Ray Sparrow's long career in revolutionary organizing is incompletely represented in this small collection, and long periods are completely undocumented. There is also no information on his interesting and important career in construction. Indeed, many of these facts are only evident because they are discussed in his obituary from The Militant. The Sparrow Papers are arranged as Obituary, Correspondence, Writings, and Miscellany. The entire collection is available both in paper form and on microfilm.
The Correspondence mainly dates from 1958 to 1968. The exception to this is a few items, 1953-1954, exchanged with national organizer Tom Kerry and with James P. Cannon about writing done by Sparrow. The coverage resumes in 1958 after Sparrow relocated in San Francisco. Most of this later correspondence consists of exchanges about international party matters, national and local elections, publicity tours, finances, and factional disputes, both within the national office and within the San Francisco branch. There are also occasional allusions to the party's situation in Los Angeles in correspondence with Carl Feingold. While the majority of the correspondence from the late 1950s is concerned with the details of day-to-day party operations, occasional letters from such prominent correspondents as James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs, George Weissman, Tom Kerry, and Joe Hansen contain more comprehensive reports. Later correspondence alludes to the growing role of young people in the party and to the 1962 Cuban Blockade demonstration. The most extensive correspondence dates from the period 1966 to 1968 when Sparrow was sent to Brussels as a member of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. Despite the volume of the exchanges with international Trotskyist leaders such as Ernest Mandel and Livio Maitan and with Dobbs, Hansen, and other national staff in New York City, it is unclear precisely what Sparrow's responsibilities were in Europe.
Some letters, especially those from Mandel, concern conditions he observed during worldwide tours. Correspondence with British socialist Ernie Tate is also extensive here. This material is quite informative about conditions in Great Britain, organizational work carried for international peace demonstrations, and the factional dispute with Ernest Healy. A substantial portion of the international correspondence concerns the details of publication and distribution of party pamphlets and periodicals.
The Writings, which represent only a small sample of the material that Sparrow published in The Militant and elsewhere, consists of a review of The Power Elite and broadcast remarks aired by KPFA in reply to comments made by Seymour Martin Lipset. It is not known if the two other pieces filed here (“An Examination of the District Convention Resolution Condemning Trotskyism” and “Report of the New York Local Organizer”) were written by Sparrow.
The Miscellany consists of typewritten notes thought to relate to the 1953 or 1954 CIO convention and a file of mimeographed and original documents (undated, but circa 1957) relating to a crisis in the CP after the 20th Congress. Particularly interesting here is a pre-convention document “Report to the District Negro Commission.” Nothing in the file explains why these documents were in Sparrow's custody.
