I wanted to share one more quick post this week. I found a file on James McElligott who I could not find much information about, but was very intrigued by the file that Gordon Hall had on him. Hall had two photos taken 6 years apart along with notes on McElligott’s involvement in the American Institute and John Birch Society. It does not seem like McElligott was much of a major player, but it is hard to say. Either way, he is a figure largely forgotten by history. The images show the extent of Gordon Hall’s work. The fact that he kept detailed information about a minor figure (and kept the files organized for 6 years) in the already fringe world of extremism is remarkable.

James McElligott 1961

James McElligott 1967

This item from the Hall-Hoag collection comes from a publication called the Attica News.  The Attica News was published by the Attica Defense Committee out of Buffalo, New York.  Published in the wake of the Attica Prison Riot on September 9, 1971 this periodical primarily focused on prisoners’ rights and the mistreatment of inmates.  During the Attica Prison Riot roughly 1000 inmates took control of Attica Prison holing over 30 hostages.  After 4 days of negotiations the prison was stormed by New York State police. 39 people were killed including 10 hostages. (All numbers sited from Wikipedia.)

Attica News (January 30,1974)

For more information on the Attica Prison Uprising:

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attica_Prison_riot

Project NIA:

http://niastories.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/attica_primerfinal.pdf

Solidarity:

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/313

There Are About 50 Boxes of Index Cards in the Collection

Within the collection there are boxes of index cards created by Gordon Hall for a variety of uses. Some of the cards have names of individuals and what groups they were members of.  Others have names of organizations with notes and information about them. Many of the cards also have addresses for the individuals or groups. Hall also used the cards to track his work. The index cards included in this post have the name of an organization, its address and a note saying they have been written a letter. I believe that the note means that Gordon Hall wrote to each of these groups requesting material. A lot of the material in the collection was gathered in this fashion.

I wanted to mention the index cards on the blog because they show the amount of effort and the attention to detail that Hall brought to his work. Also, from the archivist/historian perspective, they are an invaluable source of information. Not only do they provide a glimpse into Hall’s practices, but they also provide information about a ton of groups.

For this project they may help in a practical way as well because we have to describe the organizations in the collection. Many of these organizations are very small and have no information online and these cards could provide a lot of information along the lines of names, dates, locations and even categories. Of course they would have to be organized and inventoried first. At this stage of the process all we know is that we have boxes full of index cards.

There are about 23 boxes (1067 folders) of unidentified material in the Hall Hoag collection. A lot of this material is bank slips, notes, letters with no discernible pertinence and other unmarked documents. These boxes also sometimes contain research done by Gordon Hall which could be quite interesting to researchers but is hard to organize without reading thoroughly.  When group together the material often looks like this:

However, in all of these boxes there is usually something of interest that was not easily recognizable when first encountered. Sometimes it is even a few pages within a document or a stack of documents. For example the item below is clearly from the Ad Hoc Committee Against the War in Vietnam but was in an unmarked envelop with many other unrelated items. Hopefully before this project is over there will be time to go through the unidentified material, but it is not a major priority because most of the items in the box do not add value to the collection illustrating the point that no matter how much work is done organizing material, there are always some loose ends.

Ad Hoc Committee Against The War in Vietnam (1965)

The above images are covers from the left wing magazine Radical America. Also included is a picture of copies of Radical America as it is stored in the Hall Hoag Collection. Radical America is a publication from Paul Buhle and Mari Jo Buhle who were members of Students for a Democratic Society. RA was published out of Somerville, Massachusetts and “focused on topical issues of concern to the left and society at large, such as women’s liberation, working class radicalism and busing.”[1] The magazine ceased publication in 1999. Paul Buhle has been a professor at Brown University since 1995.

Full copies of Radical America can be read through Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship project on Radical America.

One of the images including in this post is the cover of the issue “Alternative Education Project, Aug. 1970.” Click this link for full access to this text.

The digital copies are currently being migrated to the Brown Digital Repository.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_America