Title: Paul Booth Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1956-1970

Creator:

• Booth, Paul, 1943-

Call Number: Mss 256

Quantity: 1.5 c.f. (4 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 Paul Booth, a New Left activist who served as president of Students for a Democratic Society, 1962-1964, and as a leader of the National Conference for a New Politics, and who later turned to community organizing in Chicago and to reform of the labor movement. Included are general correspondence, primarily 1962-1968; speeches and writings; and an extensive subject file on organizations and projects in which Booth was involved. Prominent correspondents include Rennie Davis, Todd Gitlin, Walter Reuther, Arthur Waskow, and numerous officers of SDS. The subject files variously contain correspondence, mailings, reports, financial statements, and clippings.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00256

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1943	Paul Booth was born in Washington, D.C.
1960, Fall	He first demonstrated his organizational abilities when as a freshman at Swarthmore College he helped found the Off-Campus Issues Committee.
1961, Dec	Became a member of the National Executive Committee of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
1962, June 11-15	Attended Port Huron convention.
1962	Elected vice president by that convention.
1963	Re-elected vice president of SDS. Todd Gitlin was elected president.
1964, June	Graduated from Swarthmore, finished his term as vice president, and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he and Todd Gitlin directed SDS's Peace Research and Education Project (PREP), which primarily studied ways of converting the U.S. military-industrial complex to peace-time production, the inequities of the draft, and corporate investment in South Africa.
1965, March 19	SDS sponsored a demonstration in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC for its loans to apartheid South Africa; Booth was among the 43 arrested. This was SDS's first official act of civil disobedience. PREP did not survive this demonstration, as increasing U.S. involvement in Vietnam made continuing peace research seem pointless.
1965, April	Booth joined SDS's National Office (NO) as Washington Coordinator for the First March on Washington to End the War, 4-17-65.
1965, June 9-13	Attended national convention at Kewadin, Michigan, and was elected to the National Council of SDS.
1965, Sept	The spirit of local initiative decided upon at Kewadin left the NO in a shambles. Booth left his work organizing new SDS chapters in an Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) in Oakland, Cal. and returned to the NO, which several members of SDS's Old Guard were trying to re-order so that it could again give some national focus to the. organization.
1965-1966	Booth accepted position of SDS's National Secretary in the Chicago NO. His tenure was the last for a member of SDS's Old Guard, and he was sharply critized by many new members for not being radical enough and for issuing a Vietnam position paper without consulting the membership.
1965	His support of the National Conference for a New Politics (NCNP), which sought to elect progressive candidates within the confines of establishment politics, also alienated many newer SDS-ers.
1966, June	Booth's term ended, leaving him physically and emotionally exhausted.
1966, Summer	Booth accepted a position as research director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America.
1966, Fall	He began to participate more actively in NCNP.
1966, Winter	Became a member of NCNP's Steering Committee and helped lay the groundwork for the August 1967 national convention which futilely tried to find an alternative to the two party system in the U.S.
1966-1967	Helped to develop the School of Community Organization in Chicago, a project that was jointly sponsored by SDS and by local civil rights and political reform activists. The aims of the project were to do research into the bases of political and economic power in Chicago and to develop a cadre of knowledgeable and experienced organizers able to challenge and change the power structure of the city. There were several municipal electoral campaigns aided by the project.
1969	Worked for the Labor Workshop, an action committee of reform-minded labor organizers seeking to revitalize, re-educate, and re-direct the American labor movement. There, Booth helped to plan a conference on workers' education and the future of the labor movement which was held at Morgantown, West Virginia on October 12, 1969. That winter, he also started working on the workshop's newsletter, New Directions in Labor.
1970	Continued to help edit New Directions in Labor. In the fall, he helped organize Chicago students' support for striking General Motors' workers.
1971 to the present	Booth and his wife, the former Heather Tobin, have continued to be active in Chicago politics. He founded the Citizens Action Program, which helps citizens in their disputes with local government and businesses; and in 1972 they founded the Midwest Academy, which trains community organizers.

For additional information on Paul Booth's involvement in SDS, see Kirkpatrick Sales' SDS (New York: Random House, 1973).

The Paul Booth Papers span the years 1956 to 1970 but primarily concern his activities from 1962 to 1970. The collection is composed of general correspondence, 1962-1968, several folders of Booth's writings and speeches, an extensive subject file concerning organizations Booth was active or interested in, some miscellany, and restricted material on his Chicago labor projects.

The correspondence includes letters or copies of letters from personal friends; political leaders; activists in the civil rights, anti-war, and labor movements; and from other SDS leaders. Topics of primary concern include strategy of the New Left; the war in Indochina; civil rights; and the theory and practice of organizing students, workers, and minorities into an effective political force. Prominent correspondents include the following (an asterisk after a name indicates frequent or important correspondence):

• Lois Addison, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Democrats*
• Robert Bender, executive director of the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union*
• Julian Bond, Georgia State Representative and civil rights leader
• Joseph Clark, U.S. Senator (D-Pa)
• Rennie Davis, director of ERAP*
• David Dillinger, anti-war activist and member of the Chicago Seven
• Greg Gallo, president of the NSA*
• Todd Gitlin, former president of SDS and Booth's co-worker on PREP*
• William Green, U.S. Congressman (D-Pa)
• Philip Hart, U.S. Senator (D-Mich)
• Steven Max, member of SDS's National Office*
• Vance Opperman, vice president of NSA*
• Walter Reuther, president of United Auto Workers*
• Dr. Benjamin Spock, anti-war activist
• Nicholas von Hoffman, radical journalist
• Arthur Waskow, New Left leader and historian*
• Jim Williams, director of SDS's Political Education Project*

Booth's writings and speeches comprise two folders of material, one containing “A New Left Manifesto,” 1967-1968, and one containing drafts of a speech, several essays, and several longer studies. This material relates to poverty in the United States, the New Left, and the relationship between SDS and the NCNP.

Booth's subject file is arranged alphabetically by title of organization, most prominently the NCNP, NSA, and SDS. The material on the NCNP is primarily concerned with its August 1967 convention and its aftermath.

There are pre-convention mailings; reports, papers, and proposals presented at the convention; financial statements; clippings; and material on the organization's response to its investigation by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. One folder concerns NSA's International Committee meetings and the role of the NSA and American students in foreign countries, 1964-1965. Concerning the Northern Student Movement, to which Booth related while at Swarthmore, there is one folder of conference papers and leaflets, 1963-1964, re civil rights, education, problems of the Northern ghettoes, and rent strikes. The School of Community Organization records, 1967, reflect Booth's involvement in an attempt to create a grassroots, radical political base in Chicago; these records include brochures, reports, and clippings examining Chicago's power structure, and memoranda and membership lists which illustrate intra-organizational developments. The most extensive section of this subject file concerns Booth's long participation in SDS; filed alphabetically there is information on civil rights activities in the South, 1961; ERAP, 1963-1967; miscellany, 1961-1967; material from SDS national conventions, 1959-1965; SDS's Political Education Project (PEP) and especially its study of HUAC, 1961-1968; research papers by various authors) 1962-1964; and two bound volumes, labelled “Fall Semester, 1962” and “Spring Semester, 1962.” In these volumes Booth chronologically filed all SDS materials that came his way that year.

The miscellany includes Booth's personal financial records, 1965-1966; clippings, 1963-1967, re the test ban treaty, civil rights, Democratic Party politics, and the New Left; and a folder of leaflets, 1960-1967, re civil rights, community action, and anti-war activities. There is also a folder of research papers, 1956-1961, by various authors on such topics as the Student League for Industrial Democracy, civil liberties, federal aid to education, and peace.

There is material pertaining to Booth's involvement in the Labor Project and the GM strike. It includes letters from co-workers, labor activists, and friends concerning conferences on labor organizing, the newsletter New Directions in Labor, and discussions of current political issues such as wage and price controls and the war in Vietnam. The folder on the GM strike also contains lists of student organizers and professors in the Chicago area who supported or sympathized with the GM workers as well as other material pertaining to the gaining of student support for this strike.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Paul Booth, Chicago, Illinois, April 22, 1969, Jan. 17, 1972, and Nov. 21, 1973. Accession Number: M69-119; M72-11; M73-450

Processing Information

Processed by Eleanor McKay and Michael Kohl, November 16, 1973.

	General Correspondence
Box   1 Folder   1	1962-1963, Sept
Box   1 Folder   2	1963, Oct-Dec
Box   1 Folder   3	1964, Jan-March
Box   1 Folder   4	1964, April-Dec
Box   1 Folder   5	1965
Box   1 Folder   6	1966
Box   1 Folder   7	1967-1968; undated
	Writings and Speeches
Box   1 Folder   8	General, 1962-1970, undated
Box   1 Folder   9	“A New Left Manifesto,” 1967-1968
	Subject File
	National Conference for New Politics
	General
Box   1 Folder   10	1967, March-June
Box   1 Folder   11	1967, July-Aug
Box   1 Folder   12	1967, Aug-Summer
Box   1 Folder   13	1967, Sept-1968, March
Box   2 Folder   1	Clippings, 1967
Box   2 Folder   2	National Student Association: International Committee, 1964-1965
Box   2 Folder   3	Northern Student Movement, 1963-1964
Box   2 Folder   4	Pamphlet Committee, 1967
	School of Community Organization
Box   2 Folder   5	General, 1967
Box   2 Folder   6	Clippings, 1967
	Students for a Democratic Society:
Box   2 Folder   7	Civil rights activities in the South, 1961; undated
	ERAP
Box   2 Folder   8	1963-1964, June
Box   2 Folder   9	1964, July-1967; undated
Box   2 Folder   10	Fall Semester, 1962
	Miscellaneous
Box   2 Folder   11	1961-1963
Box   2 Folder   12	1964-1967; undated
	National conventions
Box   3 Folder   1	1959-1963, Nov.
Box   3 Folder   2	1963, Dec-1965; undated
	PEP
Box   3 Folder   3	General, 1964-1965; undated
Box   3 Folder   4	House Un-American Activities Committee, 1961-1968; undated
Box   3 Folder   5	Research papers, 1962-1964
Box   3 Folder   6	Spring semester, 1962
	Miscellany
Box   3 Folder   7	Booth's Financial Records, 1965-1966
Box   3 Folder   8-9	Clippings, 1963-1967; undated
Box   3 Folder   10	Leaflets, 1960-1967
Box   3 Folder   11	Research Papers, 1956-1961; undated
	Labor Project
Box   4 Folder   1	Morgantown, West Va., Conference, 1969, Oct 12
	Labor Project
Box   4 Folder   2	1969
Box   4 Folder   3	1970; undated
Box   4 Folder   4	G.M. Strike; Student-Worker Project, 1970; undated