Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Transcripts of oral history project relating to the political and social protests of the 1950s and 1960s, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The collection consists of fifty transcripts of oral history interviews relating to political and social protests in Ann Arbor in the 1950s and 1960s. Topics of discussion in the interview include civil rights demonstrations, draft resistance and other opposition to the Vietnam War, feminism and the equal rights movement, alternative lifestyles, gay rights, the drug culture, student rights, and the influence of rock and roll music. The interviewees include Arnie Bachner, Larry Behnke, Frithjof Bergmann, Walter Blackwell, Barry Bluestone, Elise Boulding, Bunyan Bryant, Eric Chester, Tania Cordes, Jerry DeGrieck, Peter Dilorenzi, Richard Feldman, Miriam Flacks, Richard Flacks, Robben Wright Fleming, Madison James Foster, Barbara Fuller, Todd Gitlin, Gail Grigsby, Barbara Haber, William Haber, Tom Hayden, Larry Hunter, Edward James, Sharon Jeffrey, Ken Kelley, Walter Krasny, Diane Kohn, Howard Kohn, John Leggett, Richard Mann, Robert Meeropol, James G. Mellen, Fredrick L. Miller, Martha Prescod Norman, Beth Oglesby, Carl Oglesby, Marge Piercy, Genie Plamondon, Paul Potter, Randy Potts, Nais Raulet, Robert Ross, Ezra Rowry, Gayle Rubin, John Sinclair, Leni Sinclair, Eda Spielman, Milton Taube, Nancy Wechsler, and Marilyn Young.

Democratic governor of Michigan, 1961-1963; gubernatorial office files, campaign files, papers from his career as state senator and lieutenant governor.

The John B. Swainson collection consists of four subgroups of files: pre-gubernatorial (covering the period of 1943 to 1960), gubernatorial (covering his one-term, two-year tenure as the state's chief executive), post-gubernatorial (covering the years since he left the governor's office, 1963 to 1975), and visual materials.

The great bulk of the collection is the gubernatorial subgroup documenting the last months of Swainson's term as lieutenant governor under Governor G. Mennen Williams, the 1960 campaign for governor, his gubernatorial administration, and his unsuccessful campaign for re-election. The importance of the collection, as with all gubernatorial records, is its documentation of public policy issues of the early 1960s and the relationship of the governor to the legislature, to the heads of the state's various boards and commissions, to the federal government, and to the citizens of Michigan.

Professor of political science at University of Michigan, and Democratic city councilman for Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1961-1963. Material concerning his council activities, his work for the Michigan Advisory Committee on Reorganization of State Government, and the Michigan State Science Advisory Board.

The Lynn Eley collection documents his activities as secretary on the Governor's Advisory Committee on Reorganization of State Government, 1958-1963, and his term as Democratic Ann Arbor City Councilman, 1961-1963.