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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.

Executive secretary to Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy, 1930-1933, chairwoman of the Mayor's Unemployment Committee, later director of the Detroit Housing Commission, candidate for Detroit public office, and director of women personnel at the Willow Run Bomber Plant during World War II. Correspondence and diaries concerning the Murphy mayoralty, Clarence Darrow and the Ossian Sweet Murder Trial of 1925, and local Detroit politics; and photographs.

The Josephine Gomon papers have been divided into the following series: Correspondence; Clippings/Scrapbooks; Notebooks of news items; Diaries; Biographical/Personal; Materials concerning Frank Murphy; Materials related to Gomon's projected biography of Frank Murphy; Ford Motor Company materials; Photographs.

General manager and partial owner of radio station WJR, Detroit, Michigan. Correspondence, financial material and other printed material largely concerning the operation of WJR and the history of radio broadcasting in general, including transcript of oral history reminiscences touching on his early career and time in the Navy, and John F. Patt's remembrances of radio pioneer George A. Richards; also a letter from Charles E. Coughlin, 1929, containing brief comments on religious broadcasting.

Correspondence, financial material and printed miscellanea largely concerning the operation of WJR and the history of radio broadcasting in general, including transcript of oral history reminiscences, and John F. Patt's remembrances of radio pioneer George A. Richards; also a letter from Charles E. Coughlin, 1929, containing brief comments on religious broadcasting.

Correspondent with the Detroit News, director of the Psychological Warfare Division, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Forces, during World War II. Scrapbooks with clippings of newspaper articles; copies of propaganda leaflets directed to German soldiers and civilians during the war; reports, correspondence with family, and printed matter relating to war-time service; and photographs.

The Russell Barnes papers span the years 1920-1978. The bulk of the material concerns the period 1941-1953, the years Barnes spent as foreign correspondent for the Detroit News and the three-year interval during which he served in the Office of War Information.

The collection consists primarily of scrapbooks of his news stories, OWT leaflets, collected propaganda, and letters which he sent to his wife Constance, and, less frequently, to his children, Jeannot (Lucie Jeanne) and Jamie (John James Ingalls) while overseas and in New York. The most detailed description of his professional activities can be found in the letters he wrote during the months at the OWI in New York. He discusses the OWI personnel, its reorganization and the conflict with the OSS. The letters from the OWI Cairo and Algiers contain lively discussions of local customs and the rigors of life there, but are constrained by war-time censorship and thus shed less light than might be expected on his role as PWB director. The letters written while he covered the U.N. sometimes reflect the tense atmosphere there and the pressure brought to bear upon newsmen to take a stand on the issues they report. Barnes also discusses the power struggle in the Detroit Foreign Policy Association.