Hunter Gray (John R. Salter) Papers, 1955-2000


Summary Information
Title: Hunter Gray (John R. Salter) Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1955-2000

Creators:
  • Gray, Hunter (name after 2000)
  • Salter, John R., 1934-2019 (birth name)
Call Number: Mss 525; Audio 851A; PH Mss 525; M2002-100

Quantity: 1.8 cubic feet (1 record center carton and 2 archives boxes), 1 tape recording, and 56 photographs; plus additions of 6.0 cubic feet, 7 tape recordings, and 0.2 cubic feet of photographs and transparencies

Repository:
Archival Locations:
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:
Papers of John R. Salter Jr., also known as Hunter Gray, a sociologist and professor active in civil rights and community organization groups starting in the 1960s, contains correspondence; speeches, reports, and other writings by Salter; files from some of his professional positions; his FBI files; newspaper clippings; and other documents. Salter's papers cover: civil rights of American Indians and African Americans; the boycott of white businesses in Jackson, Mississippi; his work for the Southern Conference Educational Fund in North Carolina (1963-1964), as director of the Chicago Commons Association (1969-1973), and as director of the Office of Human Development of the Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York (1976-1978); the Halifax County Voters Movement and civil rights in North Carolina; and activities while teaching sociology at the Navajo Community College, Tsaile, Arizona, and at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. There are no papers specifically illustrating Salter's teaching career. Also includes photographs and an audio recording of Floyd Westerman, a Native American musician. The photographic portion of the collection includes images of Hunter Gray, as well as images related to his civil rights activities in the 1960s and 1980s such as housing conditions for African Americans in the south in the 1980s.

Note:

There is a restriction on use of this material; see the Administrative/Restriction Information portion of this finding aid for details.



Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00525
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Biography/History

John R. Salter Jr. was born February 14, 1934, and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. His father, a Wabanaki Indian (Micmac/Penobscot), was the adopted son of William Mackintire Salter, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Ethical Culture Society, and was a leader of the Indian Rights Association.

John Salter Jr. graduated from high school in 1951, and then earned bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology in 1958 and 1960 from Arizona State University (ASU). During his years in college, Salter organized student groups at ASU, and did volunteer work for the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, among other groups. Following graduation, Salter taught sociology at Superior State College, Superior, Wisconsin, 1960-1961, and in 1961, became an assistant professor at Tougaloo Southern Christian College, in Jackson, Mississippi. He quickly became a leader in civil rights and community organizing activities. On December 12, 1962, Salter, his wife Eldri, and four Tougaloo students helped organize a boycott of white businesses in downtown Jackson, demanding an end to discrimination against black workers and consumers. The boycott was continued by the Jackson chapter of the NAACP, and backed by the national NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), and the Gandhi Society for Human Rights. Although Salter and the other picketers were beaten and arrested, the long-term boycott proved successful, especially as a means of organizing the Jackson black community. However, the withdrawal of NAACP support of direct action, coupled with the June 12, 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, and the injuries boycott leaders Salter and Rev. Edwin King suffered in a car accident on June 18 (an accident that Salter believed was “rigged”), led to the end of the mass demonstrations.

In September of that year, the Salters moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he began work as a SCEF field secretary. For much of the following four years Salter worked with Southern poor people, helping them to develop grassroots community organizations. Two of those years were spent with SCEF projects in North Carolina and elsewhere in the South. In Halifax County, North Carolina, Salter organized boycotts, non-violent demonstrations, and federal lawsuits to obtain voting rights, and to curb segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror. He also acted as a consultant for several anti-poverty programs, among them The North Carolina Fund and the Peoples' Program on Poverty, which he helped to organize. During the 1965-1966 school year Salter taught at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, but then returned to North Carolina as director of training with the North Carolina Fund, a state-wide poverty agency. He was eventually deemed “too radical” for the position, and fired. In 1967, Salter moved to Buckley, Washington, where he spent a year teaching low-income Native Americans, African Americans, and whites at Rainier State School, and also pursued doctoral level work at the University of Washington. The next year he taught at Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and organized locally for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

In early 1969, Salter became southside director of the Chicago Commons Association, one of Chicago's largest and oldest private social service agencies. While working with the Association, Salter became involved with local American Indian programs, and worked with the American Indian Center. He also taught part-time at Roosevelt University in Chicago. From 1973 to 1976 he chaired the Chicago-based Native American Community Organizational Training Center. He continued his community organizing and work with Native Americans as a member of the department of urban and regional planning and advisor to American Indian students at the University of Iowa, and developed the American Indian Cultural Center at Iowa State Penitentiary, both from the summer of 1973 until December 1976. At that time he became the director of the Office of Human Development of the Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York. Also from 1973 to 1976, Salter developed and taught courses for the American Indian Cultural Center at the Iowa State Penitentiary, and served as a member of the federally-funded American Indian Business Association and of the Iowa State Indian Education Advisory Committee.

Among his projects while director of the Rochester programs were the establishment of low-income neighborhood and block groups, and the organization of a 1977-1978 strike of Algonquin mink-skinners in Ontario County, New York, who were protesting low pay and substandard working conditions. Not all of Salter's activities nor his independence pleased his superiors, however, and in 1978 he was dismissed for insubordination. In 1979, Salter published a book, Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism, and a piece for the book, Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out. From 1978 to 1981 Salter was chairman of the Education and Social Sciences Division and taught sociology at the Navajo Community College, Tsaile, Arizona. In 1981 he moved to the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota. He also continued to be active in American Indian civil rights.

Salter married Eldri Johanson, the daughter of a Dalton, Minnesota, Lutheran minister. They are the parents of four children, Maria, John III, Peter, and Josephine. John R. Salter changed his name, circa 1995, to John Hunter Gray, his original family name, and in 2000 to just Hunter Gray. Hunter Gray died on January 7, 2019 in Pocatello, Idaho.

Arrangement of the Materials

This collection was received in multiple parts from the donor(s) and is organized into 2 major parts. These materials have not been physically interfiled and researchers might need to consult more than one part to locate similar materials.

Administrative/Restriction Information
Use Restrictions

Copyright to some images are not held by the Wisconsin Historical Society. When using images from this collection, the citation must include Hunter Gray Papers.


Acquisition Information

Original Collection presented by John R. Salter Jr., Grand Forks, North Dakota, 1979-1982, and loaned for copying by Salter, 1980-1981. Accession Number: M79-522, M79-531, M80-022, M80-464, M80-585, M81-056, M81-442, M81-466, M81-657, M82-056, M2002-100


Processing Information

Original Collection processed by Menzi Behrnd-Klodt, October 1980; reprocessed with additions, January 1982. Photographs processed by David Benjamin.


Contents List
Mss 525
Part 1 (Mss 525, Audio 851A/1, PH Mss 525): Original Collection, 1957-1982
Physical Description: 1.8 cubic feet (1 record center carton and 2 archives boxes), 1 tape recording, and 56 photographs 
Scope and Content Note

The collection contains a variety of documents which reflect civil rights and community organizing activities, and his work with American Indians during the years he used the name John Salter. Included are correspondence; numerous speeches, reports, and other writings by Salter; partial files from some of his professional positions; his FBI files; and other papers. There are few papers specifically illustrating Salter's teaching career.

Biographical materials includes a résumé from 1960, photocopies of photographs, and two interviews done in 1981. The records of the Chicago Commons Association consist of correspondence, printed form letters, announcements and notes of meetings, address and telephone lists, copies of Salter's reports as director, 1969-1972, and affidavits attesting to racial discrimination.

In 1981 Salter and his attorney obtained the release for portions of his FBI file. The file was released over a period of months in sections which were not in chronological order, and have been kept in the order of their release. Also included is a letter Salter wrote August 11, 1981, referring to the latest portion of the files released (Box 1, Folders 8-10), and giving his comments about their content.

Salter's records of his civil rights work in Mississippi include newspaper clippings, which provide a day-by-day record of his activities; copies of statements and court documents; texts of speeches given by Salter and others, all dating from the period of the Jackson boycott movement; and a printed record of hearings on voting and registration held by the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1965. There is also a folder containing copies of the “North Jackson Action,” which was the bulletin of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, to which Salter was advisor. Filed with the general papers of the Jackson Boycott Movement is a copy of the police report concerning the auto accident of June 18, 1963, in which Salter and Rev. Edwin King were injured, and which he came to believe was deliberately planned. Correspondence regarding Salter's Mississippi civil rights work is interfiled with the general correspondence, and includes both letters of support and hate mail.

Salter's North Carolina civil rights and voter registration work is represented by correspondence with Anne and Carl Braden, James Dombrowski, and other SCEF officials, affidavits of non-registration, general papers, leaflets, and flyers; Salter's writings, speeches, and reports to SCEF and others; and news clippings. The papers concern both testing of public accommodations in Chapel Hill, and the Halifax County Voters Movement. Printed materials include legal briefs from the Willa Johnson v. Joseph Branch (1966) and Charles Lee Parker v. North Carolina (1969) cases, and a copy of the state election laws (1963). Also present are news clippings, leaflets, and flyers, with some correspondence, which Salter kept regarding the increase in Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina during this period.

A separate section on the Southern Conference Educational Fund includes printed transcripts of the 1963-1964 hearings about SCEF held by the Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities of the State of Louisiana, and in 1967 about the poverty program in southern Louisiana. There are also SCEF press releases and reprints, some of which concern or were written by Salter.

Salter's interest in the American Indian Center and the Native American Community Organizational Training Center is revealed by a folder of materials including by-laws, applications for and certificates of incorporation, a prospectus and project proposals, reports, background information, résumés, and financial and other information. Fragmentary papers, including newspaper articles, illustrate some of Salter's work while at the University of Iowa, while papers created and gathered while he was director of the Office of Human Development in Rochester, New York, primarily concern the fur workers' grievances and strike, and Salter's dismissal from his position. Included are correspondence, statements, and reports.

Salter's own writings, speeches, and articles are represented in a separate folder, as well as by items in a folder titled conferences and programs, and in a folder of material regarding Salter's friend John Beecher. In 1980 writer Richard Harger authored The Scourge of Secrecy: A Personal Testimony and Appeal, concerning FBI and CIA surveillance during the years of civil rights and anti-Vietnam war activities. A section of the book deals with the events and people of the Jackson boycott movement. Included in the file are a review copy of the book, sent to Salter to review, another portion of the book in appendix form, and several letters reviewing and opposing the work.

The audio recording is labeled, “Given with love from your Black Brother, Don Anthony White 117121 Wash. State Pen. 1/18/72.” Recorded is a concert by Native American musician Floyd Westerman, who sang his original compositions and adaptations of popular songs. Also included are Westerman's comments on the oppressive nature of white institutions, illegal white acquisition of American Indian land, and the injustice of the legal system as applied to minorities. The quality of the sound is very poor, as the recording was apparently made from the audience, and spoken comments from the stage are difficult to understand. Also included is an unidentified concert by a rock and roll band.

The photographic portion of the collection includes images of Salter, both alone and with others, as well as images related to his civil rights activities in the 1960s and 1980s. Activities documented include a planning meeting at Tougaloo College (1962-1963); a Woolworth's sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi, and a protest at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1963-1964); events in Enfield, North Carolina, including voter registration workshops and the attempted burning of a Black grocery store by the Ku Klux Klan (1964); and a North Carolina civil rights/anti-poverty conference (1965). Later events documented include Native American organizing in Chicago, Illinois (1972); and a King Memorial Banquet in Grand Forks, North Dakota (1989). Also present are images of housing conditions for African Americans in the 1980s American South.

Box   1
Folder   1
Biographical materials
Box   1
Folder   1 (continued)
Interviews with Salter, 1981
Box   1
Folder   2
American Indian material, 1972-1980
Chicago Commons Association
Box   1
Folder   3
General, 1969-1973
Box   1
Folder   4
Community organizing reports, 1969-1972
Box   1
Folder   5
Racial affidavits, 1970-1971
Box   1
Folder   6
Correspondence, 1962-1981, undated
FBI files
Box   1
Folder   7
1963
Note: Released January 1981.
Box   1
Folder   8-9
1960-1969
Note: Released later in 1981.
Box   1
Folder   10
1963-1967
Note: Released later in 1981.
Box   1
Folder   11
“Freedom Summer Reviewed,” Jackson, Mississippi Symposium, 1979
Box   1
Folder   12
University of Iowa papers, 1974-1975
Box   1
Folder   13
Miscellaneous
Mississippi - Civil Rights Activities
Jackson Boycott Movement
Box   1
Folder   14
1962-1964
Box   1
Folder   15
“North Jackson Action,” Bulletin of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, 1962-1963
Box   1
Folder   16
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Hearings on Voting, Jackson, Mississippi, 1965
Box   1
Folder   17-18
News clippings, 1962-1964, undated
Box   1
Folder   19
Report on the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, 1967
Box   1
Folder   19 (continued)
Salter's affidavit, 1981
Box   1
Folder   20
Native American Community Organizational Training Center, and American Indian Center, Chicago, 1973-1975, 1977
North Carolina - Civil Rights and Voter Registration
Box   1
Folder   21
Affidavits of Non-Registration, 1964
Box   1
Folder   22-23
Correspondence and related material, 1963-1967
Scope and Content Note: Includes Salter's final report, October 7, 1965.
General
Box   1
Folder   24
1963-1964
Box   2
Folder   1
1965-1968
Box   2
Folder   2-3
Ku Klux Klan activities, 1964-1965
Box   2
Folder   4
News clippings, 1964-1965
Printed
Box   2
Folder   5
Legal briefs, 1966, 1969
Box   2
Folder   6
State Election Laws, 1963
Box   2
Folder   7
Writings, speeches and reports, 1966, 1968, 1977, 1979
Box   2
Folder   8
Organizing
Box   2
Folder   9
Press and radio lists
Box   2
Folder   10
Rochester, New York, Office of Human Development, 1972-1980
Box   2
Folder   11
Segregationist, Ku Klux Klan, and other Anti-Civil Rights materials - General
Southern Conference Educational Fund
Box   3
Folder   1-2
Transcripts of hearings before the Louisiana Joint Committee on Un-American Activities, 1963-1964, 1967
Box   3
Folder   3
Press releases and reprints, 1963-1964
Speeches, writings, and reviews
Box   3
Folder   4
General, 1957-1981, undated
Box   3
Folder   5
Beecher, John - writings by Beecher; writings and reviews by Salter, 1963-1981
Box   3
Folder   6
Conferences and programs, including speeches, 1973-1975
Box   3
Folder   7
Scourge of Secrecy / by Richard Harger, reviewed by Salter and others, 1980
Box   3
Folder   8
Klanwatch Special Issue, 1982 February
Box   3
Folder   9
Unions and labor organizing, 1963-1980
851A/1
Concert by Native American musician Floyd Westerman, Washington State Penitentiary: audio recording, 1972 January 18
Scope and Content Note: Sound quality is poor. On Side 2 is an unidentified, undated concert by a rock and roll band.
PH Mss 525
Photographs
Use Restrictions: Copyright to some images not held by the Wisconsin Historical Society. When using images from this collection, the citation must include “Hunter Gray Papers.”
Box   1
Folder   1
Hunter Gray [John Salter] portraits and with others
Box   1
Folder   2
Tougaloo College, 1962-1963
Box   1
Folder   3
Protests/demonstrations, Jackson, Mississippi, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1963-1964
Box   1
Folder   4
Voter registration, Literacy Class, Enfield, North Carolina, 1964
Box   1
Folder   5
Unsuccessful KKK effort to burn an African American store, Enfield, North Carolina, 1964
Box   1
Folder   6
Civil Rights/Anti-poverty Conference, North Carolina, 1965 March
Box   1
Folder   7
Native American organizing, Chicago, Illinois, 1972
Box   1
Folder   8
Housing conditions for African Americans in the American South, 1980s
Box   1
Folder   9
King Memorial Banquet, Grand Forks, North Dakota, 1989 January 14
Box   1
Folder   10
People
M2002-100
Part 2 (M2002-100, Audio 851A/2-8): Additions, 1955-1992, 1996-2000
Physical Description: 6.0 cubic feet (4 record center cartons and 5 archives boxes), 7 tape recordings, and 0.2 cubic feet of photographs and transparencies (2 folders) 
Scope and Content Note: Additional papers, 1955-1992, 1996-2000, documenting John Salter’s (Hunter Gray) professional and personal interests in civil rights, American Indian affairs, labor and community organizing, and teaching. Also documented is Salter’s UFO encounter, the peyote case United States v. Warner, and the White Earth Anishinabe Nation’s land claims battle in Minnesota. Included are correspondence and news clippings; speeches, reports, and writings by Salter and by others; his FBI files; transcripts of two interviews with Salter; biographical and family history information; photographs of Salter-Gray family and Salter alone and with others; and sound recordings primarily related to the Anishinabe Indian land claims. Also includes an 1889 note from activist Jane Addams to Mrs. Salter. This accession includes 53 formerly unprocessed accessions. The audio tapes have been assigned call number Audio 851A.
Civil rights
Box   1
Folder   1
NAACP/Jackson Movement papers
Box   1
Folder   2
Programs
Box   1
Folder   3
NAACP membership cards, 1962
Box   1
Folder   4
Writings and speeches
Box   1
Folder   5
The Southern Patriot, 1962 January-1966 April
Box   1
Folder   6
The Student Voice (Tougaloo), 1963-1964
Box   1
Folder   7
Senate hearings
Box   1
Folder   8
Publications
Box   1
Folder   9
Legal papers
Box   1
Folder   10
“Organizing the Community for Action”
Box   1
Folder   11
“On Our Knees: the Story of the Jackson Church Visits”
Box   1
Folder   12
Christmas in Mississippi
Box   1
Folder   13-19
Publications
Box   1
Folder   20
Broadsides
Box   1
Folder   21
Writings by others and background
Box   1
Folder   22-23
Sovereignty Commission, news articles and briefs, 1980s-1998
Box   1
Folder   24
Native American ancestry and Salter-Gray family background
Box   1
Folder   25
Ephemera, 1960s-1980s
Box   1
Folder   26-27
Clippings, 1960s-1992
Box   1
Folder   28
Kinatuinamot Illengajuk, Labrador Inuit Association newsletter, 1976-1978, 1980
Note: 4 issues.
Correspondence
Box   1
Folder   29
John Salter letters to his parents, 1960-1964
Box   1
Folder   30
1967
Box   1
Folder   31
Eldri Johanson letters to parents, 1960-1970
Note: Regarding civil rights activities.
Box   1
Folder   32
Regarding surveillance
Box   2
Folder   1
Personal and family, 1955-1983
Box   2
Folder   2
Regarding Civil Rights, 1962-1966
Box   2
Folder   3
Rochester Diocese correspondence and articles, 1978
Box   2
Folder   4-7
General and professional, 1960s-1985
Box   3
Folder   1-2
General and professional, 1988-1991
Box   3
Folder   3-4
Background information on Salter (Hunter Gray) activities, circa 1973-1989
Box   3
Folder   5
Curriculum vitae, Salter (Hunter Gray), circa 1984
Box   3
Folder   6
Chicago Commons Association, Arthur Hillman, correspondence, writings
Box   3
Folder   7
UFO encounter account, Salter's (Hunter Gray), 1988-1990
Box   3
Folder   8
News clippings, 1988-1989
Box   4
Folder   1
Jane Addams note to Mrs. Salter, 1889
Box   4
Folder   2
Memos and news articles, regarding Salter and University of North Dakota (UND), police policy, 1984-1986
Box   4
Folder   3
Community organizing and Navajo Community College, circa 1980
Box   4
Folder   4
College catalogs, 1961-1962, 1980-1981
Writings by and about Salter (Hunter Gray)
Box   4
Folder   5
Reviews, writings, remarks, 1960s, 1980s
Box   4
Folder   6
Reviews and book correspondence, 1979-1982, 1987
Box   4
Folder   7
Book reviews, writings, conference programs, 1962, 1979-1988
Box   4
Folder   8
Correspondence, reviews, articles, writings, 1986
Box   4
Folder   9
Writings, reviews
Box   4
Folder   10
News clippings, 1990-1991
Box   4
Folder   11
Civil rights news clippings, correspondence, articles, 1960s-1980s
Box   4
Folder   12
Civil rights miscellany and correspondence
Box   4
Folder   13
Labor unions organizing
Box   4
Folder   14
John Beecher, articles on
Box   4
Folder   15
Salter (Hunter Gray) interview, transcript, for John Stennis oral history project, 1990 December 26
Box   4
Folder   16
Salter interview, transcript, conducted by Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1981
Box   4
Folder   17
Maine Indian land claims, articles, 1985
Box   4
Folder   18
News clippings from Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi
Box   4
Folder   19
Action newsletter, Student Action Superior State College, 1961
Box   4
Folder   20
Labor, miners, and other organizing
Box   4
Folder   21
Dissertation by James Helten, UND, “Do What the Spirit Say Do, John Beecher and His Poetry”
Box   4
Folder   22
“Reflections on Ralph Chaplin, the WOBBLIES, and organizing …” / by Salter (Hunter Gray), 1984
Box   4
Folder   23
Writings by others, 1980s-2000
Box   4
Folder   24
Indian affairs
Box   4
Folder   25
Background, news clippings, correspondence on peyote case, United States v. Warner, police force, 1984-1988
Box   4
Folder   26
Martin Luther King Jr. celebration, speech and ephemera, 1989
Anishinabe land claims
Note: Contains information related to the White Earth Anishinabe Nation's land claims on the Minnesota Reservation.
Box   5
Folder   1
Historical background
Box   5
Folder   2
Legislative and legal background information, historic
Box   5
Folder   3
Legislative and legal documents, 1972-1978, 1985-1986
Box   5
Folder   4
Lawsuit against White Earth Land Settlement Act, 1986
Box   5
Folder   5
White Earth Anishinabe Nation printed materials
Box   5
Folder   6
“Notes on White Earth Mineral Study”
Box   5
Folder   7
News clippings, 1980-1988
“Dispute at White Earth: Suffering in Silence No More,”
Box   5
Folder   8
Slide-tape presentation transcript and slide information, by Becky LeFebvre
PH Box   2
Folder   2
Slide show transparencies for Part 1
Note: Images of people, meetings and demonstrations.
851A/2-3
Audio for slide show
851A/4
Winona La Duke, Grand Forks, North Dakota, early 1985
851A/5
Maggie Hawks and Mary Jane Wilson, 1983 August 8
851A/6
Fred Weaver with Winona La Duke, 1983 August 8
851A/7
Interview with Salter (Hunter Gray) regarding the United States v. Warner peyote case
851A/8
Talk on American Indians by Salter (Hunter Gray), Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1976
M2002-100
Box   6
Folder   1-7
FBI files and FOIA requests, Salter's (Hunter Gray)
Correspondence
Scope and Content Note: Contains correspondence primarily between Salter and his colleagues and friends.
Box   7
Folder   1-23
1959-1988
Box   8
Folder   1-17
1989-1991
Box   9
Folder   1-3
1991
Photographs
PH Box   2
Folder   1
Salter-Gray individual and family photographs, circa 1911-1989; John Salter Jr. (Hunter Gray) meeting with United Negro College Fund officials, 1963