The Tillow papers are confined mainly to the years 1963 - 1966 and are divided into two groups: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Pittsburgh Committee To End The War In Vietnam (PCEWV). The first provides documentation and insight into one of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1960's during the period of its greatest vitality. The materials relating to the PCEWV illustrate the antiwar movement on a local level and trace some of the activities of one of the affiliates of the National Coordinating Committee To End The War In Vietnam during the early period of opposition to the war.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee papers consist primarily of correspondence of SNCC's Atlanta office during the period 1962 - 1965 and are arranged chronologically. A few memoranda, news releases, and minutes of meetings are interfiled with the correspondence. The letters are limited mainly to matters handled by Walter Tillow and do not represent the total correspondence of the office. Chief correspondents include officials of a variety of labor unions and several civil rights organizations including: Council of Federated Organizations, Operation Freedom, Fayette County Project, and the Southern Conference Educational Fund. The papers also include a two page autobiographical statement by James Forman who was executive secretary of SNCC from 1961 until 1965.
The Pittsburgh Committee to End the War in Vietnam papers are arranged in four folders: 1) general antiwar correspondence, 2) records of the committee including position papers, policy statements, press releases, broadsides, agenda and mailing lists, 3) records relating to the November, 1965 regional conference at Pittsburgh of the National Coordinating Committee To End The War In Vietnam, and 4) newspaper clippings. Within each folder all materials are arranged chronologically.
Mimeographed materials representing early organizational activities of the National Coordinating Committee To End The War In Vietnam, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Operation Freedom and the Southern Students Organizing Committee were removed from the collection and transferred to the Contemporary Social Action File. Other printed or near print materials concerning the following organizations were also filed, by organization, in the Contemporary Social Action File: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Fayette County Project, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, W. E. B. DuBois Clubs, Operation Freedom, Council of Federated Organizations, the Peacemaker Movement, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
