The collection consists of records, correspondence, and reference materials generated and collected by the United States Servicemen's Fund. It is organized in four series: Administration, Projects, Reference, and Newspaper Clippings.
The ADMINISTRATION series includes correspondence and internal memoranda that describe some of USSF's projects, concerns and administrative workings. The correspondence also includes material from a closely affiliated west coast group, Support Our Soldiers. Letters by Donna Mickleson, who helped organize the first GI coffeehouses and was a USSF executive director, are included with the west coast material. The correspondence also includes letters to and by USSF associate Josh Gould, who tried to organize a meeting between the Vietnamese and U.S. antiwar groups' representatives in Montreal. Financial statements and USSF's fund raising records detail the organization's major activity -- that of raising money to support GI movement projects. USSF's fund raising efforts were crippled when the Internal Revenue Service revoked the group's tax-exempt status in 1973. Minutes and agendas of USSF board meetings are incomplete. Many of the reports and position papers are anonymous. The USSF office apparently collected accounts of movement opposition and periodically mailed copies of those accounts in “Repression Packets.”
Included in the PROJECTS series are material from some of the GI organizations that received USSF funds. Major projects were coffeehouses situated near various military bases, GI newspapers, legal and mental health counseling services, and performances of the FTA Show in the United States and in the Far East.
Copies of GI newspapers USSF supported are not included in the collection. The researcher can find many of these papers on microfilm in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin's library. However, lists of the newspapers which USSF supported can be found in this collection. The researcher should consult “GI newspapers” (Box 4, folder 20) and the program titled “The New Army” that is with programs for the FTA Show's Lincoln Center performance (Box 4, folder 11). The latter publication also lists coffeehouses and other projects that received USSF support as of November 1971. Additionally, the researcher may also wish to consult David Cortright's Soldiers in Revolt (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1975) for an annotated bibliography of GI newspapers.
The REFERENCE series includes general material regarding GI movement groups and causes. Because these groups' exact relationship with USSF is not readily apparent, this material is included in the REFERENCE series.
General newspaper clippings regarding the GI movement are included in the NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS series. In addition, accounts of the 1972 trip of four antiwar activists -- Cora Weiss, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Professor Richard Falk, and David Dellinger (one of the Chicago Seven) -- to North Vietnam are preserved on microfilm. The four went to Vietnam to escort home three U.S. prisoners of war. Weiss was a member of USSF's board of directors and Coffin and Dellinger were USSF supporters. Their trip to North Vietnam, however, was under the auspices of another organization, Committee of Liaison with Families of Servicemen Detained in Vietnam (COLIFAM). Most domestic newspaper clippings were weeded from these files, leaving accounts of the trip from European, Canadian, Australian, Mexican, and some Asian newspapers. Three North Vietnamese newspapers (one in English) are also included.
