These records of the Greater Boston Committee of Racial Equality, covering only the years 1963-1965, are those which had been in the possession of Professor Richard D. Brown of the Department of History, Oberlin College. Brown was active in Boston CORE's employment committee as a graduate student at Harvard in the 1960s, and the records reflect this activity of the organization and CORE's interest in “integrated” advertising of major local and national companies and utilities. The collection comprises both manuscript and printed materials. The manuscript category consists of general correspondence, an operational file, miscellaneous notes, and statements on the employment policy and practice of the First National Bank of Boston. The printed materials include brochures, reports, periodicals, copies of “integrated” advertisements, and newspaper clippings. In each category the material is limited but representative.
Much of the correspondence is to and from Richard D. Brown; some to Alan Gartner. Of note is a Xeroxed letter from Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Alan Gartner, March 9, 1963; a copy of a letter from M.J. McDermott to Governor George Wallace of Alabama, April 2, 1965; and a letter from Eric Sevareid to Richard D. Brown, June 22, 1965 with a copy of a script for Sevareid's remarks on the Walter Cronkite news broadcast of June 8, 1965.
The Operational File contains the constitution of the Greater Boston Committee of Racial Equality as adopted April 13, 1959, and miscellaneous lists, e.g. a “Partial Listing of Greater Boston Negro Civic, Social and Fraternal Organizations,” March 5, 1964, and a “Mailing List.”
The Miscellaneous Notes were probably compiled by Richard D. Brown in his CORE related activities. They consist of an outline of a meeting with Milton Rosenberg of the New York State Commission on Human Rights, January 5, 1965; notes on a telephone conversation with Malcolm Peabody, chairman of the Massachusetts Governor's Advisory Committee on Civil Rights, January 12, 1965; and a miscellany of notations relating to the employment of Negroes through the offices of Boston CORE.
Among the pamphlets and brochures included in the printed materials are some state of Massachusetts literature on employment and housing discrimination, a report on “The Boston Negro Market” in the 1960s, a statement of Governor John A. Volpe's Civil Rights Program, and the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin, “Income, Education and Unemployment in Neighborhoods, Boston, Massachusetts,” January 1963. There are also a very few CORE publications as well as a few copies of “integrated” advertisements, and newspaper clippings referring to employment practices of various Boston banks and miscellaneous related subjects.
