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Du Bois Papers Collection (Speeches)

W. E. B. Du Bois at the Hauge, September 10, 1958

W.E.B DuBois was a scholar, writer, editor of The Crisis and other journals, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan African Congresses, international spokesperson for peace and for the rights of oppressed minorities.

The Du Bois Papers Collection (Speeches) on SiRO is a part of the W.E.B Dubois Papers collection from the University of Massachusetts Archives and Special Collections. The collection contains manuscripts of hundreds of speeches with his handwritten notes. The speeches reflect the developing ideas of Du Bois on world peace, colonialism, and developments in Africa and America.* The collection contains original manuscripts along with handwritten notes which were later edited and revised for publication.*

Du Bois’ annual lecture tours are a “richly documented yet largely overlooked and understudied aspect of Du Bois’s long and distinguished life.”** Hundreds of his lectures and speeches are archived at UMass Amherst and other collections around the country.**

Below is an excerpt from his famous speech ‘Behold the Land’ given to the Southern Negro Youth Congress commending them on their efforts and encouraging them to focus on the South as the “battle-ground” for change.*

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963, Behold the land, October 20, 1946

This is another excerpt from a fragment of the famous speech ‘Socialism and the American Negro’ delivered in 1960:

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963, Socialism and the American Negro, April 9, 1960

*https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/series/mums312-s02

**W. E. B. Du Bois’s Lectures and Speeches: A Brief History, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Scholar in Residence, W.E.B. Du Bois Center, UMass Amherst

Densho collection featured on SiRO!

The Densho collection features objects relating to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during the WW II. The collection includes testimony of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated, in the form of first hand video accounts, images, documents and news articles.

“Densho,” is a Japanese word that means ‘to pass on to the next generation.’ Densho is an organization that aims to promote principles of democracy and equal justice for all. “The legacy we offer is an American story with ongoing relevance: during World War II, the United States government incarcerated innocent people solely because of their ancestry.”*

This short film by Densho shows how the incarceration of Japanese began after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Densho Collection contains a large collection of video interviews of Japanese American activists who discuss the life in internment camps, their experiences with activism and involvement with the Civil Rights Movement and the movement for redress and reparations.

Source: The Revolutionary Friendship of Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X

In her interview, activist Yuri Kochiyama talks about how Japanese Americans were divided using the so-called “loyalty questionnaire.” She says “the whole internment experience made Japanese Americans feel that this should not happen to any other group ever again….”

*https://densho.org/about-densho/

New Collection: Ted Sahl Collection

The Ted Sahl Collection is a selection of 1091 photographs from the original digital collection housed in San Jose State University Special Collections and Archives .

Ted Sahl is an award winning photojournalist from San Jose who has documented social and political events in the Bay area since 1970s*. He is known for his engagement with the LGBT community and photographic work depicting the LGBT movement and also gay and lesbian life from 1976-2010. Sahl has also authored the book From Closet to Community: A Quest for Gay and Lesbian Liberation in San José & Santa Clara County (2002).

Ted Sahl talks about the inspiration for his work in this interview on Outlook Video from 2007:

* Sahl (Ted) Archives: A Collection of San José Gay and Lesbian History, Online Archives of California

New Collection: Radical America

SiRO just added a new collection- Radical America, 1967-1999, a political magazine by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) founded in 1967. The content of the magazine spanned across themes of working -class radicalism, feminism, racism, marxism etc.

The magazine initially served as an unofficial journal of the SDS and was edited by historians Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle in Madison, Wisconsin. In the 1970’s the magazine became more concerned with issues of the New Left. As historians left its editorial board in the 1980s and prices of printing increased, Radical America had to close its office in 1999.

” It left behind a proud history of thought-provoking articles and a testament to a social movement that long outlived its initial organizational form, namely, Students for a Democratic Society. “**

SDS was one of the largest student radical organizations in the US and built a membership of 300 chapters across the country by the time it closed in 1969.* A new SDS was formed in 2006 in the wake of anti-war demonstrations against the US.

Read more about the collection here.

*Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS: The Rise and Development of The Students for a Democratic Society, pp. 529-530. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974)

**Radical America, 1967-1999, Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship

Bi-Weekly Round Up November 5: The American Indian Movement (AIM)

In honor of November being American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month, this week’s post will be focusing on the history of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Although activism in the American Indian community had been occurring before the establishment of AIM, the movement gained significant attention and was instrumental in using the news media to spread their message and activism.

Founded in July 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the group was initially formed to address Native American treaty issues, racism, police harassment, and to achieve economic independence and sovereignty for Native American people. Other areas of focus were spirituality, affirmation, and leadership for the American Indian and Alaska Native community. Rather than focusing on traditional lobbying strategies, AIM members chose to take their message directly to the American public by holding events, creating their own press through the use of zines and other newsletters, and its leaders often sought out opportunities for the explicit purpose of creating more visibility for the movement.

From its inception in 1968, AIM members led protests, sit-ins, and other forms of public activism to gain visibility and attention from the larger American public toward the plight of the American Indian. In 1970, around Thanksgiving, members seized a replica of the Mayflower; in 1971, members occupied Mount Rushmore, which was carved into the mountainside of sacred Lakota land. Also in 1971, members also occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building in Washington, D.C., citing the poor management and problems with the administration for their treatment of Native Americans and reservations.

Free Leonard Peltier page from NARP newsletter

From the NARP Newsletter, MSU Libraries

AIM, in their 20 point list to summarize issues with federal treaties and promises, had twelve points directly related to treaty responsibilities that the U.S. government had failed to fulfill and uphold. In 1972, AIM members and other Indian groups gathered together for a protest named “The Trail of Broken Treaties” in Washington, D.C. Their high visibility, achieved through events like protests, occupations, and other forms of activism, gave the members a platform but also made the movement a target for government intervention. What AIM is probably best known for in current times are the events that occurred at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Wounded Knee, where around 200 to 300 AIM activists and FBI agents were in an armed stand-off for 71 days in 1973.

Following the Wounded Knee incident, violence and deaths abounded within the AIM community with suspicions of members being FBI informants and garnered significant media attention to the protest. Notably, in 1973 during the Academy Awards, Marlon Brando refused to attend the event and in his place sent Sacheen Littlefeather, a Native American actress, to accept his award and to use the platform to speak about the movement. During the occupation of Wounded Knee, activists Dennis Banks and Russell Means were often the spokespersons for the organization, and the motivation for going to Pine Ridge was due to the high levels of poverty, the tribal chairman Richard Wilson’s corrupt activities, and failure of the U.S. government to uphold its end of the treaties. Wilson’s supporters, known as Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), are believed to have murdered 60 opponents of the tribal government.

Despite the protests, Wilson was re-elected in 1974 amid voter corruption scandals, intimidation, and other means of coercing the election in his favor. Violence on the reservation erupted during this time between opponents of his presidency and his supporters. Means and Banks were indicted by the South Dakota government for their participation in the occupation and protest, which later was ruled a mistrial with all charges being dropped against them. However, Leonard Peltier, another member of AIM, was arrested and imprisoned in 1975 following a shootout with two FBI agents on the reservation. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and was most recently denied clemency by the Obama administration. He is currently still in prison.

The movement continues to exist today and has grown to encompass a number of other organizations all focused on the same issues. At Michigan State University, there are materials in the radicalism special collection from the early days of AIM (accesible through SiRO), and a number of other resources exist for scholars and other interested persons to learn more about the movement and its impact.

Resources

University of Minnesota American Indian Movement Archives and Records

Michigan State University Radicalism Collection – American Indian Movement

Smithsonian Institution – American Indian Movement

Freedom Archives – AIM

Digital Public Library of America – AIM

GALE – AIM and Native American Radicalism

 

Bi-Weekly Round Up October 22: The Chicano Movement

The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, also known as El Movimento or the Chicano civil rights movement, extended the Mexican American movement with the goal of achieving Mexican American empowerment. Originally a deragatory term for referring to children with Mexican migrant parents, the term was embraced as a symbol of self-determination and pride. Famous figures like Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez are well known for their involvement with Chicano activism, particularly farm workers’ rights. The movement began in the late 1800s after the U.S.-Mexican War and gained momentum after World War II, with Chicano activists winning major landmark cases like Mendez v. Westminster, which ruled segregation of children of Mexican and Latino descent unconstitutional, and Hernandez v. Texas, which ruled that Mexican Americans and other subordinated peoples were guaranteed to equal protection under the 14th amendment.

In the 1960s, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) was founded to engage in political advocacy and training of future leaders. Similar to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the MALDEF now covers the roles of many other

From the MSU Libraries MICHILAC Collection

organizations and continues to engage in activism today. In the 1970s, Chicana women engaged in reproductive rights activism by fighting against compulsory sterilization and succeeding in requiring the use of bilingual consent forms. The Chicano movement was not focused on any one organization or specific cause, and rather encompasses a number of sub-movements dedicated to issues that affected Chicano populations differently. Regardless, the influence of the movement is still felt today and ongoing.

Although the Southwest is the epicenter of the movement, Colorado is where people point to the movement’s beginnings. In California, however, many scholars note that the state had the most student organizations across university campuses engaged in Chicano activism, whereas other states did not participate in the same forms of student activism. In the midwest, Chicago was a hub for Chicano activism, and there were efforts throughout the rest of the midwest particularly for the United Farm Workers (which will be covered more in depth next week).

The initial goals of the movement were Chicano empowerment, anti-war, voting and political rights, police brutality, and more. In the 21st Century, the major focus of the Chicano Movement is still focused on empowering Chicano and Latinx peoples in elections and participating in government, representation of Chicano and Latinx persons in media, as well as immigration rights. Chicano art, literature, and presses fluorished during the beginning of the movement and continue to serve as a creative space for political expression. The history of the movement is rich and multi-faceted, and is complicated by a number of social and geographic variables that affected the way the various sub-movements took shape and shaped the larger movement.

SiRO and the Michigan State University Libraries have a number of resources on the history of the Chicano movement. Two highlights at MSU Libraries are the Midwest Chicano/Latino Activism Collection (housed in special collections and digitized in SiRO and here:https://d.lib.msu.edu/michilac), and the Cesar E. Chavez (https://lib.msu.edu/general/collections/chavez/) which is housed in the Main Library. Other collections exist, of course, and we provide a sample here for people wanting to learn more or access research materials to broaden their understanding of Chicano activism in the past and today.

Resources:

MICHILAC Collection at MSU Libraries

Library of Congress Chicano Civil Rights Movement Collection

UC Santa Barbara Chicano and Latino Collections

Colorado Chicano Movement History Portal

Online Archive of California – Chicano Movement Newspapers

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center