1866-1916)” and “50 More Years of Brush Making, 1916-1974.”

Founded by Betsy Siggins in 2009, Folk New England is an organization dedicated to documenting, preserving, and interpreting the cultural legacy of folk music in all its forms, with an emphasis on New England’s contribution.

The Ephemera Collection consists of dozens of posters, fliers, calendars, and other promotional materials for musical acts collected by Folk New England. Concentrated in the years of the folk revival in the late 1950s to late 1960s, many of the posters were sent to Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass.

Founded by Betsy Siggins in 2009, Folk New England’s mission is to document, preserve, interpret and present the ongoing cultural legacy of folk music in all its forms, with emphasis on New England’s contribution to the enrichment of North American life. The organization continues a dialogue between New England’s distinct folk music heritage and its future, through the establishment of a regional folk music archive, robust collections development and access, multi-disciplinary outreach and education, and engaging entertainment programs for the public.

The Folk New England collections document the folk music scene, broadly construed, with an emphasis on the folk revival of the late 1950s and 1960s to the present. Although the performers and music are central, the growing array of collections also documents producers, venues, photographers, and others involved in the scene.

View all FNE collections

A legal scholar and pacifist, Caleb Foote was born in Cambridge, Mass., on March 26, 1917, the son of a Unitarian minister and Quaker mother. Earning degrees in history from Harvard (AB 1939) and economics from Columbia (MA 1941), Foote was hired by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to organize their northern California office as the U.S. entered the Second World War. A committed conscientious objector, he refused assignment to a Civilian Public Service camp, arguing that the draft was undemocratic and “an integral part of the war effort,” thus earning a sentence of six months in prison. When released, Foote resumed his work with the Fellowship, opposing the internment of Japanese Americans, but ran afoul of the Selective Service a second time in 1945, earning an additional eighteen months. After a presidential pardon in 1948, Foote became Executive Director of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objection, but left after two years to return to school, hoping a law degree might aid him in the cause of addressing racial and economic injustice. He held academic positions in law schools at the University of Nebraska (1954-1956), Penn (1956-1965), and Berkeley (1965-1987), becoming well known for his opposition to a bail system that unfairly burdened the poor and falsely accused, among other causes. Foote died in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 2006, shortly before his 89th birthday.

An extraordinary archive of principled resistance to war, the Foote collection contains a thorough record of one man’s experience as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Accompanying some of the legal proceedings associated with Foote’s refusal of assignment to Civilian Public Service is an extensive correspondence with family while imprisoned and other associated content. Foote also retained important material from his wartime work with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and later work with the CCCO. His later correspondence provides an important perspective on his developing legal career, particularly the earlier years, and an extensive series of essays and autobiographical writings provides critical personal and intellectual context for Foote’s pacifism and legal practice. The collection also includes some correspondence and writings by and about Foote’s education, his father, Henry Wilder Foote, and mother.

Foresty and lumbering have been substantial sectors of the Massachusetts economy for more than 300 years. This collection includes photographs of forests throughout New England and New York, lumbering and related occupations, tools of forestry, and distinguished foresters. Together these images capture the history and traditions of forestry and lumbering in Massachusetts from mill work to Christmas trees.

Shortly after receiving her doctorate from the University of California Berkeley in 1972, the anthropologist Sylvia Helen Forman joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. A staunch feminist and activist, Forman was known for her commitment to her students and to the political life at the university, and for her engagement in the community. She died of cancer in 1992, just 48 years old.

The nine papers in this collection were the products of studies by students enrolled in Forman’s Anthropology 497 class at UMass Amherst. All are intensive analyses of issues of race, gender, and social justice in local communities, including disability, teenage pregnancy, child care, Cambodian refugees, and attitudes toward community living and community change.

Collection of chiefly newspaper clippings compiled by Georgana Foster documenting the response of the western Massachusetts community to a variety of local and national topics such as the Vietnam War, communes, the re-elections of Congressmen Silvio Conte and John Olver, the Amherst Peace Vigil, the Peace Pagoda in Leverett, and the Iraq War.