This collection contains information about social action groups and national and local issues with which Stromquist was involved between 1963 and 1978. The material is arranged by subject into five series: Civil Rights, Vietnam Anti-War Movement, Third World Development Issues, Local Projects, and Miscellaneous. In Box 1, Folder 1 are biographical newsclippings about Stromquist's work in Mississippi and articles by him concerning Mississippi and India.
The bulk of the collection consists of printed documents distributed by national civil rights, anti-war, and social action organizations: newsletters, information packets, pamphlets, and mass mailings. These materials are supplemented by newsclippings, articles, course outlines, and bibliographies, as well as by Stromquist's personal notes from and for speeches, meetings, courses, readings, and conferences; personal correspondence, published and unpublished papers and drafts, notes and correspondence for a book on Cuba, and ideas for discussion group and public speaking topics.
Stromquist's CIVIL RIGHTS files include a folder of materials collected while he was in New Haven, Connecticut: a report and other papers on the 1962 Philadelphia Tutorial Project and the Harlem Educational Project, by the Northern Student Movement; an issue of the CORE-lator; photocopies of letters and notes, many apparently written for the Yale Civil. Rights Council; and other near-print materials on Mississippi distributed by the Northern Student Movement. Papers relating to Stromquist's experiences as a volunteer with the Mississippi Freedom Project include near-print material produced and distributed by SNCC and the Council of Federated Organizations, mail received by his family in response to letters to Senator Everett Dirksen, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and President Lyndon Johnson, requesting increased protection for SNCC volunteers; and correspondence and notes kept by Stromquist about his personal experiences.
VIETNAM ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT records concern the Indochina Peace Campaign and protest against Honeywell's defense projects. There are several printed speeches, instructions for New Haven-Yale participants in the March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam, and a speech and workshop notes from an anti-war teach-in for a proposed action project during the Columbia University strike, all apparently generated or distributed by the New Haven-Yale Committee for Peace in Vietnam. From the American Friends Service Committee and the Honeywell Project there are mainly near-print flyers, reports, articles, and other papers. Stromquist's notes and writings are fragmentary, but include comments on an article, notes for or from a talk and a discussion panel, and others. Regarding the Indochina Peace Campaign there are mimeographed minutes of a meeting and letters, handwritten notes and speech notes, and notes of a talk by Tom Hayden and Fred Branfman following their return from North Vietnam in November 1972.
THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT ISSUES includes a folder of articles about Cuba and Latin America; near-print contact lists, a newsletter, a statement of purpose, and other papers from the Committee of Returned Volunteers; and articles, personal notes and writings, letters, and notes by others, all gathered as a result of Stromquist's two-month visit to Cuba with CRV. Apparently the Cuba materials were collected in preparation for writing a book. Stromquist's materials on Peace Corps director Joseph H. Blatchford include articles, printed biographical sketches of Blatchford, a few notes, and other information, collected while organizing a protest against Blatchford's speaking engagement in Milwaukee in 1970.
Within the LOCAL PROJECTS files are materials relating to local social action groups in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and southwestern Wisconsin. Stromquist's files on imperialism and economics, and the economic power structure, contain discussion notes, an outline, and near-print material relating to his writings and research on imperialism and American corporations. These were gathered for courses taught by Stromquist while in Milwaukee. His files on Pittsburgh include a few newsletters and notes from an adult forum held by the South Side Community Council; and many notes, newsletters, meeting notes, form letters, and articles concerning the organization of the Pitt Professional Union, American Federation of Teachers. Stromquist's files on the utilities project of the Pittsburgh chapter of the New American Movement, include newsclippings, a proposal on tactics, testimony, minutes, flyers, and notes concerning NAM's campaign to win public ownership and control of the Duquesne Light Company. There is also a NAM form letter in support of the United Mine Workers.
Stromquist's files from his work in rural southwestern Wisconsin include organizational charts, memos to staff, proposals, discussion papers, reports, and minutes and notes of meetings of the Technical Assistance Planning Group of the Wisconsin Coulee Region Community Action Agency, with headquarters in Westby, Wisconsin. There is a small file of clippings and Stromquist's testimony in opposition to Dairyland Power Cooperative's proposed power plant at Lansing, Iowa and its power line linking the Lansing plant with its Genoa, Wisconsin plant. Anti-nuclear and anti-utility concerns also helped organize individuals into the Citizens for Safe Energy activist group. Stromquist's papers relating to CSE include notes and minutes of meetings, letters, notes, flyers, a statement of purpose, and other materials gathered for information. Also of interest is Stromquist's collection of materials and outlines on topics for the Rural Politics Discussion Group he founded in 1977; and two newsletters, draft by-laws, and notes concerning the Kickapoo Exchange Food Coop.
Two folders of MISCELLANEOUS materials consist of notes and a list of questions from “Oral History and People's Struggle,” a December 28, 1971 conference co-sponsored by the New York City Women Workers Oral History Project and the Radical Caucus; and social action miscellany.
