Title: David Cherry Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1966-1969

Creator:

• Cherry, David

Call Number: Mss 273; Tape 474A

Quantity: 0.4 c.f. (1 archives box) and 1 tape recording

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 collected by David Cherry, a graduate student in history at the University of Wisconsin, primarily relating to the period 1967-1968. Included are correspondence, minutes, membership lists, flyers, memoranda, handbills, and other printed matter pertaining to the Teaching Assistants Association, the History Students Association, and other departmental student groups, the 1967 Dow demonstration against the Vietnam War and subsequent student strikes, and educational reform. Many of the items bear informative marginal notes made by Cherry. On tape are interviews with eyewitnesses of the Dow demonstration and a November 1967 panel discussion featuring Paul Soglin on CIA recruiting on the university campus.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00273

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A graduate student and teaching assistant in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, David Cherry was caught up in the campus turmoil which the Dow demonstration heralded. He and Alan Helfman, an undergraduate student of his, collected material in Fall 1967 relating to the Dow demonstration with the intention of publishing an article; this project was, however, never completed. Cherry also joined the Teaching Assistants Association in October 1967, partly in response to the University's handling of anti-war protests and partly in order to seek more widespread educational reform. For a short time in the spring of 1968, Cherry served on a UW student-faculty committee, which investigated ways that the student body could more actively participate in university decisions. He also became the chairman of the Grievance Committee of the TAA. That summer he worked on student organizing at the departmental level (as SDS and other organizations were also trying to do) and on developing critiques of college education at UW and in general. In these capacities, he wrote the leaflet “On the Teaching of History: The Survey Principle Must Go” (Aug. 1968), using the pseudonym Bernie Johnson.

Cherry became very active in the History Students Association which he had helped to create during the summer of 1968. He acted as de facto secretary for the association. In this capacity, he negotiated with publishers and writers over copyright to material that later appeared in the association's publications; handled requests for association publications; and obtained space at the American Historical Association's December 1968 convention to organize a radical caucus of historians.

In 1969 Cherry became increasingly despondent over the potential of campus organizing. He and other UW TAA activists formed a commune in Baltimore during that summer. The following fall, he began teaching at the Essex County College in Newark, N.J.

The David Cherry Papers, 1966-1969, cover primarily the years 1967-1968, and contain material which he gathered in Madison, Wisconsin--the bulk of it at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The collection includes correspondence, minutes, membership lists, flyers, memoranda, handbills, leaflets, pamphlets, newsletters and other miscellaneous items. There is one folder of correspondence with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin describing the collection and its research value. The collection, however, deals primarily with the Teaching Assistants Association (1966-1969), student activism (Oct. 1967-Feb. 1969), student departmental associations (Oct. 1967-Feb. 1969), and educational reform in Madison (1968). Cherry arranged this collection, meticulously dated it, and organized it by subjects and thereafter chronologically. He also included revealing marginalia about the authorship, origin, purpose, and effect of these various documents.

Material on the TAA includes items which Cherry collected or Xeroxed from his own files and from those of Robert Muehlenkamp, president of the TAA (1968), and of George Browder, chairman of the TAA Grievance Committee (1966-1967). The collection has some correspondence of the TAA (1967-1968) with departments and faculty concerning the recognition of the TAA and TA's working conditions; and with activists and administrators at other universities dealing with the status of teaching assistants and educational reform. It also has TAA minutes (1966-1969), lists of members of the TAA (1967-1968), its constitution (1968), various reports, memoranda, leaflets, petitions, press releases and handbills (1966-1969). There are also documents on a TAA education project which researched ways to reform university teaching methods and curriculum (1968) and a valuable comprehensive historical analysis of the TAA by UW undergraduate Leonard Goldner (1968).

The student activism files deal with the Dow demonstrations and their after-math (October-December, 1967), anti-draft organization within the History Department (1968), and the Black Strike (February, 1969). The Dow demonstration items are comprised of leaflets and handbills, a tape interview of witnesses to the violence on October 17, 1967, and a series of inter-departmental memoranda from the Sociology Department which demonstrate the effect of the turmoil on the UW faculty (Oct. 1967-Jan. 1969). The Black Strike items consist of handbills and leaflets. There are a few leaflets and handbills dealing with anti-draft organizing within the UW History Department.

The material on student departmental associations includes the membership lists of the UW Philosophy Students Association and of the History Students Association (ESA) (1968); minutes of the HSA (Fall 1968); pamphlets and newsletters of the English, History, and Philosophy Students Associations (1968); a list of departmental organizers (Nov. 1968); and general correspondence of the HSA (Fall 1968). There are numerous handbills, leaflets, and other documents which deal with these organizations. Cherry identified the author of several of these leaflets and pamphlets.

The educational reform material reflects Cherry's involvement in the TAA and ESA, and also the activities of Bruce Amundsen, a math teacher at Madison Central University High School (MCUHS), which was staffed, in part, by student teachers from the university. Cherry's own collection includes reports of student-faculty committees, leaflets, handbills, critiques of the educational system, and a few newspaper clippings dealing with the 1968 Final Report of the UW Board of Visitors. Amundsen's collection has reports of student council meetings, handouts relating to educational reform, and memoranda from the principal of MCUHS, William Marsh, dealing with the expression of political opinions by teachers and with student grooming codes.

The correspondence of the TAA and HSA contains many requests for information and publications from students and faculty members at other colleges. The HSA file contains a letter from Melvin Greenberg to David Cherry, Oct. 31, 1968, concerning secrecy at public meetings and a letter from Cherry, Nov. 1968, to June Oppenheimer of the Daily Cardinal, the UW student newspaper, concerning a report of a history departmental meeting.

One folder of printed materials re UW student activism, 1966-1969, was separated to the Social Action Vertical File.

Acquisition Information

Presented by David Cherry, Madison, Wisconsin, in four accessions, October-August 1969. Accession Number: M68-332, M69-30, M69-64, M69-243

Processing Information

Processed by Michael Kohl (Intern) and Eleanor McKay, September 19, 1973.

Mss 273 Box   1 Folder   1	Cherry's correspondence with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1969
	Teaching Assistants Association
Box   1 Folder   2	Leonard Goldner's history of the TAA, 1968
Box   1 Folder   3	General Papers, 1966, June-1969, Jan.
Box   1 Folder   4	Education Project, 1963, April-Aug.
	UW Activism
Box   1 Folder   5	Dow Demonstration, 1967, Oct.-Dec.
Box   1 Folder   6	History Department Draft Resistance Organization, 1968
Box   1 Folder   7	Strike for Black Demands, 1969, Feb.
	UW Departmental Student Associations
Box   1 Folder   8	English Students Association, 1968, April-Dec.
	History Students Association
Box   1 Folder   9	1968, June-Sept.
Box   1 Folder   10	1968, Oct.-1969, Feb.
Box   1 Folder   11	Other Departmental Students Associations, 1968
Box   1 Folder   12	Wisconsin Sociology Students Association and Sociology Departmental Papers, 1967, Oct.-1969, Jan.
	Educational Reform in Madison
Box   1 Folder   13	Departmental Student-Faculty Committee Reports, 1968, Spring
Box   1 Folder   14	Final Report of the UW Board of Visitors, 1968, May
Box   1 Folder   15	Madison Central University High School, 1968
Tape 474A	Tape Recording
No.   1 Side   1	Dow Interviews Scope and Content Note: Cherry's interviews with University of Wisconsin faculty members and a law student who witnessed the Dow Demonstration of October 17, 1967. Interviews occurred at the end of October 1967.
No.   1 Side   2	CIA Panel, November 1967 Scope and Content Note: Panel discussion re: desirability of having CIA recruitment on the University of Wisconsin campus. Participants included Chancellor William Sewell, Paul Soglin, and various faculty members.