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

This weeks Hall Hoag Post on the  South Africa Catalyst Project has been posted on the libraries special collections blog. You can find the post here. We are moving up to the big time! (The cartoon featured below is by BulBul)

South Africa Catalyst Project (1978)

Todays post is a bit of a companion piece to last weeks post on the Martin Luther King assassination. I came across a few of Gordon Hall’s research files on James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King. Ray was convicted of a variety of crimes throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. He escaped prison in 1967 and worked on the George Wallace presidential campaign being a strong supporter of segregation.  Ray also underwent facial reconstructive surgery during this time.

On April 4, 1968 King was assassinated and Ray fled to Toronto. Ray was captured at Heathrow Airport in London, was extradited to Tennessee and confessed to the assassination. Shortly after Ray recanted his confession. Until his death in 1998, Ray spent much of his life fighting the conviction (even briefly escaping prison in 1977). He claimed throughout his life that he was not responsible for the assassination and many conspiracy theories have been developed around this fact. For many it remains one of the many mysteries of the 20^th century.

It seems that Gordon Hall was following this fairly closely. I have included some images of a few files that Hall kept on Ray and a sample of what is in the files. It is a clipping from the New York Times in 1968 reporting on the status of Ray’s conviction while he was still in London.

James Earl Ray File 1

James Earl Ray File 2

James Earl Ray NY Times 1968

On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated. Along with the assassination of President Kennedy, the King assassination is a prominent topic in the Hall Hoag collection (there is also a lot of material about King in general).  Figures that transcend politics like King or Kennedy became shorthand for a set of ideals that Americans either agreed with or disagreed with and this was no different for extremist groups. King’s importance in American history cannot be understated making him a prominent figure for both right and left wing groups. His assassination also opened the door for a different type of extremism, the conspiracy.

The item shared today comes from The New Federalist which was a publication operated by Lyndon LaRouche[1]. LaRouche and his publications are basically impossible to pin down and classify. He is one of the true anomalies in American extremism.  He has been on both the left and right side of politics, has operated some large organizations, and ran for president in each election from 1976 until 2004, but most people have never heard of him. The article here is a conspiracy theory surrounding the King assassination (from 1996), but conspiracy is only one of many topics covered by The New Federalist. For more information on LaRouche I suggest reading the link above. It will be worth your time.

The New Federalist (April 6, 1996)

The New Federalist 2 (April 6, 1996)

The “Waco Siege” occurred 21 years ago this month. This involved federal and state law enforcement staging a 51 day stand off with a group of Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas that ended with a raid which caused a fire and the death of 76 men, women, and children.[1]

The impetus of the raid was an arrest warrant for David Koresh on weapons charges. David Koresh was the leader of the Branch Davidians in a place known as Mount Carmel Center. The Branch Davidians were a sect of  Seventh Day Adventists who believed we were living in a time near the apocalypse and the second coming of Jesus Christ. They studied the bible intensively and in particular the book of revelation. David Koresh was known inside the group for his ability to interpret the book of revelation[2] and believed himself to be a prophet.[3]

Regardless of the intensions of law enforcement the raid became symbol of gross incompetence and government interference of individual rights.

The publication shared today comes from The Patriot Report, which was published by The Present Truth out of Indiana. The publication can be seen as part of the larger Patriot Movement with a focus on conspiracy theories and individual rights being dimensioned by an overpowering government.

There is much more to be read about the Waco Siege than I covered here. A good place to start would be Malcolm Gladwell’s recent article on the events at Waco for the New Yorker. You can find the article here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/31/140331fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=1

The Present Truth – Waco Update (1993)

The Present Truth – Waco Update 2 (1993)

The 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill promoted me to take a look through the Hall-Hoag collection to find an item relating to the spill. However, I came across something of a surprise that I wanted to share. The Exxon Pipeline Company printed a newsletter called The Liner and I was able to find a copy of it in the collection. Corporations like Exxon often have publications and Gordon Hall collected many of them. I believe that his reasoning was two-fold. 1) Many corporations were the target of other extremist groups and would publish responses. 2) Many corporations were involved in politics and had agendas to promote, but the item shared today does not quite fall into either category.

When I located the item I was expecting it to be about the Exxon Company and most likely pertaining to some aspect of the oil business. It is really just a showcase for an employee of the Exxon Pipeline Company,  Norma Gabler who edited and wrote textbooks in Texas on the side job. Gabler’s work made her a prominent figure in education and she became somewhat controversial for her conservative views of education believing that “modern education was designed to undermine traditional, moral absolutist education.”

My guess is that Gordon Hall collected this item because he was interested in learning more about Gabler. It was a surprise because it seems unusual that he was able to locate this profile in a fairly obscure publication. This item also showcases how difficult it can be to classify the items in the collection without looking at them. The item is listed on an inventory as The Exxon Pipeline Company because they published the pamphlet, but the item really has nothing to do with oil or Exxon. What we really have here is something that would interest someone researching education in the 20th century in the U.S., but would be very difficult to find. Considering that there are 170,000 folders in the Hall Hoag Collection, it is not possible to spend this amount of time on each of them providing the somber proof that although we are working to make this collection visible, there were always be some aspects of it that remain hidden.

The Liner Cover (March 1973)

The Liner Inside (March 1973)