The collection consists primarily of fund-raising and sponsorship appeals; communications between the CABS national office and local chapters; legal documents; a small amount of internal papers such as financial records, reports of the defendants' tours, and papers used in preparing the legal cases; lists of sponsors and contributors; and newsclippings. These records are arranged in four series: General Correspondence of CABS, General Records, Correspondence and Papers of CABS Chapters, and Scrapbooks of Newsclippings.
The GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF CABS illustrates the main activities of the national office in New York: recruiting sponsors (particularly academics), raising money for the defendants' legal defense, and exhorting local chapters to do the same. A major portion of the correspondence dates from October 1963 through March 1964, a period of intensive organizing prior to the first judicial test of the Indiana Anti-Subversion Act on March 20, 1964.
The GENERAL RECORDS include a variety of documents, memoranda, and official CABS literature. Among the records titled “Descriptions of the Case” are summaries of important events prepared both to inform the sponsors of the progress of the case and, apparently, to aid in the legal defense. Included also are some press accounts, transcripts, and drafts of speeches. Other memoranda prepared in the course of the legal defense and copies of many of the court documents are among the General Records as well. The financial records are mainly statements from legal counsel and summaries prepared for the sponsors. Other General Records include printed promotional literature, CABS press releases, and announcements, schedules, and reports pertaining to the defendants' speaking tours. The major part of the lists of sponsors and contributors is a box of file cards giving the names, addresses, and institutional affiliations of individual sponsors.
CABS collected resolutions passed by unions, student groups, and others in support of the defendants, and a few items from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC). Through most of CABS's existence one of the defendants' two co-counsels was Leonard B. Boudin, general counsel of the ECLC. Although CABS was reluctant to acknowledge a connection with the ECLC, regarded by many in Bloomington as overly sympathetic to left-wing causes, the ECLC took considerable credit for the Bloomington students' legal successes.
Also among the records in this series is a printed transcript of the speech by Leroy McRae that led to the original indictment of Levitt, Bingham, and Morgan. CABS sold copies of the speech as a fund-raising device. Finally, someone apparently connected with CABS prepared a typewritten, candid political and personal appraisal of 195 prominent Bloomington residents, probably in anticipation of Prosecutor Hoadley's investigation of persons associated with the YSA. Individuals described were members of political organizations, journalists, lawyers, university faculty, administrators and students, and others. The document's main purpose seems to be to point out those who could and might choose to identify members of the YSA.
The CORRESPONDENCE AND PAPERS OF CABS CHAPTERS series primarily contains routine correspondence between local chapters and individual contacts, and the national office. Some files also contain financial statements, press releases, and reports on the defendants' promotional activities in the locality.
Although most of the items included in the SCRAPBOOK OF NEWSCLIPPINGS relate to Levitt, Bingham, and Morgan's legal case and personal activities, several other subjects are covered. Clippings from the period prior to the indictments under the anti-subversion law describe the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Bloomington and the controversy over its recognition as a campus organization and, later, a similar controversy over the YSA. In early 1963, Prosecutor Hoadley arrested and tried an Indiana University student, Nancy Dillingham, for possession of marijuana and charged that she was a confidante and marijuana supplier of Bloomington socialists. Both Dillingham and the YSA denied that she had any connection with the YSA. The clippings cover these incidents and Dillingham's trial. In addition, clippings were kept regarding certain activities of other Bloomington figures associated with the YSA.
