Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Below are links to the finding aids of some of our larger, more prominent, and frequently used Political Papers collections documenting regional, state, and federal politics, organized labor, and grassroots organizations.
Paul Simon served as an Illinois state representative, state senator, lieutenant governor, U.S. congressman, and U.S. senator. In 1987 he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for President. He retired from the Senate in 1997 and became the director of the Public Policy Institute at SIU, a position he held until his death in 2003. The Paul Simon papers include personal papers, records of his campaigns, a few boxes from his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, and all his papers from his time in the U.S. Senate and at the Public Policy Institute.
Senator Roland W. Burris papers
Roland W. Burris, an alumnus of SIU, was the first African American to be elected to statewide office in Illinois. He was elected comptroller in 1979, serving three terms, and then attorney general in 1990. He ran unsuccessfully three times for the Democratic nomination for governor of the state and as an independent for mayor of Chicago. In 2009 he was appointed U.S. Senator to fill out the term of Barack Obama when Obama became President. The Senator Roland W. Burris papers document his campaigns and his time in all three of the offices that he held.
Kenneth J. Gray was a U.S. Congressman from Southern Illinois from 1955 to 1973 and 1981-1985. The bulk of this collection comes from the first period of his tenure. Gray served on the powerful Public Works Committee and played a role in developing the federal interstate highway system.
Glenn Poshard served as a state senator before being elected to Congress to the seat being vacated by Paul Simon when he was elected to the Senate in 1984. Poshard served in the Congress until he ran as the Democratic nominee for Illinois governor in 1998. He later served as President of Southern Illinois University. This collection includes the record of his campaigns and his service in every elected office.
Jerry F. Costello was a U.S. Congressman from Southern Illinois for more than 24 years, from 198 o 2013. He served on the Science, Space, and Technology, and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committees, and chaired the important Subcommittee on Aviation. The papers document Costello's congressional career.
Kenneth V. Buzbee was an Illinois state senator from 1973 to 1985. He was chair of the Senate Appropriations II Committee after it was formed in 1977. Beside his time in the Illinois legislator, the papers document his service on the Illinois Energy Resources Commission, of which he was chair from 1979 to 1981, and his activity in the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). There are several folders of material from the "Save SIU Committee" of 1974, on which Buzbee served.
Clarence Harmon was the second African American mayor of St. Louis, an office he held for four years from 1997 to 2001. Before that he was Chief of Police. This collection includes the records of his tenure as mayor and documents his efforts at city renewal. Among the major events that occurred during his tenure was Pope John Paul II's visit to the city.
Laborers International Union of North American (LiUNA) Local 773 records
Chartered in 1940, Laborer's Local 773 represented laborers in Cairo, Illinois. In 2003 local Laborers' unions from across Southern Illinois joined together to make up the new Laborers' Local 773, which was relocated to Marion, Illinois. In addition to workers in Southern Illinois, Local 773 represents railroad maintenance workers nationwide. The records include organizational records, meeting minutes, correspondence of business agents, treasurers reports, membership information, steward reports, trade council minutes, agreements with employers, and documentation of political activities.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Southwestern Region Educational Department records
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) Southwestern Region Educational Department records consist primarily of the files of its first and longtime director, Doris Preisler (Wheeler). They include minutes of the Educational Committee for 1937-1942, correspondence, programs, promotional advertising materials, mimeographed announcements, newspaper clippings, and song sheets. A large part of the collection (2 linear feet) is comprised of material related to the one-day institutes sponsored by the department at various locations around the region, including at SIU.
Victoria Woodhull Martin papers
Victoria Woodhull Martin was an activist, writer, public speaker, and suffragist who in 1872 became the first woman nominated by a political party (the Equal Rights Party) for President. She and her sister Tennessee Claflin were the first women to open a brokerage firm on Wall Street. The sisters also published a weekly newspaper, the Woodhull & Claflin Weekly. This collection includes correspondence, including with other suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, autobiographical notes, and drafts and copies of speeches and articles.
Gordon Stein Collection of Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll, known as "The Great Agnostic" and called the greatest orator of his age, was a nineteenth-century freethinker and activist. Born in New York in 1833, he settled in Illinois, teaching school in both Mount Vernon and Metropolis before practicing law in Marion, Shawneetown, and Peoria. After a nominating speech at the Republican Convention in Cincinnati in 1876, he became a nationally known orator, traveling the country to give speeches on various topics while maintaining a law practice in Washington, D.C. This collection contains the research files of Intersoll's biographer Gordon Stein and includes correspondence, articles by and about Ingersoll, speeches by Ingersoll, and photographs of Ingersoll and his family.
David Ibata Collection of Cairo Racial Strife
This collection consists of research material collected by Dave Ibata, editor in chief for the Daily Egyptian in 1975, for a series of articles examining the state of race relations in Cairo. It includes typed notes of interviews of various Cairo citizens conducted in March-April 1975, including James B. Walder, the mayor of Cairo, Preston Ewing Jr., the president of the Cairo NAACP, Rev. Larry Potts, founder of an all-white school, Lt. Governor Paul Simon, Rev. Charles Koen, the presiden tof the United Front, and Ralph Anderson, president of Phoenix of Cairo.
Beatrice Stegeman Collection of Civil Rights in Southern Illinois
The Beatrice Stegeman collection consists of materials relating to civil rights and women's liberation that were collected by Beatrice Stegeman, a student at Southern Illinois University in the early 1960s. Materials in the collection include circulars distributed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the SNCC newsletter, The Student Voice, Student Nonviolent Freedom Committee circulars, Carbondale Human Relations Commission reports, various memoranda, and correspondence.
League of Women Voters of Jackson County (Ill.) records
The National League of Women Voters began once women's suffrage ended with the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. With the establishment of women's right to vote, women women around the country joined together in an effort to have a voice in in government. An Illinois league was formed in 1925. The Carbondale League of Women Voters (also known as the League of Women Voters of Carbondale) was founded in 1926. In the early 1980s the name of the local league was changed to the League of Women Voters of Jackson County. The local league's records include bylways, meeting minutes, correspondence, committee reports, annual reports to the state league, project files, publications of the local, state and national leagues, news clippings, photographs, and scrapbooks. Other collections documenting the life and activity of women in Southern Illinois include the Woman's Club of Carbondale records and the Carbondale Business and Professional Women's Clubs records.
Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists (RACE) records
The Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists (R.A.C.E.) was organized in 1988 from an earlier (1983) group, "Association of Concerned Environmentalists," or A.C.E. Both were formed in direct response to what members saw as "atrocious land stewardship by the Forest Service." The records document the group's various lawsuits brought against the Forest Service to protect Shawnee National Forest.
Carbondale Peace Center records
The Carbondale Peace Center (CPC) was established in 1973 in opposition to the Vietnam War. Many of its members were students at SIU. Its projects included a peaceful protest against the Central Intelligence Agency, "Alternative Christmas," and "Breaking Barriers in the Carbondale Community," a series of meetings for discussion on different issues co-sponsored with the Carbondale Interchurch Council. CPC communicated with local congressmen, representatives from President Gerald R. Ford's office, and numerous organizations at both the local and national levels, including the War Resisters League, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Indochina Peace Campaign, Catholic Peace Fellowship, American Friends Service Committee, Coalition to Stop Funding the War, Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Peacemaker, and the Institute for World Order. A related collection is the Peace Coalition of Southern Illinois records.
Richard Darby was the editor of the Marion (Ill.) Daily Republican from 1962 to 1971 when he formed the Richard Darby Public Relations Agency. He served as press aide to Rep. Kenneth J. Gray from 1971-1974 and again from 1984-1988, and for Rep. Paul Simon from 1975-1984. The papers include personal papers, records and photographs from Darby's public relations business, with files on many local businesses and politicians, and papers and photographs from his work for Gray and Simon. The papers include records of Southern Illinois Incorporated, an organization of local business people focused on improving the economy of Southern Illinois.
Taylor Pensoneau Illinois Political Research Collection
Taylor Pensoneau was the Springfield, Ill. bureau chief for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1965, when he re-opened the bureau, until 1978. From 1978 to 2003 he worked for the Illinois Coal Association, becoming its president in 1998. Pensoneau began writing books in 1993 with a biography of Illinois Governor Dan Walker, continuing to write after his retirement. This collection contains Pensoneau's research files from his books on Dan Walker and the Shelton Gang.
Charles L. Klotzer Collection of Freedom of the Press and Alternative Publications
The Charles L. Klotzer Collection consists of the many journals pertaining to freedom of the press, journalism in general, as well as reviews and alternative press publications, including those from foreign presses. Of particular interest to local investigators are the 18 alternative newspapers from the 1960's and 70's, such as Big Muddy Gazette, Little Rebel, and Southern Free Press, all printed in the Carbondale region. Charles Klotzer was a newspaper editor and publisher of the St. Louis Journalism Review.
Underground Newspaper Collection
The Underground Newspapers collection contains primarily left-wing and anti-war publications produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the Vietnam War era collected by Eugene Bridwell, Assistant Humanities Librarian at Morris Library. It also contains some non-periodical brochures and fliers produced in the same era.