Illinois State University Milner Library

On July 11, 2013

Recently researching for another blog post I cam across at digital collection of Gordon Hall conducted interviews at The Milner Library at Illinois State University in its “Voices of Extremism” collection. Mr. Hall interviews some prominent extremist leaders such as George Lincoln Rockwell and Billy James Hargis who have been topics of earlier blog posts. You can listen to these interviews online with the link below.

GORDON HALL INTERVIEWS

For more information on Mr. Hall himself ISU also has a fairly long and detailed biography written by his son Richard Hall:

GORDON HALL BIOGRAPHY

We have copies of these interviews on reel to reel tape in the Hall-Hoag Collection Part II.

Political Poster

By amajcher

On July 10, 2013

In Collection Highlights

We recently found 20 large political posters that seem to have been used by the Boston Area American Veterans Committee. The poster in this post specifically mentions Gordon Hall. It also highlights Gordon Hall’s unique position in the extremist landscape in that he was vilified by both the right wing and left wing organizations. Many right wing organizations considered him a communist and many left wing groups considered him fascist.

A Four Year Bummer

By amajcher

On July 3, 2013

In Collection Highlights

A Four Year Bummer was a small publication started in 1969 by students at The University of Illinois and servicemen stationed at the Chanute Air Force Base in Champaign, Illinois and was affiliated with the American Servicemen’s Union.[1] The publication, previously named “Harrass The Brass” was short lived, not lasting past the early 1970s[2] and focused primarily on the poor conditions at Chanute AFB and news from the broader GI movement.[3] There are less than 10 copies of A Four Year Bummer in the Hall Hoag Collection Part II.

A Four Year Bummer (May,1970)

A Four Year Bummer Insert (May 1970)

[1]http://www.sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/galleries/cover_pages/four_year_bummer.html

[2] Cortright, David “Soldiers In Revolt: GI Resistance During The Vietnam War” Haymarket Books, 1975

[3] http://www.bibliopolis.com/main/books/1670142/Chanute-AFB-A-Four-year-Bummer–Bolerium-Books.html

Black Panther Party

By amajcher

On June 25, 2013

In Collection Highlights

This week’s highlighted organization is the Black Panther Party. Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary socialist organization that became one of the most widely known extremist groups in the 20^th Century. At its peak the Party had ~10,000 members and focused on African American rights and freedoms in the United States as laid out in its “Ten Point Program.” The Party also became known for violent altercations with law enforcement agencies. These include the fatal shootings of Oakland policeman John Frey and prominent party member Bobby Hutton as well as the police raid that ended in the death of party member Fred Hampton. [1]

We have a wide array of items on the Black Panther Party to share in this post, including an article published by the Black Panther Party, other items published about the Party and photos taken, presumable by Gordon Hall at a Black Panther Rally in Boston.

The Black Panther 1962

Facts About The Black Panthers (Unknown Source)

Free Huey Newton Rally Post Office Square, Boston, MA (May 1, 1969)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party

New Work Location

By amajcher

On June 19, 2013

In Archival Processing

We are out at the Library Connections Annex now! All of the material from the Hall Hoag Collection is stored at the Annex and we will be working through all 1,600 boxes this summer. The goal of this stage is to collate all of the folders containing items from the same organizations. The current boxes we have are in the order that the items were shipped to Brown. We will be working to take the items out of the original boxes and place them in boxes labeled with letters of the alphabet. As a group we should be able to refile 25-30 boxes each day. The work will include checking the original boxes against a folder inventory to ensure we have the correct boxes (and they are inventoried), refiling the material into new boxes in alphabetical order, and then updating the old inventories with the new boxes numbers for each of the folders. We will have 8 students working in 3 teams full time all summer. We hope to get through the entire collection. This will also provide us the opportunity to see all of the material as we refile it, so we should have some great highlights to share on the blog.

Students Filing the Material Into Alpha Boxes

Students Inventorying Boxes

Hall-Hoag Research (Locations)

By amajcher

On June 14, 2013

In Archival Processing

We have finished researching over 1500 organizations in the collection and we found locations for 900 of them. Massachusetts and New York have the highest number of organizations and if you combine, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and California you would have more than half of the organizations in this subset. Although the results here are only for 900 organizations, I would not be surprised if the trends continued throughout the collection. It is also interesting that so far we have found material from 45 different states and 25 organizations with international locations. The charts below contain the data that we have found so far.

Hall Hoag Summer Work

By amajcher

On June 3, 2013

In EAC-CPF, Grant Updates

Today marks the beginning of the summer work for the Hall Hoag project. In two weeks we will begin our work at the Library Annex building but for now we are going to be doing research the organizations in the collection. We should be able to get through 1000-1200 organizations in this time. We will be finding the following information on each organization:

Organization Authority – we will be using VIAF to find authoritative versions of the organization names.
Organization Authority ID
Location City
Location State
Start Date
End Date
Organization Historty URL
Member Names
Member Name VIAF
Member Position
Member Start Date
Member End Date
Related Collection Location
Related Collection Title
Related Collection URL

Since we will have the help of 8 students this summer I am having them look up each organization the old fashioned way (Google) and fill in as much as they can find. All of the data they find will be imported into our database and will be added to the EAC-CPF records for the organizations.

The Summit and the Pit

By amajcher

On May 23, 2013

In Collection Highlights

This week’s item is a Christian Crusade Publication pamphlet named The Summit and the Pit by Gen C. A. Willoughby. Willoughy was a highly decorated military officer who served in both World War I, World War II and was General Douglas MacArthur’s Chief of Intelligence from 1940-1951.[1]

This particular pamphlet from 1961 covers Willoughby’s concern about the United State’s role in Eastern Europe after WWII. Willoughby believed that the US needed to increase its number of military divisions in the area to compete against Soviet interests. In many ways this pamphlet is a direct response to Senator Mike Mansfield who famously advocated for decreased military action, especially during the Vietnam War. In 1971 Mansfield offered a bill that called for the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe to be halved[2] but was not passed.

This pamphlet was published by Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade, which Hargis founded in 1950 and by the 1960s was one of the best known far right organizations.[3] Hargis was one of the first televangelists and made daily broadcasts on 500 radio stations and 250 TV channels in the 1950s and 1960s. According to Hargis, he preached taught and published on the following issues: “anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-welfare state, anti-Russia, anti-China, a literal interpretation of the Bible and states’ rights.”[4] Hargis went on to found the American Christian College in Tulsa in 1971.[5]

Hargis lost his prominence in 1974 after a sex scandal published by Time magazine that reported that students of both sexes said Mr. Hargis had sexual relations with them.[6] Charges were never brought against Hargis and he never admitted to the allegations but he also never returned to the spotlight.

Christian Crusade: The Summit and the Pit (1961)

[1]http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/manuscripts/collections/ms024.dot

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield

[3] George, John and Laird Wilcox “Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe” Prometheus Books (1992) pp.203

[4] http://www.economist.com/node/3499528

[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20975-2004Nov29.html

[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20975-2004Nov29.html

EAC-CPF Workshop

By amajcher

On May 14, 2013

In EAC-CPF

On Monday I attended the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) workshop, held in the Sheerr Room in Fay House at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, located at Harvard University. Katherine M. Wisser, Assistant Professor and Co-Director, Archives/History Dual Degree Program at Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College taught the workshop that covered the International Standard Archival Authority Record For Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families, hands on EAC-CPF work and an overview of other EAC-CPF projects. EAC-CPF is a standard that can help define the creators of archival collections and expose relationships between creators and other archival collections. For the Hall-Hoag project we will be using EAC-CPF to show relationships between all of the organizations in the collection when we publish the collection online. This workshop really helped clarify how to properly code the identities of the organizations in the Hall-Hoag collection and the potential of listing the functions of these organizations.

To get an idea of what EAC-CPF can look like in practice check out these sites:

Trove (The National Library of Australia): http://trove.nla.gov.au/?q=

Archives Portal Europe Network: http://www.apenet.eu/

Fay House, Cambridge

EAC-CPF Workshop

Who is Gordon Hall?

By amajcher

On May 8, 2013

In Collection Highlights

I rencetly found this item in the collection, but it does not have any publication information. Based on other copies of this document in the collection it is most likely attributed to a Stephen Miller, but it has been difficult to pinpoint his associations. The pamphlet also mentions Thomas A. Bresnaham from the State (MA?) Commission to Curb Communism. The item calls into question Gordon Hall’s communist sympathies. Although I do not know much about this item I chose to include it because it illustrates Gordon Hall’s profile in the extremist community. Through his collecting and writing Gordon Hall was a known entity to both left and right wing groups.

Send an email along if you think you might know more about this item.

The Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda, Part I and II

The Divided America Project

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