Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Wesley McCune founded Group Research Inc. in 1962 after a successful career as a journalist for such magazines as "Newsweek", "Time", "Life", and "Changing Times. Group Research Inc. was based in Washington DC until ceasing operations in the mid-1990s. The organization collected materials that focus on the right-wing and span four decades. The archive includes information about and by right-wing organizations and activists in the form of publications, correspondence, pamphlets, reports, the newspaper "Congressional Record," and magazine clippings and other ephemera. McCune and his small staff also published an initially bi-monthly but in later years monthly newsletter Group Research Report which kept its subscribers abreast of the latest views and actions of right-wingers.

Correspondence relating to Erskine's various educational, musical and literary interests; manuscripts of his writings; lecture notes for college courses; souvenirs of his army service in World War I and his Columbia University professorship, and student papers from his own school and college days. Also, biographical file, scrapbooks, and articles.

Correspondence, minutes of meetings, financial records, publications, notes, subject files, awards, speeches, reports and audiovisual materials document work by the Church Peace Union, its successors Council on Religion in International Affairs and Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and related organizations such as the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches. The first installment of the CCEIA archival materials came to the RBML in 1974, with numerous additions over the years. A major addition in 1982 contained primarily the records of the Board of Directors and their semi-annual meetings, as well as the various programs and institutes of the Council, for the years 1972-1982, along with selected 1930s materials. 1986 addition contains presidential correspondence files, minutes of the Board of Trustees and committees, special projects, programs and conferences files, and the business and editorial files of "Worldview". Correspondents include John Foster Dulles, Jane Addams, Fiorello La Guardia, and Paul Tillich. 1990 and 2000 additions includes files of CCEIA presidents and vice presidents, paper and audiovisual materials on Merrill House Conversation Programs; Educational programs; International Monetary Fund/Lecture series; The Annals Of The Academy Of Political & Social Science; Washington Consultations; Colloquia for the Clergy; Church State Project; Asian Development & The Carribean Initiative; Korea: Year 2000 Project; fundraising files, printed materials and files of the Department of Publications.

The Industrial Areas Foundation has been working in the northeast and New York metropolitan area for 35 years. The collection documents the organization's relationship with four mayors, five governors, environmental commissioners and several governors in New Jersey, numerous public and private sector leaders. Included in the collection are correspondence, op-eds, editorials, articles, and other press items, strategy documents and internal reports describing the workings of our citizens organizations in four boroughs, northern New Jersey, Long Island, and beyond. The organization has been deeply involved in many of the central issues and initiatives of the region over those years including, the rebuilding of East Brooklyn and the South Bronx, the start of the new small schools movement, the start of the living wage movement, the charter revisions that ended the old Board of Estimates and expanded the City Council, the fight to establish and preserve mayoral control of the schools, the ongoing struggles to preserve public housing, and many other matters.

The collection consists of addresses, press releases, memoranda proclamations, and other papers by and in regard to Charles Seymour Whitman (1868-1347) who was the District Attorney of New York County from 1910 to 1914 and Governor of New York State from 1915 to 1918. The material ranges in date from 1910 to 1937. The material is confined for the most part to drafts of the Governor's speeches to various groups on such subjects as the NEW YORK STATE PENAL CODE, unification of state laws, public health, education, and agriculture. Also, a typed memorandum on Whitman's ancestry and a few miscellaneous items. There are not papers or correspondence of a personal nature in the collection. The material is mostly in typescript. There is also a microfilm of Lt. Charles F. Becker's testimony in the Rosenthal murder case.