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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.

Organizational records of the nonprofit Human Service Employees Registration and Voter Education Fund (Human SERVE), which advocated for Americans to have the opportunity to register to vote at government-run social services agencies. The collection includes records of Human SERVE's funding sources, organizational partnerships, and campaigns. There are also records of Human SERVE's involvement in the passage and implementation of laws on both the state and federal levels that resulted from the organization's advocacy work. The bulk of the state-level records are from New York State. Finally, there are internal records related to the organization's staffing, Board, and legal compliance.

Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, and printed materials by and about John Howard Griffin. The correspondence is extensive and includes letter from Jacques Maritain; Thomas Merton; Maxwell Geismar; Eldridge Cleaver; Robert Casadeus; Abraham Rattner; P.D. East; Joseph Noonan; Sarah Patton Boyle; Lillian Smith; Father August Thompson; Nell Dorr; and Brother Patrick Hart. All of his major works are represented in manuscript form (usually typescript, carbon). In addition there are many original photographs by Griffin, which he pasted throughout his extensive journal, 1950-1980. This journal is a remarkable account of his life and thoughts, extending to over 3,000 pages.