Summary Information
William Converse Haygood Papers
1942-1954
- Haygood, William Converse, 1910-
Mss 23
0.4 c.f. (1 archives box)
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of Haygood, a former State Historical Society of Wisconsin editor, consisting chiefly of correspondence and news releases written as a member of the 76th Infantry Division's public relations staff. The majority of these deal with the army's advance through Germany in 1945.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00023 ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
William C. Haygood was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910, and graduated from the Valdosta High School in 1927 and from Emory University at Atlanta in 1931. The following year he received an A.B. degree in Library Science from Emory as a Rosenwald Fellow. In preparation for a Ph.D., Mr. Haygood was enrolled in the Graduate Library School at the University of Chicago between 1934 and 1939, and again in 1947 and 1948. During these years he published Who Uses the Public Library: A Survey of the Patrons of the New York Public Library (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1938), and did two pamphlets for the American Library Association on aspects of Inter-American librarianship. He also studied at the Art Institute in Chicago; the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania; and Central University, Madrid, Spain.
In the 1930s, Mr. Haygood was employed as a librarian in both the Emory University Library and the New York Public Library, and from 1937 to 1938 was field agent for the American Association for Adult Education. At the behest of the Rosenwald Fund, he reorganized the library at Georgia Teachers College, Statesboro, in 1939-1940, and spent the following year in Mexico and Washington as executive director of the American Library Association's Committee on Library Cooperation in Latin America (Rockefeller Grant). He became secretary of the Julius Rosenwald Fund in 1940, and at the time he went into army service during World War II, was director of fellowships for the Fund.
Following his release from the army in 1945, Mr. Haygood returned to the Rosenwald Fund to administer its fellowship program. During his tenure he handled $100,000 in grants annually for both black and white Southerners, and administered a library program in which one million books were placed in Negro schools in the South.
From 1949 to 1951, he was director of United States Information Libraries in Spain, organizing libraries and training staffs. For the six years following this work, he lived both in Spain and in Madison, Wisconsin, engaging in free lance writing. During this period he published articles in national magazines and professional journals, served as library consultant to the Puerto Rican government (1955), and published The Ides of August: A Novel (1956).
Since 1957, William C. Haygood has been on the staff of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, as editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History, and in charge of the Society's publications program. In 1957 and 1959 he served as a visiting lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1960 was co-editor of A Soviet View of the American Past.
Scope and Content Note
The years covered by the material in this collection are 1942-1947 and 1954, but the papers represent primarily the period in which William C. Haygood was in the United States Army, April 5, 1943 to November 12, 1945. The collection contains the letters he wrote to his wife and to his parents while still stationed in the United States and after reaching the European theater. It includes interviews and news releases he wrote as the American army advanced into Germany.
Haygood entered the Army Air Force, was transferred to the Signal Corps within a few months, and later that same year was transferred to the Army Specialized Training Program. He departed for the European theater of war on December 4, 1944. Because of his training and language background, by the time his unit (Headquarters, 76th Infantry Division) arrived in France, Sgt. Haygood was serving as an interpreter. This gave him an opportunity to talk with many persons, including some released from concentration camps, and to be close to situations with which the usual army personnel had little or no contact. His letters reflect this, and his news releases and interviews, written from Germany as the American army moved in, are very descriptive.
Special reference should be made to three correspondents in the papers. While stationed in Paris, Sgt. Haygood became acquainted with Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas. In letters of July 21 and August 10, 1945, he describes in some detail his visits to their apartment. After returning to the United States he received a letter from Gertrude Stein (circa January, 1946), and one from Alice B. Toklas (November 4, 1946) following Miss Stein's death.
For many years Mr. Haygood was a friend of Lillian Smith, co-editor of The South Today; and author of Strange Fruit (1944), Killers of the Dream (1949), and numerous articles and pamphlets. She wrote to him on June 1, 1954, concerning her plan to write a book following the Supreme Court decision of 1953, and asking Haygood to write a section from the standpoint of a white southern man telling “the way we learned and unlearned our racial lessons.”
Administrative/Restriction Information
Presented by William C. Haygood, Madison, Wisconsin, Jan. 2, 1969.
Processed by Margaret Hafstad, October 23, 1968.
Contents List
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Correspondence
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Box
1
Folder
1
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1942, May 20; 1943, May 2 - 1944, Dec. 30
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Box
1
Folder
2
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1945, Jan. 1 - June 17
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Box
1
Folder
3
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1945, June 26 - 1947, June 8; 1954, June 1
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Box
1
Folder
4
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Haygood's news releases from Luxembourg and Germany, 1945, Feb.-Aug.
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Box
1
Folder
5
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Report, Mark H. Terrel, Major, May, 1945
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Box
1
Folder
6
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Haygood's army service, chronology
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Box
1
Folder
6
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Miscellany
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