There & Back Again: A Hobo’s Tale

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An exhibition is currently on display about Hobo culture, train hopping, and boxcar art over the last 150 years. The exhibit will run from January 9 – February 28, 2020 in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center Gallery at the University of Connecticut. Drawing from the extensive railroad collections at the UConn Archives & Special Collections, this exhibit seeks to present the love of trains from an alternative approach through art, folklore, and travelogue.

The exhibition will feature an opening reception and film showing of Bill Daniel’s Who is Bozo Texino: the epic account of the improbable discovery of the true identity of the world’s greatest boxcar artist. (2005) on Thursday, February 6th, 2020 from 7-9pm.

DAYGLO AND NAPALM – In Closing: The Making of a Dissident

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Peace March, New York City, April 15,1967.
Howard S. Goldbaum Collection of Connecticut Daily Campus Negatives.

The following essay is an extended closing remark to the exhibition Day-Glo and Napalm: UConn from 1967-1971, by guest curator and contributor, George Jacobi (’71).The exhibition runs until Friday, October 25th, 2019.

Thanks to the GI Bill, the Fifties are a favorable time for most Americans home from the war to build a career and raise a family. Powered by Unions as well, the rise of the largest middle class in history finally includes some Black and Latino citizens. Suburbia is invented. The 1964 World’s Fair in New York promises we’ll all be working far fewer hours and getting there in a flying car, asserting that technology only benefits mankind. Robots will do the tough jobs. The future seems so far away that this is almost believable. Are white kids in New England spoiled? Compared with previous generations, sure we are, and so has each generation since. Growing up then is generally benign, and the result is a chance to examine ourselves and America with less national responsibility than our parents. Our patriotism thus leans toward social betterment, not defense or personal economic progress.                                                              

Under the veneer of white middle-class American life rumblings of unrest have begun. Academics are suggesting that modern society is unfulfilling. Rachel Carson has shown America that it is in the process of killing nature with chemicals. Kerouac has been “On the Road” and Jackson Pollock has blown up the art world. Jazz has turned from big band dance music into individual expression. Ginsburg writes “Howl” and thus comes out as a gay man; the book is immediately banned. Yet in Greenwich Village people are “suddenly free of the shackles, the baggage of tradition”: Liam Clancy. Nevertheless, beatniks are portrayed as a joke on TV.                                                                                                                                                  The political and cultural events that took place at UConn during the years 1967 to 1971 of course reflect wider American historical forces. For simplicity, label these Politics, Spirituality, Culture, and the Arts. In reality, they are jumbled together; breaking them down in order to clarify each is a rare side benefit of the passage of time.                                                                                                                                         

The following account lists this history, phenomena that took place or began prior to 1967. By that year, society is increasingly seen by an influential youth minority as hypocritical or empty of value. It has become apparent that the norms are mythological and serve only the powerful. Alienation results with what is initially a quiet insurrection against uncritical acceptance of the status quo. While most of the country isn’t paying attention, there is a cultural shift; all of a sudden something changes. Several small groups at first, an anti-establishment minority slowly appears. Most folks in America and at UConn in the mid-1960s go about their own lives whether they are sympathetic to this rebellion or not. A majority of UConn students, including us, will spend most of our hours being students.                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

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DAYGLO AND NAPALM: Singular Sixties Stories

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Moratorium, Oct. 15, 1969. Howard S. Goldbaum Collection of Connecticut Daily Campus Negatives.

The following guest posts by alumni Ken Sachs (’71), Michael Pagliaro (’72), Lori Wallach (’70), and Janet Rogers (’72) are in conjunction with the current UConn Archives exhibition Day-Glo & Napalm: UConn 1967-1971 guest curated by George Jacobi (’71). The exhibition is on display until October 25th in the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Guest Post by Anonymous:

In 1969 I had a IIs deferment at UCONN that would run out in January 1970 when I completed my B.A. My roommate had served in Vietnam where he survived the battle that has been called “Hamburger Hill.” When I received my physical notice, he informed me that I needn’t worry about the draft as he would “kill me” before I was drafted rather than let me participate in that ill-advised war. Fortunately, T_____had access to some black beauties (little black capsules containing an amphetamine commonly referred to in those days as “speed”).

On the morning of my physical in the fall of 1969, I popped one of the “beauties” into my mouth and headed off to our local draft board. At age 22, I was the oldest on the bus, surrounded by a lot of naïve 18-year-olds, many just out of high school. Before the bus left, the middle-aged clerk at the draft board got on the bus waving a little U.S. flag and telling us all “how proud” she was of us all. Frankly, I wanted to strangle her for her “patriotism.” Before the bus arrived in New Haven I popped my last black beauty.

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Resources in the Archives about Labor Strikes in Connecticut

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Near the center of the University of Connecticut campus sits Hawley Armory, one of many oblong brick buildings. Built in 1915 and named after Willis Nichols Hawley, a UConn graduate who died of yellow fever in the Spanish-American War, the armory has long served as a site for athletic events, campus gatherings, and military exercises.

Yet as the historian Jeremy Brecher reminds us, sturdy brick-buildings like Hawley Armory once appeared across the United States for another purpose. They were designed to help defend the country, though not from distant enemies but rather disturbances at home.

In the late nineteenth century, working people across the country began to organize and agitate for higher wages, improved working conditions, and a better quality of life. In these efforts, their key weapon was the strike—the mass refusal to work. But capitalists and their political allies had weapons of their own, and they didn’t hesitate to use them.

During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, for example, when local police refused to break up strikes, governors called in state militias to do it for them. In these grisly skirmishes, armories proved useful to government officials intent on breaking the power of workers. Even though the Great Railroad Strike ended in failure, labor militancy continued in the following decades, and the strike remained an essential tactic for workers.

As a leading industrial state, Connecticut has been home to a fair share of labor unrest, much of it well documented in the business and labor collections held by Archives & Special Collections.

One early example was the 1935 strike of 1,000 workers at the Colt Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company located along the Connecticut River in Hartford. In the middle of the Great Depression, workers routinely used work stoppages and picket lines to improve their working conditions. And the workers at the Colt plant had good reason to strike. As one striking worker, Leo LaForge, later recounted, “There was, in them days, no holidays, no vacation, no sick days, no time and a half.”

The strike was a raucous affair, involving violence and intimidation against workers, as well as an attempted bombing of the plant manager’s home. Students from Yale and Wesleyan University even joined the picket lines. Yet despite new laws protecting collective bargaining, the company refused to negotiate with the workers and the strike was eventually called off after a few weeks.

Workers at the Pratt and Whitney Division of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company had greater success when they went on strike in 1946. Organized by Unity Lodge 251 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, several thousand workers refused to work in an effort to achieve higher wages. They aimed to raise their pay 18 ½ cents an hour, equal to industry-wide rates. The company’s president, Charles W. Deeds, rejected the worker’s demands, citing labor costs and supply shortages left over from World War II.

But the striking workers had the wind at their backs. In the years 1945-1946, the United States saw the largest strike wave in the nation’s history. In 1946 alone, as many as four million workers walked off the job. Despite concerted opposition from management, and tensions with local authorities, thousands of Pratt & Whitney workers led mass pickets at the plant. After twenty-one weeks, the company eventually settled, agreeing to a 12-cent raise.

The years after the Pratt & Whitney strike saw significant improvements in the lives of American workers. Between 1947 and 1973, the working-class standard of living nearly doubled, and much of that growth owed to the strength of organized labor. Yet the heyday of the labor-management accord would not last long. Organized labor’s fortunes began to wane as early as the late 1960s.

In 1967, for example, 100 workers at the Sessions Clock Company in Bristol, Connecticut, voted to go on strike. Through their union, Local 261 of the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, the workers at Sessions, many of them women, sought a 20-cent pay increase. The company response was all too familiar. Picketing workers were beaten at one point during the strike, sending one union organizer, James Ingalls, to the hospital.

After nine weeks, the union accepted a 10-cent pay increase and the workers returned to the factory. Despite the measured success, the writing was on the wall: organized labor was in decline. Only a few years later, the same union representing workers at the Sessions Clock Company was lobbying members of Congress to increase worker protections. Foreign competition combined with laws allowing corporations to easily move production was battering once-thriving union towns. Rather than face strikes, companies closed plants and moved them to areas with low taxes, low wages, and laws that made it difficult to unionize.

Since the 1970s, the declining fortunes of organized labor has been a key feature of American life. But this trend may soon be changing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018 saw more work stoppages than at any time since 1986. Either way, there’s no better time to explore the exciting history of strikes in Connecticut, and no better place to do it than Archives & Special Collections at the University of Connecticut. Among the relevant collections are:

Henry Stieg Collection of the Pratt & Whitney Company The collection comprises materials gathered by Henry R. Stieg, a master gage inspector at the Pratt & Whitney Division of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company from 1940 to 1973 and departmental steward in the Unity Lodge Local 251 of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers and, after 1948, Unity Lodge, Local 405 of the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, CIO. The materials include publications, newsletters, flyers, and memoranda related to the company and unions, including the 1946 strike. They also contain drawings and machine plans, reports and maps, correspondence, contract proposals, as well as other union-related material, such as work agreements, job evaluations, newspaper clippings, and pamphlets. The finding aid can be found here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/679

James A. Ingalls Papers The papers comprise materials generated and gathered by James A. Ingalls when he served as a Field Representative of the International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO. They include contracts, correspondence, legal records, financial records, and newspaper clippings. They also contain notes from when Ingalls represented Connecticut local chapters to negotiate contracts, resolve strikes and lockouts, and develop collective bargaining agreements, pension plans, and compensation and health benefits packages. Included in the papers is material on the 1967 strike at the Sessions Clock Company. The finding aid can be found here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/454

Nicholas J. Tomassetti Papers Nicholas J. Tomassetti was a labor organizer associated with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union, as well as a Democratic representative to the Connecticut General Assembly. The papers document Tomassetti’s labor activities and involvement in the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers Union (UE) and include correspondence, reports, administrative and legal records, strike and negotiation materials, directories, minutes, publications, scrapbooks, photographs, and newspaper clippings. The finding aid can be found here: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/705

Ralph J. Pancallo Papers Ralph Pancallo was a long-standing member of the International Typographical Union (now the Communications Workers of America). Pancallo also served as vice president of the Connecticut State Labor Council, secretary and president of the New Britain Central Labor Council, and as both president and treasurer of the New Britain Typographical Union #679 (now the Connecticut Typographical Union #679). The papers comprise materials collected by Pancallo, including union meeting minutes, financial ledgers, printed materials, correspondence, clippings, convention reports, programs, and films. Other materials include publications from a variety of local typographical unions, as well as the AFL-CIO. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/584

University of Connecticut, Center for Oral History Interviews Collection The collection comprises interview transcripts conducted by the University of Connecticut Center for Oral History, and individuals and programs associated with the Center. The Center began life as the Oral History Project in 1968 and after expanding over the 1970s was made a center by the UConn Board of Trustees in 1981. The collection includes the transcripts of interviews with workers who participated in the 1935 Colt strike, along with other collections focused on labor and industry in Connecticut. The finding aid can be found at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/984 and digitized material can be found here: http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:19840025

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

UConn Archives Punk Photography at Counter Weight Brewing Co.

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The next installation of the traveling exhibition, Live at The Anthrax, is currently hosted at Counter Weight Brewing Co. in Hamden, CT and will run from September 5th-December 15th, 2019. This exhibition features 20 black & white photographs from the Joe Snow Punk Rock Collection, taken by Joe in the late 1980s during the final years of The Anthrax club in Norwalk, CT.  Bands featured in the selection include local CTHC staples such as Wide Awake and NY Hardcore bands Up Front and Absolution to seminal acts such as Fugazi.  This curated exhibition highlights the dedication, energy and lived values of those who formed the hardcore scene and turned it into a community.  This exhibit seeks to expose the public to archival collections outside of a traditional archives setting in order to promote access to rich cultural materials like those of the Joe Snow Punk Rock Collection in everyday spaces like record stores, breweries and community spaces. This exhibition is free and open to the public.

Anarchism at UCONN (Believe It or Not!); The Inner College Experiment

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This guest post by Prof. Len Krimerman is in conjunction with the current exhibition Day-Glo & Napalm: UConn 1967-1971, an exhibition guest curated by alumnus George Jacobi (Class of ’71) on the student times of the late 1960s and early 1970s at UConn and in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969. Currently on display until October 25th, 2019.

Inner Tooth staff, publication of the Inner College, 1970

By Len Krimerman*

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

“Anarchism at UCONN” may seem a baffling title or an attempt at dry humor. We are, after all, not talking about the ‘60s and ‘70s at UC Berkeley or Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan. And today our own state’s flagship university is safely and securely nestled within what its region delights in calling itself – “the quiet corner”.

But I can assure you, there really were years, not days or months, when anarchy, or something very much akin to it, had a place within and was tolerated by UCONN. Though there is now no tangible trace of this anarchic educational venture, and no documentation of it in the official histories of this University, it actually did emerge, and it had a great run.

So let me tell a bit of this radical experiment’s story. The idea of it came to life in an undergraduate course in social and political philosophy I was teaching in the Fall of 1968. We were discussing social critic Paul Goodman’s The Community of Scholars, which certainly sounds tame enough. But his book’s challenging anarchic thesis was that several of Europe’s finest universities were founded, during the Italian Renaissance, by “secession”. Faculty thwarted by rigid state or clerical bureaucracy simply quit, taking with them dozens of their students, and created self-directed places like the University of Florence.

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The Lady Edith Society…and the Lengths Some Will Go To Save a Steam Locomotive

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During the nineteenth century, railroads expanded dramatically across the United States, turning the steam locomotive into a potent symbol of progress in American life. As railroads moved people, goods, and information around the country like never before, the steam-engine seemed to rework the basic nature of time and space. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a keen observer of industrializing America, wrote in 1834 that when riding on a train, “the very permanence of matter seems compromised … hitherto esteemed symbols of stability do absolutely dance by you.”

Yet by the mid-twentieth century, railroads had become a symbol of the past. While trains remained in use, the automobile and airplane replaced them as markers of modernity. Nevertheless, the era of the steam-engine continued to fascinate many Americans, and rescuing relics of the nineteenth century became a hobby for some. One group of hobbyists, calling themselves the Lady Edith Society, even traveled across an ocean to rescue a retired locomotive from the forward march of time.

The Lady Edith Society was founded in 1959 by Edgar T. Mead, Jr., Rogers E. M. Whitaker, and Oliver Jensen, all then living in New York City. None of the men had any engineering background, but they shared an enthusiasm for railroads and their history. Mead, a Wall Street financial analyst, had already spent years preserving railroad equipment and even worked for a railroad in Maine as a young man. Whitaker, who helped to publish The New Yorker and wrote about railroading under the pen name “E.M. Frimbo,” had reportedly traveled over four million miles by train in forty different countries. Jensen, the managing editor of American Heritage magazine, often directed his editorial efforts to covering railroad history.

The three men came together to rescue the “Lady Edith,” the No. 3L steam-engine train for the Cavan & Leitrim Railway of Ireland. The 4-4-0 type locomotive was originally built in 1887 by the noted firm of Robert Stephenson & Company, of New Castle-upon-Tyne, England. The Lady Edith was one of eight steam-engines built by the company for the Cavan & Leitrim Railway. All the trains except one were named after the wives or daughters of the company directors (the final train was named after Queen Victoria).

The Cavan & Leitrim Railway was a 3-foot narrow-gauge railway located in the Irish counties of Cavan and Leitrim. The lighter gauge rail suited the sharp turns and steep grades of the northern Irish landscape. The line was primarily used to haul coal and livestock, though it carried passengers as well. In 1925, the line was absorbed into the Great Southern Railways Company and began to face stiff competition soon after. First highways drew away livestock and passengers, and finally, new mines eliminated the need to transport coal. The line ran for the last time in March 1959.

A few months later, the members of the Lady Edith Society pooled their money together, made arrangements with the transatlantic shipping firm United States Lines, and soon had the Lady Edith and a couple other pieces from Cavan & Leitrim sailing across the Atlantic toward Boston. Once the Lady Edith arrived in the United States, the train was moved to the Pleasure Island Amusement Park in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Cleaned and painted, the Lady Edith and the other pieces from Cavan & Leitrim stayed on display at Pleasure Island for a number of years.

But in 1961, a change in park policy meant the Lady Edith Society had to find a new home for their rescued locomotive. The Lady Edith and its passenger car were then moved to the Pine Creek Railroad Museum near Freehold, New Jersey, for storage and display. Still, the society members longed to see the train run again, so they launched a series of costly and difficult repairs. In 1965, amid the repairs, the Lady Edith was moved a third time to Allaire, New Jersey, home of the new Pine Creek Railroad Division of the New Jersey Museum of Transportation, Inc.

After many years of repairs, and many delays due to inadequate information, the Lady Edith finally steamed again on May 13, 1967, eight years after leaving Ireland. Although it was a rough ride, everyone gathered was excited to see the train moving under its own power. In subsequent years, the train made additional trips along the tracks in Allaire, usually accompanied by a subsequent series of repairs. By the end of the 1970s, the Lady Edith Society members gradually divested themselves of ownership, with Edgar Meade reportedly the last to transfer his shares.

Today, the Lady Edith remains with the New Jersey Museum of Transportation, Inc., though some efforts have been made to return it to Ireland.

We know the story of the Lady Edith Society and their efforts to save this steam engine through the papers of Oliver Jensen, which we hold here in Archives & Special Collections. Jensen (1914-2005) was born in New London, Connecticut, and spent much of his life in the state. A railroad enthusiast all of his life, he served as president of the  Connecticut Valley Railroad Company and from 1976-1980 as chairman of the board of directors. The  Connecticut Valley Railroad Company restored tracks along the original Valley Railroad line, transforming the railroad into a popular tourist attraction based in Essex, Connecticut. For more information about Oliver Jensen see the finding aid to his collection at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/830

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

DAY-GLO AND NAPALM: UCONN FROM 1967 to 1971

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Formal Dinner, McMahon Hall, 1968. Personal Collection of George Jacobi.

August 5th – October 25th, 2019

Reception: September 19th, 2019 6-8pm at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center Gallery

Archives & Special Collections Gallery

Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

An exhibition guest curated by alumnus George Jacobi (Class of ’71) on the student times of the late 1960s and early 1970s at UConn and in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival of 1969. Jacobi has curated materials from the Archives & Special Collections photography, periodicals and Alternative Press Collections and incorporated personal collections and narratives from those who lived through it to create a robust personal exploration of the times.

The following essay is an extended introduction to the exhibition Day-Glo and Napalm: UConn from 1967-1971 by guest curator and contributor, George Jacobi (’71).

DAY-GLO AND NAPALM: UCONN FROM 1967 to 1971

Recollections and Impressions for my University of Connecticut Archives Exhibit

George Jacobi ©2019

A small innocuous on-campus house is surrounded by angry UConn students, its front porch protected by armed, helmeted State Police and University Security Officers. The Riot Act has already been read to the 100 or so protesters, whose shoulders are hunched in Navy pea coats against a bitter north wind. It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 1968. Some of those students spent the previous night with faces lit only by black lights, psychedelic music swirling around them. Smoke from illegal hash pipes drifted out dorm windows. A relaxed but resolute fellowship, they temporarily dwelt in an imaginary world.

Today, back in the daylight, they want UConn to divest itself from the military industrial complex, to end its involvement with Olin Matheson, manufacturer of missiles for the Vietnam War. In fact, they insist. They chant, they yell, they watch as the most committed among them climb onto the recruiting location’s porch to put their bodies in the way of the war machine. This world is far from imaginary. Clubs swing, rocks fly, heads are bloodied. Twenty-one are arrested.

Within two years, the Student Union Mall will be filled with 4000 UConn students – now the entire college is on strike. What is it with these young people? For many, trust in the establishment, from government to church to the University, has completely evaporated. Something is badly broken. How have these middle-class kids, in just a year or two, come to a point of complete resistance to America herself?

The 50th Anniversary of 1969 is more than an appropriate time for this exhibit; it’s also the last significant anniversary when many participants in this bit of history will be alive. Most of the counter-cultural political drama at UConn took place between 1968 and 1970 – ‘69 is a fitting centerpiece. Despite continued racial and anti-war protests, such communal events as the Woodstock Music Festival made 1969 almost feel like a short respite between the more violent bookends of the other two years.

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Michael Rumaker, 1932-2019

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Author and Black Mountain College alumnus Michael Rumaker — writer of fiction, poetry, short stories, non-fiction and memoir — passed away on June 3, 2019.

Michael Rumaker was born in South Philadelphia to Michael Joseph and Winifred Marvel Rumaker, the fourth of nine children. He spent his first seven months in the Preston Retreat charity ward, too sickly to be brought home, while his mother helped pay for her keep and his birth by peeling potatoes in the hospital’s kitchen. He grew up in National Park, New Jersey, a small town on the Delaware River, and later attended the school of journalism at Rider College in Trenton on a half-scholarship. After hearing artist Ben Shahn speak enthusiastically of Black Mountain College during a lecture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he applied to the college and was granted a work scholarship. In September 1952 he transferred to Black Mountain–washing dishes seven days a week, managing dishwashing crews, and taking care of the kitchen his first year–and studied in the writing classes of Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. While at Black Mountain College he produced three stacks of manuscripts, each a foot high, which he kept hidden on a top shelf.

His breakthrough was “The Truck,” written for Olson’s writing class in October 1954: “after two years of confused false starts and superficial scratchings, I wrote my first real short story, although, in what was to become usual for me, I didn’t know it till after the fact.” He had “reached back,” by his own account, into his adolescence in the mid-1940s and a street gang he knew in the northern section of Camden, New Jersey, “to get it.” Olson’s response was enthusiastic, and he suggested that Rumaker send the story to Robert Creeley for the Black Mountain Review, which he published.

In September 1955 Rumaker graduated from Black Mountain with an honors degree ( Robert Duncan was his outside examiner)–one of only two or three students to have graduated from the college in its final years. After graduation, he lived in Philadelphia for a year, working in an advertising agency during the day and writing stories at night (“Black Mountain College,” he wrote, “had prepared me for nothing but my destiny”). In October 1956, he quit his job at the agency and hitchhiked the three thousand miles to San Francisco, where he worked as a clerk for a steamship company, again writing in his spare time while staying with former Black Mountain friends there, on hand for the energies shortly to be recognized as those of the Beat Generation. He describes these days vividly in “Robert Duncan in San Francisco,” part of his memoir of a literary life in progress.

He returned to New York in April 1958, suffered a breakdown some six months later, and was hospitalized, first at Bellevue and then at Rockland State just north of New York City, until August 1960. His first contract, then–four stories for Scribners’ Short Story 2 anthology–was signed in a mental institution. Since recovery he continued to live in Rockland County.

Rumaker received an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia University in 1969 and taught writing at the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Rockland Center for the Arts.

Beginning in the 1970s, Rumaker began publishing memoirs and poems as well as fiction, often using a first-person narrator. His principal subject was gay life in the novels A Day and A Night at the Baths and My First Satyrnalia, the memoir Robert Duncan in San Francisco, and the poem “The Fairies Are Dancing All Over the World,” originally published in the periodical Gay Sunshine (1975) and later included in the 2005 release Pizza: Selected Poems. 

According to George Butterick, who began reading and collecting Michael Rumaker’s literary papers at the University of Connecticut in 1974, “Rumaker proceeded from writing about disengaged youth in a generation willing to declare its difference, to being a celebrant of total life and human joy. Actively participating in his own destiny, he has left a glowing trail of work to document the struggle toward identity. He represents, in his later writings, one extension of the Beat revolution: the embracing of sexual diversity. Governing all his work is an indefatigable spirit that gives the creative life reward.”

The Michael Rumaker Papers, assembled by Rumaker, contains his literary manuscripts, letters, notebooks, diaries, photographs, audio recordings and periodicals documenting his life, writing, activism, friendships, and literary affinities from 1950 to 2015.

Rumaker was a friend, supporter and collaborator to archivists and staff at the University of Connecticut over the years. We send our condolences to Rumaker’s friends and family. Read more on the website of The South Jersey Times.

Resources in the Archives on D-Day and the Normandy Invasion

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On June 6, 1944, the day now known as D-Day, the Allied Forces of World War II stormed the beaches of Northern France in an effort to liberate France and Europe from four years of German occupation. Led mostly by the military forces of the United States, Britain, and Canada, D-Day’s Normandy landings were the turning point in the war that eventually led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.

Archives & Special Collections has materials with references to D-Day and the Normandy Invasion although not as many as we had hoped. While we have several sets of letters by soldiers from Connecticut who served in World War II we found that many of those soldiers were either stationed on bases in the U.S. at the time or were fighting in other theaters. Those who might have been involved made little contemporary mention of the battles, a couple of them noting in their letters that they had been instructed by their superiors to specifically NOT write home about the invasion. We found that even the university records have scant contemporary mentions to the event, particularly in student publications, because  by the time of the invasion in June 1944 school was out of session for the summer.

Despite these disappointments there are some items in the collections, particularly these:

Andre Schenker was a Professor of History at UConn and a world affairs commentator for station  WTIC in  Hartford in the 1940s. His series of programs during the years of World War II made him one of the best-known commentators in the state. One of his most notable commentaries was of D-Day, and can be heard in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:859909662. Transcripts of this and his other broadcasts can be found in his papers.

Thomas J. Dodd served as Executive Trial Counsel at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, after the war, where Nazi leaders were put on trial to answer for their crimes against humanity. In his position on the United States prosecution team Dodd gathered evidence from German records to support the arguments. Dodd’s family donated these documents, all transcribed in English, and they are now one of our most used and strongest collections. Among the files is “Shooting of Allied Prisoners of War by 12 SS Panzer Division in Normandy, France, 7-21 June, 1944” which details the acts perpetrated by the Nazis immediately after D-Day. This document can be found in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:5466

The UConn Center for Oral History conducted interviews for the project “Voices from the Second World War.” One of the interviews is with Robert Conrad, who served in the Army Air Force beginning in 1942. Conrad was a mechanic who was sent overseas to England in the 356th fighter squadron and was crew chief on P47 and P51 fighter aircraft.  In his interview, conducted in March 2000, he tells of the preparations made to the airplanes in the lead-up to D-Day.

Also in the “Voices from the Second World War” project is an interview conducted in December 1999 of Franklin Johnson, who was in the 110th Artillery, where he discusses the preparations of his unit for the Normandy Invasion, particularly the secrecy and confusion surrounding it.

Other projects in the Center for Oral History project, which can be found in the digital repository, make mention of the Normandy Invasion, including interviews by Harold Burson (http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860389827), Benjamin Ferencz (http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860389823), and Manfred Isserman (http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860389820p). Each of these men were interviewed for the “Witnesses to Nuremberg” project but noted their D-Day experiences in their interviews. Maurice Barbaret, interviewed for the “Connecticut Workers” project, also refers to Normandy at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:860307439

The Southern New England Telephone Company produced an employee newsletter – The Telephone Bulletin – that extensively reported on SNET men and women who served overseas during World War II. Following the Normandy Invasion there were several notices in the publication about employees who participated or were killed in the invasion, or served in France.

Like SNET, the New Haven Railroad had an employee newsletter — Along the Line — where the activities of individuals were noted, particularly those who served during World War II. The August 1944 issue of the newsletter notes those railroad employees who were wounded or killed in the invasion.

James W. Wall was a Boston area photographer whose work focuses mainly on the locomotives and trains of Massachusetts, primarily in the 1930s when he was a teenager. The collection also has photographs taken by Wall when he served in the Army during World War II. Little is known about Wall but that which we do know is gathered from the photographs he took. The collection includes several images taken in France, particularly in Cretteville and Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, in July and August 1944, showing local scenes, other servicemen, and fighter planes.

Resources in the Archives on the Central American Solidarity Movement of the 1980s

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In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or Sandinistas), a revolutionary political party organized on Marxist-Leninist principles, came to power in Nicaragua by helping to overthrow the long-ruling Somoza family dynasty. Soon after, the Sandinistas faced concerted opposition from the Contras, a loosely-affiliated set of guerilla groups opposed to the new left-wing government. The U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan directly supported the Contra rebels, providing them with money, training, and supplies. After this support became illegal by acts of Congress in 1982-84, the Reagan administration secretly used the profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to continue funding the Contras, an action that later erupted into public view with the Iran-Contra Affair.

The New York Times recently reported on how Vermont Senator and Democratic-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders opposed the actions of the Reagan administration during this period. But Senator Sanders was not the only one: thousands of Americans became involved in opposing the Reagan administration’s support for reactionary forces across Central America in the 1980s. Some of the organizations and individuals involved in the Central American solidarity movement resided here in Connecticut, a history well documented by materials held in the Archives & Special Collections at the University of Connecticut Library.

For example, materials from local chapters of Witness for Peace (WFP) and Pledge of Resistance (POR), two of the largest organizations involved in the Central America solidarity movement, can be found in our extensive Alternative Press Collection. Witness for Peace was founded in 1983 by faith-based activists opposed to the Reagan administration’s support for the Contras. During the 1980s, WFP chapters brought thousands of Americans to Central America to document the horrors of war and accompany Central Americans in warzones. Pledge of Resistance, also founded by faith-based groups in 1983, grew into a national campaign to get ordinary Americans to pledge their opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America. By the time Ronald Reagan left office in 1989, as many as 100,000 people in the United States had made the pledge, and many thousands had also participated in non-violent protests against Reagan’s policies.

The Alternative Press Collection also holds records from similar organizations, such as the Connecticut Central American Network and the Connecticut Committee for Medical Aid to Nicaragua, among many others. Archives & Special Collections also hold the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Archive of Latin Americana, an extensive collection of primary and secondary sources on Latin America. These materials include significant documentation on the Central American solidarity movement from both the United States and Central America. Finally, the archives also holds other relevant collections like the International Rescue Committee, Central America Records, an organization dedicated to helping immigrants from Central America reach the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, and the personal papers of Steve Thornton, a labor activist and organizer from Hartford, Connecticut, whose papers contain a range of documentation on activism against U.S. involvement in Central America.

If you’re interested in learning more about the 1980s Central American solidarity movement, we invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections. 

Resources in the Archives on Student Life at UConn

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In December 1967, the University Of Connecticut Faculty Senate tasked its Student Wellness Committee with taking the temperature on campus. After a series of systematic surveys conducted between 1968 and 1971, the committee presented a comprehensive assessment of student opinion over the years. The results were not encouraging.

Based on their surveys, the committee found a “clear and constant decline” in the number of students satisfied with their education at UConn. Student government, parking, and housing all came in for particular criticism, yet larger issues lurked beneath the surface. “A general state of uneasiness,” the committee noted, “pervades much of [the students’] outlook.”

In the survey’s early years, the U.S. war in Vietnam figured prominently. But by 1971, the turmoil of war, the draft, and student protest had been replaced by “a feeling of powerlessness, uncertainty of goals, uncertainty of finding a job after graduation.” In their assessment, the committee found students to be “evolutionary oriented not revolutionary oriented.” Most wanted the same things as their parents: a good career, a chance to meet people and form relationships, a meaningful life.

Not everything was bad, though. The committee also indicated that students deemed much about the university desirable. They praised the beautiful campus, the diverse student body, the moderate expenses, and the overall value of a UConn degree. The only thing left to do, the committee reasoned, was to take stock of student grievances and make changes where possible.

Have you ever wondered what life was like for students at the University of Connecticut “back in the day”? How did students experience their time on campus? What did they like and dislike? What were their hopes and fears? How did these change (or not) over time? Archives & Special Collections of the University of Connecticut Library holds a wealth of material for those interested in exploring these and other questions about student life at the University of Connecticut. Among the relevant collections are:

University of Connecticut, Senior Survey Records. The collection comprises administrative records associated with opinion surveys conducted by UConn between 1969 and 1975. The surveys cover student opinions on everything from administration, courses, housing, Greek life, and campus mood. The bulk of the collection consists of individual students responses made up of mostly hand-written responses along with general identifying information. The collection also contains administrative summaries for some years. The finding aid can be found at: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/818

University of Connecticut, Undergraduate Student Government Records. The collection comprises the administrative records of the UConn’s student government from 1944 to 1985. The records document changes in the name and structure of the student government, as well as the different topics and issues the organization addressed. Topics addressed range from the quality of housing to registration difficulties to political issues and student-led initiatives, such as a campus recycling program. Minutes and agendas for the Undergraduate Student Government from 1985 through the present are also available although they have not yet been integrated into the collection. The finding aid can be found at: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/721

Campbell Collection of the Organization of Graduate Student Action. The collection comprises materials related to a the Organization for Graduate Student Action (OGSA), an organization of graduate students that formed in opposition to the attempt by Governor John Rowland and UConn administration to remove graduate students from the state employee health plan in 2003. The materials range from general information on the state health plan and OSGA advertisements to correspondence with officials and surveys with students. The finding aid can be found at: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/577

University of Connecticut Memorabilia Collection. The collection comprises ephemera and artifacts associated with UConn that add a material depth and diversity to the textual collections on university life. The collection helps to illuminate student life at UConn through material objects, such as posters, programs, invitations, clothing, pins, buttons, and other artifacts. These materials can be a useful way of supplementing the record of student life found in textual materials. The finding aid can be found at: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/528

University Scrapbook Collection. The collection comprises scrapbooks that document programs, activities, events, and individuals associated with UConn. Similar to the memorabilia collection, the scrapbooks add another useful supplement to the official textual materials from university offices. They cover a range of subjects and time periods, with some dedicated to specific organizations and others produced by individual students. The finding aid for this collection can be found at: https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/648

Student Publications. The collection comprises digitized issues of student publications from multiple UConn campuses. The most significant collection comes from the Storrs campus, including extensive runs of early to contemporary student newspapers like the Lookout and the Daily Campus. These newspapers provide one of the most detailed portraits of student life at UConn over the years. Along with the official student newspapers, publications like Contact, Caliper, and the UConn Free Press provide alternative views and information about specific student groups and their activities on campus. The digitized items can be found at: http://hdl.handle.net/11134/islandora:campusnewspapers

Nutmeg. The collection comprises digitized copies of UConn’s student yearbook from 1915 to 2008. The yearbooks provide extensive information about students and student life from each year available. Along with class rosters, the yearbooks contain photographs and information about clubs, athletics, activities, awards, and topical material. Issues of Nutmeg from 1915 to 1999 can be found in our digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:02653871

University of Connecticut Photograph Collection. The collection comprises digitized photographs from throughout UConn’s history. The extensive collection includes photographs of students from all periods of the university. The collection also covers extensive areas of interest, from dining halls and dormitories to the library and classrooms, to athletics and recreation on campus. These materials provide an indispensable visual records of student life at UConn. The finding aid for this collection can be found at: http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:MSS19880010

We invite you to view these collections in the reading room at Archives & Special Collections. Our staff is happy to assist you in accessing these and other collections in the archives.

This post was written by Shaine Scarminach, a UConn History Ph.D candidate who is a student assistant in Archives & Special Collections.