Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Judge of the Recorder's Court in Detroit and Frank Murphy's brother; contain correspondence, legal briefs, newspaper clippings, and other materials concerning Detroit politics, 1935-1961, the grand jury investigation of Detroit street railways, 1936, arbitration of labor disputes, 1936-1941, investigation of the Charles Street housing project, 1939-1940, as well as materials illuminating the careers and personal affairs of both George and Frank Murphy, especially in relation to Detroit and the Philippine Islands.

The George Murphy papers, which encompass the years 1911 to 1961, are most comprehensive for the decade following 1932. During this period - the most politically active in Murphy's career - the correspondence is especially useful in illustrating George Murphy's role in his brother's emergence as a politician, especially his role as dispenser of patronage in the depression years. The papers, of course, illuminate the social function performed by the Recorder's Court and contain voluminous correspondence with state and federal judges, attorneys, prisoners, prison officials, probation officers, etc. Judge Murphy also maintained close contact with affairs in his home town, Harbor Beach. Included in the collection are significant materials on affairs in the Philippines during his brother's governorship there, particularly correspondence during the years 1933 to 1936 with his sister, Marguerite, Eleanor Bumgardner, and with leading Filipinos concerning conditions there.

News editor and vice president of Detroit, Michigan, radio station, WJR, moderator of radio program, "In Our Opinion". Correspondence, radio transcripts, scrapbooks, broadcast discs, and audio-tapes of discs; include material concerning career of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the senatorial campaign of 1942 between Prentiss Brown and Homer Ferguson, and radio broadcasting in general.

The Cushing collection consists largely of sound recordings of a selection of the "In Our Opinion" radio program. There are also additional textual materials: clippings and other documents pertaining to the program and some transcriptions of particular programs.

The sound recordings of the "In Our Opinion" program were originally phonograph transmission discs. Nearly impossible to listen to because of their oversize format and the absence of appropriate players, the library applied for and received a grant in 1977 from the NHPRC to transfer a selection of the more than 600 discs onto reel-to-reel tapes. Many of the discs already showed signs of deterioration. The selection of what discs to preserve was based on the significance of the topics discussed and the importance of the interviewees. Among the guests were Senators Arthur Vandenberg and Homer Ferguson, automobile executive (later governor) George Romney, Congressman George Dondero, military historian General S.L.A. Marshall, political science Professor James K, Pollock, Governor Kim Sigler, Lowell Thomas, Thor Heyerdahl, Edward R. Murrow, and Episcopal Bishop Richard S. Emrich, among many others. Topics ranged from state and national politics, the impact of the war, foreign affairs, post-war re-conversion of the economy, and issues specific to Detroit and Michigan.

Professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan. Papers include correspondence, reports, articles, speeches, photographs, and notebooks, relating to Bates' professional career, with material concerning activities of Ann Arbor National Defense Committee; life and career of Lawrence Maxwell, lawyer and U.S. Solicitor General in the Cleveland administration, funding and building the Michigan Union (1911-1918); Republican politics in the 1930's and 1940's; Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to reorganize the Supreme Court in 1937; and campus life at the University of Michigan during the first and second World Wars.

The Henry M. Bates papers include correspondence, reports, articles, speeches, photographs, and notebooks, relating to Bates' professional career, with material concerning activities of Ann Arbor National Defense Committee; life and career of Lawrence Maxwell, lawyer and U.S. Solicitor General in the Cleveland administration, funding and building the Michigan Union (1911-1918); Republican politics in the 1930's and 1940's; Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to reorganize the Supreme Court in 1937; and campus life at the University of Michigan during the first and second World Wars.

The papers are organized into Correspondence undated and 1886-1949, Michigan Union Building, 1911-1918; Committee of Nine on Mineral Law, 1927-1929; Miscellaneous Papers; and Photographs.

Grand Rapids, Michigan businessman and Republican politician. Correspondence, business records, speeches, and other papers relating to state politics, charitable and civic interests, banking issues, the Grand Rapids Varnish Corporation, the Michigan Trust Company of Grand Rapids, and the Ypsilanti-Reed Furniture Company of Ionia, Michigan; also materials on Albion College, the Methodist Church, the Ionia Free Fair, and Republican Party politics, especially the campaign of Arthur H, Vandenberg for the presidency in 1940.

The collection documents the business, civic, and political interests of Howard C. Lawrence. The series in the collection are: Correspondence; Speeches and speech material; Financial; Business Interests; Charitable and Civic Interests; Clippings; Miscellaneous; Photographs; and Notebooks.

University of Michigan professor of political science, special advisor to the U.S. Military Government in Germany after World War II, participant in numerous government commissions; papers include correspondence, working files, speeches, course materials, and visual and sound materials.

The James K. Pollock papers represent an accumulation of files from a lifetime of academic teaching and research and an extraordinary number of public service responsibilities to both his state and his nation. The files within the collection fall into two categories: types of document (such as correspondence, speeches and writings, visual materials, etc.) and files resulting from a specific activity or position (such as his work as delegate to the Michigan Constitutional Convention or his service with the Office of the Military Government in Germany after World War II).

The collection is large and of a complicated arrangement because of Pollock's many activities. When received in 1969, the files were maintained as received; very little processing was done to the collection so that an inventory to the papers could be quickly prepared. The order of material is that devised by James K. Pollock and his secretarial staff in the U-M Department of Political Science. Recognizing the anomalies within the order of the collection, the library made the decision to list the contents to the collection while at the same time preparing a detailed card file index (by box and folder number, i.e. 16-8) to significant correspondents and subjects. While there was much to be said for this method of preparing a finding aid expeditiously, it also covered up some problems in arrangement. Thus series and subseries of materials are not always grouped together as they were created by Pollock. Files on the Hoover Commission and the Michigan Constitutional Convention, for example, come before Pollock's work in Germany after the war. In 1999, effort was made to resolve some of the inconsistencies and obvious misfilings of the first inventory but because of the numbering system used in 1969 and the card index prepared for the files, there are still some problems. Researchers should be alert to these difficulties and take time to examine different parts of the collection for material on a similar topic.

Newspaper articles and columns by Detroit News Washington correspondent, include extensive comment on national politics and foreign relations, particularly as they relate to Michigan

Scrapbooks, 1916-1965, of Jay G. Hayden, Washington correspondent for the Detroit News, contain extensive comment on national politics and foreign relations, particularly as they relate to Michigan. Personal subjects include: Sherman Adams, Smith W. Brookhart, Prentiss M. Brown, William Jennings Bryan, James F. Byrnes, Benjamin N. Cardozo, James Couzens, George Creel, Charles DeGualle, Edwin Denby, Lewis Douglas, John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower, James A. Farley, Henry Ford, Felix Frankfurter, John Glenn, James Hoffa, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Robert M. LaFollette, Douglas McArthur, Joe McCarthy, Andrew Mellon, James Meredith, Billy Mitchell, Frank Murphy, Truman H. Newberry, Richard M. Nixon, Sam Rayburn, Owen J. Roberts, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Frank L. Smith, Joseph Stalin, Harlan F. Stone, Harry S. Truman, Arthur H. Vandenberg, William S. Vare, Henry A. Wallace and Leonard Wood.

Works Projects Administration district manager, official in the Office of Price Administration and executive secretary to Governor G. Mennen Williams. Materials concerning Michigan Democratic politics, particularly the elections of 1948 and 1952, his work for the W.P.A. and O.P.A. and his with the Michigan Children's Aid Society.

The Farrell collection is arranged into the following series: Correspondence, Political Papers, Works Projects Administration, Office of Price Administration, and Other Papers.

Popular novelist, author of The Robe and Magnificent Obsession, and minister of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Correspondence with his family, publishers and other authors concerning his work and including comments on national politics, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and World War II; also manuscripts of addresses, articles, sermons, and novels; scrapbooks; and photographs.

The Douglas papers consist of material collected by his daughters, Virginia Douglas Dawson and Betty Douglas Wilson Herman, in the preparation of their biography of their father, The Shape of Sunday. The collection has been arranged into the following series: Correspondence; Ministerial Activities; Literary Career; Miscellaneous and personal; and Scrapbooks.

Associate justice of the Michigan Supreme Court; correspondence, speeches and other materials relating to Michigan politics, Republican Party affairs, and his judicial career.

The Louis Fead collection includes correspondence, scrapbooks, biographical information and other materials relating to his political and judicial career. Some of the files relate to the view from Michigan of the proposed reorganization of the US Supreme Court in 1937. There are also materials concerning the Newberry State Bank of which Fead was an officer. Also of interest are those materials relating to his service with the American Red Cross in France during World War I.

First president of the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and chairman of the defense fund during Dr. Ossian Sweet trial. Co-founder of the Great Lakes Mutual Life Insurance Company at Detroit, Michigan.

Correspondence concerning the Plymouth Congregational Church of Detroit, Michigan, local politics, social issues, and civil rights; and partial transcript of the Ossian Sweet Murder Trial. Correspondents include Prentiss M. Brown, Wilber M. Brucker, James J. Couzens, Clarence Darrow, Frank Murphy, and George Murphy.

Also, a portrait circa 1940s (photonegative).