Manuscripts/7. Criminal Justice and Inmates
Record Group Term
Identifier: Manuscripts/7
Found in 19 Collections and/or Records:
Bromfield Street Educational Foundation (collector) Prison Newsletter collection
Collection
Identifier: M169
Overview
This collection was originally part of the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation (BSEF) records. As part of its Prisoners Project efforts, the BSEF collected newsletters that were sent to them from various prisons and organizations located across the country and Canada.
Dates:
1972-1996
Bromfield Street Educational Foundation records
Collection
Identifier: M064
Overview
The Bromfield Street Educational Foundation was originally established as the Gay Community News in 1973. Until the Bromfield Street Educational Foundation ceased operation in 1999 due to financial difficulties, the Gay Community News was one of the oldest, most progressive, national newspapers in the gay community. Eight Boston gays and lesbians started the newspaper in 1973 to create a community voice for gays and lesbians in the Boston area. In 1978, the Gay Community News became national...
Dates:
1963-2003; Majority of material found within 1985-1993
Carolyn W. Darack papers
Collection
Identifier: M204
Overview
Carolyn Hooky W. Darack was an activist in the Boston area for social rights and public health. Carolyn grew up in Brookline and attended Simmons College School for Social Work (1942?). During the 1950's she worked with Ehrmann on abolishing capital punishment in Massachusetts. During this time, her name was Carolyn W. Mork. Her first husband was Arnold P. Mork. He and Carolyn had three children: Arnold Jr., David, and Doretta. She later remarried (Melvin Darack) after her first husband...
Dates:
1928-1960
Coalition to Stop Institutional Violence records
Collection
Identifier: M027
Overview
The Coalition to Stop Institutional Violence was founded in Boston in 1975 in response to the proposed establishment of a "special unit for violent women" at Worcester State Hospital. Comprising ex-mental patients, mental health workers, and prisoner rights groups, the Coalition launched an extensive letter-writing campaign forcing the Department of Mental Health to hold public hearings on the need for the unit. Widespread opposition to the plan prevented the unit from ever opening. The...
Dates:
1972-1989; Majority of material found within 1976-1981
Community Resources for Justice records
Collection
Identifier: M182
Overview
Community Resources for Justice formed in 1999 as a successor to multiple Boston- and New England-area organizations devoted to criminal justice, prisoner or released prisoner support, and correctional reform. Community Resources for Justice's immediate predecessors were the Crime and Justice Foundation, a group devoted to correctional reform, and Massachusetts Half-Way Houses, Inc., which owned and operated residential and non-residential programs for ex-offenders. The Crime and Justice...
Dates:
1878-2008
Edward F. Lyons, Jr. papers
Collection
Identifier: M014
Overview
Edward F. Lyons, Jr. was born in Boston, September 17, 1899. He earned a bachelor of law degree from Northeastern University in 1921 and passed the Massachusetts bar exam the same year. He was engaged in general practice until 1933 when he began working as an attorney with Home Owners Loan Corporation, an agency of the federal government. In 1942, he entered the Army, and in 1943-1945 he served as an intelligence officer in a camp for German prisoners of war in El Reno, Oklahoma. In...
Dates:
circa 1917-1959
Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts records
Collection
Identifier: M043
Overview
Founded by Elma Lewis in 1950, the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts was established to meet the social, cultural, and artistic needs of Boston's African American community. Lewis's goal was to foster the arts, not only in the local Roxbury-Dorchester community, but also in the African American community at large. The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts offered education in art, dance, drama, music, and costuming to pre-school children, school-aged children and adults.
Dates:
1954-1992
Elmer V. H. Brooks papers
Collection
Identifier: M129
Overview
Elmer V. H. Brooks was born in Briceville, Tennessee in 1906. By the time he reached fifth grade, he was supporting his family by working in a local coal mine. In the early 1920's, however, he joined the Navy to escape the dangers of the mines. He was attached to the USS Colorado for several years before receiving an honorable discharge in 1926. Brooks then hitchhiked to Boston and married Eileen M. Brooks later that year. Elmer Brooks began his career in law enforcement in 1937 as a...
Dates:
1924-1998; Majority of material found within 1937-1968
Flora Haas papers
Collection
Identifier: M132
Overview
Flora Haas was a local activist who advocated for the rights of prisoners and worked against the death penalty. She wrote numerous articles regarding the death penalty, human experimentation in prisons, and prison daycare for newspapers such as The Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, Black Weekly, The Arlington Advocate, Sister Courage, and State and Mind. Haas was the editor and creator of The Outlook, which focused on criminal justice opinions in the commonwealth. The Outlook focused on issues...
Dates:
1964-1995
John Salvi papers
Collection
Identifier: M097
Overview
On December 30, 1994, John Salvi opened fire on two abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts. He killed two women receptionists, Lee Ann Nichols and Shanon Lowney, and wounded five others associated with the clinics. Salvi's associations with radical right-wing organizations and theories about a conspiracy against the Catholic Church led him to believe that he was fighting an "abortion Holocaust." On March 18, 1996, Salvi was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and...
Dates:
1994-1996
Kelley Ready papers
Collection
Identifier: M088
Overview
Kelley Ready is a human rights activist and anthropology professor. She was especially active in the organization Friends of Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Political Prisoners, Disappeared and Assassinated of El Salvador, Monsignor "Oscar Arnulfo Romero" (CoMadres). This group supports the parent organization CoMadres by writing letters, holding meetings and events to make their struggles known, and providing financial support. The main organization was founded in December 1977 by El...
Dates:
1981-1994; Majority of material found within 1985-1989
Martin Neal Gopen papers
Collection
Identifier: M133
Overview
Martin Neal Gopen was born August 13, 1934 and died on June 18, 2006, spending the majority of his life in the South End of Boston, MA. During that time he worked as a political activist and advocate for underserved communities. He attended Northeastern University (1950-1952), but earned his undergraduate (1955-1960) and graduate (1960-1961) degrees from Boston University. He served in the US Army from 1951-1953 when he was honorably discharged. He was involved in numerous social justice...
Dates:
1933-1994; Majority of material found within 1969-1989
Michael Meltsner papers
Collection
Identifier: M175
Overview
Michael Meltsner has taught at Northeastern University School of Law since 1979. He earned his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1957 and his LL.B. / J.D. from Yale University in 1960. From 1961-1970 Meltsner worked as First Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and was co-director, along with Jack Greenberg, of the National Office for the Rights of the Indigent (NORI), a paper office within the Legal Defense Fund. Since 1970, Meltsner has taught and...
Dates:
1961-2008; Majority of material found within 1978-2004
National Lawyers Guild. Massachusetts Chapter, Inc. records
Collection
Identifier: M197
Overview
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) was founded in New York City in 1936 in response to the conservative American Bar Association. The Massachusetts chapter (NLGMC) formed soon after. At the founding convention in Washington D.C. in 1937, the National group formally opened itself to all lawyers regardless of race, sex, or political beliefs and started campaigning for anti-lynching legislation, legal protections for collective bargaining, full scale social security, and federally funded...
Dates:
1970-2006
Phyllis M. Ryan papers
Collection
Identifier: M094
Overview
Phyllis Milgroom Ryan (1927-1998) began her career as a political activist while a student at Northeastern University. Following her graduation from Northeastern University in 1950, she worked as a psychiatric social worker in the Massachusetts state mental health system. In 1951, she married William J. Ryan, Jr. with whom she shared a passion for social justice and collaborated in political action for the next several decades. By the early 1960s Phyllis M. Ryan served as a media advisor and...
Dates:
1959-1988; Majority of material found within 1961-1988
Police news collection scrapbooks
Collection
Identifier: M004
Overview
The scrapbooks consist entirely of newspaper clippings from major Boston newspapers, concerning news items related to or involving police. Please note that newspaper clippings from August to December 1962 are missing from the collection.
Dates:
1961-1968
Sara R. Ehrmann papers
Collection
Identifier: M039
Overview
Sara R. Ehrmann (1895-1993) was a Boston-area civic leader best known for her work as an opponent of capital punishment. Ehrmann's career as a capital punishment abolitionist began in 1925 when her husband Herbert B. Ehrmann became an associate counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists convicted of murder and condemned to death. Sara Ehrmann was a key leader of the Massachusetts Council for the Abolition of the Death Penalty (1928-1969) and the American League to...
Dates:
1845-1993; Majority of material found within 1924-1988
The Justice George Lewis Ruffin Society records
Collection
Identifier: M124
Overview
The George Lewis Ruffin Society was founded in 1984 in response to dwindling numbers of minority police officers in the Boston Police Department. Its goals are to create greater understanding and communication between minority communities and the criminal justice system through annual convocations, events, courses, workshops and "The Long Road to Justice" traveling exhibit which documents the history of African Americans in Massachusetts.
Dates:
undated, 1848-2009; Majority of material found within 1984-2005
Warren C. Lane (collector) photograph collection
Collection
Identifier: M192
Overview
Warren C. Lane was President of the Worcester County Bar Association in 1971. Charles B. Rugg was Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 1930 to 1933. He was involved in the Navy Court of Inquiry trials in the early 1940s which were investigating the events at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Rugg was also the Massachusetts delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1940 and 1944.
Dates:
1926-1933