Summary Information
Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson Papers
1960-1966
Mss 191; Tape 508A
0.8 c.f. (2 archives boxes) and 1 tape recording
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of civil rights worker Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson. Included are correspondence, diaries, COFO minutes and reports, Freedom School materials, printed matter, and a tape recording concerning her experiences as a volunteer in Canton, Mississippi, and as a SNCC neighborhood organizer in San Francisco in 1965. Fragmentary Knox College files mainly concern her involvement in the Student Peace Union. The tape is an interview by another Canton COFO worker concerning the Mississippi Summer project.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00191 ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
Jo Ann Ooiman was a participant in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 aimed at establishing the civil rights of Mississippi Negroes. At summer's end, she decided to stay in the South to continue her civil rights work until the next year when she moved to San Francisco and became a neighborhood organizer in the Haight-Ashbury district.
Born in September 1942, Miss Ooiman graduated from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, in 1964 and immediately joined the hundreds of Northern students going to Mississippi for a summer of civil rights activity sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations. Assigned to Canton in Madison County, Miss Ooiman devoted most of her time to teaching in the Freedom School in nearby Pleasant Green. With the arrival of September and the time to return North, she decided to remain in Canton instead. She subsequently worked on elections to the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (an agency organized in county units responsible for administering federal agricultural programs), and on mobilizing support for the Freedom Democratic Party's challenge of Mississippi's 1964 Congressional elections.
In June of 1965, Miss Ooiman left Mississippi to join Tom Ramsay, a fellow worker from Canton, as a neighborhood organizer for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in San Francisco. Working in the Haight-Ashbury district, their concerns included schools and school busing, housing, poverty programs, police relations, and freeways.
Miss Ooiman left the project in January 1966, was married that summer in St. Louis, and in the fall enrolled in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, to pursue a graduate degree in American history.
Scope and Content Note
The Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson Papers concern her activities as Jo Ann Ooiman at Knox College, in Mississippi, and in San Francisco. They contain diaries, correspondence, minutes and reports, Freedom School materials, leaflets, clippings, and a tape recording; and date 1960-1966, with most materials from 1964-1965. Part of the collection is photocopies.
The largest quantity of materials concern Miss Ooiman's civil rights work in Canton. All the diaries, the tape recording, and most of the correspondence date from this period. The correspondence is mainly incoming letters from friends at Knox College, from financial supporters in the North, and from other Summer Project workers in Canton. The Freedom School materials consist of lesson plans, curriculum outlines, samples of student work, and resource information. Filed in the “Miscellaneous” folder are drafts of booklets on employment and on schools, an article by Miss Ooiman published in Fellowship, fact sheets on Canton events, a few incident reports from other areas, and other items.
Researchers interested in this period can find letters written by Miss Ooiman published in Elizabeth Sutherland's Letters from Mississippi (New York, 1965).
The San Francisco materials are filed in two groups. One group, designated “Colleges and Universities,” contains minutes of meetings between SNCC organizers and students at San Francisco State College concerning a Community Education Program aimed at community-campus cooperation. Other contents of this folder concern the Experimental College, a student-inspired system of non-credit courses at San Francisco State.
Miss Ooiman's work in San Francisco is also documented in the folder titled “Haight-Ashbury District.” Neighborhood organizations involved in her work were the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council; the West Addition Anti-Poverty Council; and People Organizing for Work, Education, Rights (POWER). Minutes of meetings of each of these organizations plus leaflets and occasional correspondence is included.
Materials from Miss Ooiman's years at Knox College are fragmentary and consist of leaflets and minutes of the Knox Student Peace Union, 1960, and clippings concerning attacks on the 1961 campus appearance of Burton White, an opponent of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Administrative/Restriction Information
Presented by Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, Baltimore, Maryland, September 22, 1966, and January 16, 1967. Accession Number: M66-362, M67-18
Processed by Karen Baumann and archives students, March 4, 1972.
Contents List
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Mss 191
Box
2
Folder
1
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Diaries, 1964-1965
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Box
1
Folder
1
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Correspondence, 1964-1966
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Box
2
Folder
2
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Correspondence, 1964-1966, continued
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Box
1
Folder
2
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Knox College: Student Peace Union and Burton White Controversy, 1960-1961
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Mississippi
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Box
1
Folder
3
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Madison County COFO Staff Minutes & Reports, 1964-1965
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Box
2
Folder
3
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Madison County COFO Staff Minutes & Reports, 1964-1965, continued
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Box
1
Folder
4
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Other Minutes and Reports, 1963-1965
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Box
2
Folder
4
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Other Minutes and Reports, 1963-1965, continued
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Box
1
Folder
5
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Freedom School Materials
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Box
1
Folder
6
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Freedom School Materials, continued
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Box
1
Folder
7
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Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Elections, 1964-1965
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Box
1
Folder
8
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Madison County Citizen, 1964-1965
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Box
1
Folder
9
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Miscellaneous, 1964-1965
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Tape 508A
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Tape Recording
: Included is an interview by Susan Sanford, a fellow COFO worker in Canton, with Mrs. B. [name unknown] who recounts experiences and personal reactions to racial incidents during the Mississippi Summer Project; and also a Canton Freedom School lecture on such topics as the nature of society's power and class structures, the distribution of wealth, the criteria of the “good” life, and the purposes of education.
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Mss 191
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San Francisco
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Box
2
Folder
5
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Colleges and Universities, 1965-1966
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Box
2
Folder
6
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Haight-Ashbury District, 1965-1966
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