The Milwaukee Christian Center, Inc. (MCC) Records document the activities of this non-profit neighborhood organization on Milwaukee's South Side. The records date from 1925 to 1966, with the bulk of the documents created during 1946-1963. A significant portion of the collection consists of administrative and financial records: annual reports, budgets, audits, statements of account, and correspondence on personnel, policies, and general organization. The remainder of the collection documents the MCC and its constituency in action. There are records from volunteer efforts, fundraising campaigns, youth day camps, missionary activities, and interaction within the community. These take a variety of forms including correspondence, meeting minutes, agendas, information circulars, directives, summary reports, newsletters, pamphlets, flyers, and first-hand documents written by individuals participating in MCC-sponsored activities. The collection also contains 20 photographs.
The collection documents a few specific events and larger trends that figure significantly in the organization's history. It illustrates the emergence of a modern community center from the charitable arm of an established church. It documents MCC youth activities including summer day camps, leadership retreats, and sports and social events. As the collection moves into the 1950s and 1960s, the collection reflects a growing emphasis on concurrent social phenomena like the civil rights and social justice movements. The collection provides documentation of the role of a local organization in a network of regional, national, and international interests that include regulatory and advisory bodies, wide-reaching religious groups, and other entities that focus on neighborhood development, public charity, and social welfare.
The primary value of the Milwaukee Christian Center (MCC) collection is in the documentation of the types of activities engaged in by organization personnel and community constituents. These activities include fundraising, social events, missionary work, speakers and conferences, and neighborhood improvement projects. The collection illustrates the work of the MCC in the larger context of its social surroundings. The greatest strengths of this collection are the documentation for “Project 61” and the Leaf and Bud newsletter sets.
This collection is divided into four series: ADMINISTRATIVE, OPERATIONS AND ACTIVITIES, PUBLICITY AND THE PRESS, and PHOTOGRAPHS. Original order was maintained in all possible instances. The arrangement of the Administration and Publicity and Press series most closely reflects the original filing scheme of the MCC. The Operations and Activities series represents a more artificial intellectual arrangement based on subject.
The ADMINISTRATIVE series consists of financial, meeting, and personnel information, and general documentation of the regular business of the executive office, boards, committees, and various sub-groups that managed the MCC. A portion of this series includes the personal collection of materials from Reverend Kenneth L. Smith, who was the executive director of the MCC at the time the collection was accessioned.
The OPERATIONS AND ACTIVITIES series documents the MCC's work within the community and as part of a larger network of religious and missionary interests, mutual aid and neighborhood organizations, and advisory and regulatory entities at both the local and non-local level. A large part of the operations involved fundraising, as demonstrated by the “Project 61” relocation campaign materials. Activity files include documentation on more specific events such as the youth summer and day camps, and various social, educational, and spiritual activities of the MCC community. The “Project 61” records offer a fairly complete picture of a complex process, documenting the fundraising and marketing efforts of administrators and rank-and-file volunteers from the mid 1950s until the early 1960s. The records demonstrate how the forces of urban sprawl and demographic shift impacted the MCC community.
The PUBLICITY AND PRESS series consists of the Leaf and Bud newsletter collection, MCC-related newspaper clippings, and other public relations material circulated internally and externally. The Leaf and Bud newsletters were weekly and monthly in-house publications distributed among the MCC community. Leaf was more adult-oriented, while Bud was for teens and children. These included news stories, event bulletins, bits of scripture, announcements, and other items that MCC members would have found useful, informative, or entertaining. A copy of nearly every issue of these publications between the years of 1947 and 1966 is present in the collection.
The PHOTOGRAPHS series includes sixteen photographs of religious-themed posters, three photographs of the MCC building exterior, and one “grip and grin” photograph. The photographs are undated.
