Title: Shelton Stromquist Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1963-1978

Creator:

• Stromquist, Shelton, 1943-

Call Number: Mss 641

Quantity: 0.6 c.f. (2 archives boxes)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Papers of Shelton Stromquist, an historian and social activist who was involved with a number of political and social action organizations, including: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1961-1966; the Honeywell Project and the Committee of Returned Volunteers while he was program director for the American Friends Service Committee in Milwaukee, 1968-1970; Indochina Peace Campaign and the New American Movement while at the University of Pittsburgh, 1971-1975; and the Coolee Community Action Program in southwestern Wisconsin, 1975-1978. The collection includes personal notes, writings, and correspondence, as well as printed literature, and is most complete in its documentation of the printed informational materials produced for national distribution. There are also extensive materials relating to the local and regional groups in which Stromquist took an active part, in particular: Pitt Professional Union, American Federation of Teachers; Milwaukee Independent School, Free University, and Independent Learning Center; Citizens for Safe Energy, Gays Mills, Wisconsin; and the Rural Politics Discussion Group, formed by Stromquist to discuss political and social issues of interest to the rural community of southwestern Wisconsin. Stromquist's personal papers include information and working papers for a proposed book on Cuba; notes for talks on imperialism, civil rights, and war and economics; articles written about Cuba; experiences working with the Mississippi Freedom Summer project; and notes organizing a protest of Joseph H. Blatchford's policies as director of the Peace Corps.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00641

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Howard Shelton Stromquist was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, on May 31, 1943. In the spring of 1961 he graduated from Rich Township High School in Park Forest, Illinois, was awarded a scholarship to Yale University, and enrolled there in September 1961. In 1963, he joined the Experiment in International Living of Putney, Vermont, and was sent to New Delhi, India, on an exchange basis for two months. He spent the 1963--1964 academic year studying philosophy at Heidelberg University.

Stromquist spent the summer of 1964 working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He continued to work for civil rights when he returned to Yale, and was named head of the Yale Civil Rights Council in 1965.

He received his B.A. in history from Yale in June 1966. One month later he went to Tanzania as a volunteer with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), where he spent the next two years. While in Tanzania, Stromquist met and married his wife, Ann.

Stromquist continued to work with the AFSC on his return, accepting the position of program director of the Milwaukee office in September 1968. He worked with the Committee of Returned Volunteers (CRV, an organization of those who worked abroad with the Peace Corps, AFSC, the International Voluntary Service, and church groups), while he was based in Milwaukee, spending two months living and working in Cuba. He also volunteered as a tutor at the Milwaukee Area Free University, teaching a class on the economic power structure of Milwaukee.

The AFSC position ran out of funds in 1970 while he was working on a demonstration against Joseph H. Blatchford's policies as director of the Peace Corps. In 1971 Stromquist enrolled as a graduate student in American social history at the University of Pittsburgh. He joined the Pitt Professional Union and worked to secure better working conditions for university graduate assistants and employees. He also became involved with the South Side community, and with the Indochina Peace Campaign.

He was awarded his M.A. in 1973. In 1974 he was named a teaching fellow as he started work on his Ph.D. He joined the Pittsburgh chapter of the New American Movement at this time, spending a year working on a campaign to convert Pittsburgh's Duquesne Light Company into a publicly owned utility.

Stromquist moved to southwestern Wisconsin to do dissertation research in November 1975, and took a position with the Wisconsin Coulee Region Community Action Program, an anti-poverty agency. The agency was being reorganized, and he did extensive research on organizational structure for the Technical. Assistance Planning Group. Stromquist left his job the following year when he was awarded an Andrew Mellon Fellowship to support his dissertation research.

He continued to live in Wisconsin for the next four years, except for work as a Newberry Library Fellow in Residence, January-March 1977. While in Wisconsin, Stromquist worked for environmental issues. He first became involved in the fight to stop the Dairyland Power Cooperative's Mississippi River powerline. This interest widened, and he became active in various anti-nuclear organizations, particularly with Citizens for Safe Energy (CSE) of Gays Mills, Wisconsin. He helped with the Kickapoo Exchange Food Coop, and started his own group to discuss issues of interest to the rural community, including soil conservation, nuclear power, and absentee land owners.

Stromquist worked as a Local History Coordinator for the Wisconsin State Historical Society between 1978 and 1981. He received his Ph.D. in American social history in 1981 from the University of Pittsburgh and then accepted an appointment in the history department at the University of Iowa.

This collection contains information about social action groups and national and local issues with which Stromquist was involved between 1963 and 1978. The material is arranged by subject into five series: Civil Rights, Vietnam Anti-War Movement, Third World Development Issues, Local Projects, and Miscellaneous. In Box 1, Folder 1 are biographical newsclippings about Stromquist's work in Mississippi and articles by him concerning Mississippi and India.

The bulk of the collection consists of printed documents distributed by national civil rights, anti-war, and social action organizations: newsletters, information packets, pamphlets, and mass mailings. These materials are supplemented by newsclippings, articles, course outlines, and bibliographies, as well as by Stromquist's personal notes from and for speeches, meetings, courses, readings, and conferences; personal correspondence, published and unpublished papers and drafts, notes and correspondence for a book on Cuba, and ideas for discussion group and public speaking topics.

Stromquist's CIVIL RIGHTS files include a folder of materials collected while he was in New Haven, Connecticut: a report and other papers on the 1962 Philadelphia Tutorial Project and the Harlem Educational Project, by the Northern Student Movement; an issue of the CORE-lator; photocopies of letters and notes, many apparently written for the Yale Civil. Rights Council; and other near-print materials on Mississippi distributed by the Northern Student Movement. Papers relating to Stromquist's experiences as a volunteer with the Mississippi Freedom Project include near-print material produced and distributed by SNCC and the Council of Federated Organizations, mail received by his family in response to letters to Senator Everett Dirksen, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and President Lyndon Johnson, requesting increased protection for SNCC volunteers; and correspondence and notes kept by Stromquist about his personal experiences.

VIETNAM ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT records concern the Indochina Peace Campaign and protest against Honeywell's defense projects. There are several printed speeches, instructions for New Haven-Yale participants in the March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam, and a speech and workshop notes from an anti-war teach-in for a proposed action project during the Columbia University strike, all apparently generated or distributed by the New Haven-Yale Committee for Peace in Vietnam. From the American Friends Service Committee and the Honeywell Project there are mainly near-print flyers, reports, articles, and other papers. Stromquist's notes and writings are fragmentary, but include comments on an article, notes for or from a talk and a discussion panel, and others. Regarding the Indochina Peace Campaign there are mimeographed minutes of a meeting and letters, handwritten notes and speech notes, and notes of a talk by Tom Hayden and Fred Branfman following their return from North Vietnam in November 1972.

THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT ISSUES includes a folder of articles about Cuba and Latin America; near-print contact lists, a newsletter, a statement of purpose, and other papers from the Committee of Returned Volunteers; and articles, personal notes and writings, letters, and notes by others, all gathered as a result of Stromquist's two-month visit to Cuba with CRV. Apparently the Cuba materials were collected in preparation for writing a book. Stromquist's materials on Peace Corps director Joseph H. Blatchford include articles, printed biographical sketches of Blatchford, a few notes, and other information, collected while organizing a protest against Blatchford's speaking engagement in Milwaukee in 1970.

Within the LOCAL PROJECTS files are materials relating to local social action groups in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and southwestern Wisconsin. Stromquist's files on imperialism and economics, and the economic power structure, contain discussion notes, an outline, and near-print material relating to his writings and research on imperialism and American corporations. These were gathered for courses taught by Stromquist while in Milwaukee. His files on Pittsburgh include a few newsletters and notes from an adult forum held by the South Side Community Council; and many notes, newsletters, meeting notes, form letters, and articles concerning the organization of the Pitt Professional Union, American Federation of Teachers. Stromquist's files on the utilities project of the Pittsburgh chapter of the New American Movement, include newsclippings, a proposal on tactics, testimony, minutes, flyers, and notes concerning NAM's campaign to win public ownership and control of the Duquesne Light Company. There is also a NAM form letter in support of the United Mine Workers.

Stromquist's files from his work in rural southwestern Wisconsin include organizational charts, memos to staff, proposals, discussion papers, reports, and minutes and notes of meetings of the Technical Assistance Planning Group of the Wisconsin Coulee Region Community Action Agency, with headquarters in Westby, Wisconsin. There is a small file of clippings and Stromquist's testimony in opposition to Dairyland Power Cooperative's proposed power plant at Lansing, Iowa and its power line linking the Lansing plant with its Genoa, Wisconsin plant. Anti-nuclear and anti-utility concerns also helped organize individuals into the Citizens for Safe Energy activist group. Stromquist's papers relating to CSE include notes and minutes of meetings, letters, notes, flyers, a statement of purpose, and other materials gathered for information. Also of interest is Stromquist's collection of materials and outlines on topics for the Rural Politics Discussion Group he founded in 1977; and two newsletters, draft by-laws, and notes concerning the Kickapoo Exchange Food Coop.

Two folders of MISCELLANEOUS materials consist of notes and a list of questions from “Oral History and People's Struggle,” a December 28, 1971 conference co-sponsored by the New York City Women Workers Oral History Project and the Radical Caucus; and social action miscellany.

Acquisition Information

Presented by H. Shelton Stromquist, Iowa City, Iowa, 1982. Accession Number: M82-307

Processing Information

Processed by Erin Foley and Joanne Hohler, 1984, and Menzi Behrnd--Klodt, 1986.

Box   1 Folder   1	Series: Biographical Information, 1963-1965
	Series: Civil Rights	⇧
Box   1 Folder   2	New Haven, Connecticut, 1962-1965
	Mississippi Freedom Project
Box   1 Folder   3	Background Information, 1964
Box   1 Folder   4	Correspondence and Writings, 1964
Box   1 Folder   5	Racial Violence, 1964-1965
	Series: Vietnam Antiwar Movement	⇧
Box   1 Folder   6	New Haven-Yale Committee for Peace in Vietnam, 1965
Box   1 Folder   7	American Friends Service Committee, 1968--1973
Box   1 Folder   8	Honeywell Project, 1969
Box   1 Folder   9	Notes and Writings, [1971-1973]
Box   1 Folder   10	Indochina Peace Campaign, 1972-1973
	Series: Third World Development Issues	⇧
Box   1 Folder   11	Cuba and Latin America, [1968?]-1970
Box   1 Folder   12	Committee of Returned Volunteers, 1969-1970
Box   1 Folder   13	“Cuba Book Project,” 1969-1970
Box   1 Folder   14	Peace Corps Issues and Joseph H. Blatchford Protest, 1969-1970
	Series: Local Projects	⇧
	Milwaukee
Box   1 Folder   15	Milwaukee Independent School, Free University, and Independent Learning Center, 1970
Box   1 Folder   16	Discussion Notes, circa 1969-1970
Box   1 Folder   17	Power Structure and American Corporations, circa 1969-1970
Box   1 Folder   18	“War and the Imperialist Economy,” 1970
Box   1 Folder   19	Economic Power Structure Class, 1970
	Pittsburgh
Box   1 Folder   20	South Side Community Council, 1971-1972
Box   2 Folder   1	Pitt Professional Union/American Federation of Teachers, 1971-1975
Box   2 Folder   2	New American Movement, Utilities Project, 1974-1975
	Rural Southwestern Wisconsin
Box   2 Folder   3	Coulee Community Action Program, Technical Assistance Planning Group, 1975-1976
Box   2 Folder   4	Dairyland Power Cooperative, Powerline Issue, 1976
Box   2 Folder   5	Citizens for Safe Energy, 1977-1978
Box   2 Folder   6	Rural Politics Discussion Group, 1977-1978
Box   2 Folder   7	Kickapoo Exchange Food Coop, 1978
	Series: Miscellaneous	⇧
Box   2 Folder   8	“Oral History and People's Struggle,” New York City, December 28, 1971
Box   2 Folder   9	Various Social Action Issues, circa 1965-1970