The papers, which consist of scripts, recordings, background information, photographs, and correspondence, provide episodic rather than complete coverage of Back's career in broadcasting. The incomplete nature of the collection is partially compensated for by the presence of explanatory notes prepared by Back. As a result, the value of the collection lies primarily in the events Back covered rather than its biographical information. The documentation primarily relates to Back's work in Lincoln, Nebraska, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. In addition, there is strong documentation, both textual and recorded, concerning his radio documentaries on alcoholism and venereal disease. The photographs are similarly spotty in coverage. The majority show Back at work or posed with various prominent individuals. Most are unidentified, but there are snapshots of Back with Marian Anderson, Tom Ewell, Hubert Humphrey, Estes Kefauver, Robert Kennedy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert Taft Jr., and at work at KFAB-KFOR in Nebraska, WJNO in Florida, and in Germany. Two signed photographs of Obie Newcombe Jr. show marines fighting on Tarawa. An additional 60 negatives are unidentified, but it is likely they document his life before or shortly after he became a student at the University of Wisconsin. Two of these snapshots show Camp Randall. The collection includes strong, but unprocessed, visual documentation of his biographical WFIL program, These Are Americans and sound documentation of Cross Fire.
The papers are arranged alphabetically by subject, with the topics in the file including program and station names and genre. The genre files include biographical clippings and personal miscellany, correspondence, a notebook, and miscellaneous writings.
The correspondence is very incomplete, consisting primarily of listener mail received after the cancellation of Congress Today in 1952 and Cross Fire in 1953. One brief letter from ABC explains the reasons for the cancellation. A substantial number of listener letters concern his coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Particularly interesting among these letters is from one from fellow correspondent “j.e. [Jim]” about the hearings and related news. The collection includes a carbon of Back's reply. Another of the few pieces of correspondence written by Back in the collection is a 1955 exchange with “Betty” concerning America's Town Meeting of the Air for which Back had been a moderator. An interesting 1955 letter indicates Back's dissatisfaction with ABC management decisions, a dissatisfaction that probably contributed to his move to WFIL in Philadelphia. The early correspondence from the 1930s also contains a few exchanges with Modern Screen magazine and J. Clark Graham, dean of Ripon College, concerning a draft article about Spencer Tracy. (The papers include separately foldered drafts of articles about Don Ameche and Tom Ewell, but not the Tracy article.)
Among the programs with which Back was associated, the collection includes recorded transcripts of Crossfire, the ABC radio news interview program dating from the early 1950s which featured such prominent individuals as Chester Bowles, Paul Douglas, Charles A. Halleck, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther, and Alexander Wiley. The recorded programs are arranged chronologically by date, but an alphabetical list of guests appears as an appendix to this finding aid. About Congress Today, Back's nightly WMAL broadcast, there is a folder of transcripts dating from 1954 and one item dating from 1950. America's Town Meeting of the Air, for which Back was a moderator, is represented by background information and publicity. An extensive file of printed transcripts of this program received with the papers has been transferred to the SHSW Library where it is catalogued by title. The collection also includes several printed transcripts for Americans at Work, which was produced by CBS in 1939. Back's contribution to this program is not obvious from internal evidence, but it is presumed that he was associated with the program because of its inclusion in the donation to the Historical Society.
The collection also includes recordings of The Lonesome Road, a radio documentary about alcoholism, as well as raw tape interviews apparently used in editing the broadcast. There are typed transcripts for a similarly titled 1949 series that concerned venereal disease. The Officers Conference material represents an interview program about world affairs that was aired by the military broadcast network. Back hosted and produced several of these programs on a free-lance basis during the early 1950s. The files include transcripts and handwritten notes for these programs. Among the notable guests are William O. Douglas speaking on the conflict between communism and democracy in Southeast Asia and General Walter Bedell Smith.
Most important from Back's television work at WFIL are the unprocessed videotapes and sketchy background research materials for These are Americans, a biographical interview program dating from the 1960s that featured Marion Anderson, Pearl Buck, Jimmy Durante, Helen Hayes, Stan Musial, Richard Nixon, and Ed Wynn.
Among the stations represented in the collection are KFAB/KFOR in Lincoln, Nebraska and WJSV in Washington, D.C. The KFAB/KFOR files include representative scripts Back wrote for news and entertainment programs and for advertising. He also saved ten copies of Flash, the illustrated station newsletter. Similar broadcast script materials exist for WJSV, as well as that station's newsletter for 1942. For WTOP, also in Washington, D.C. there are mimeographed scripts by Back for Whatever Happened To, a series of biographical features about formerly prominent individuals. Additional writings arranged alphabetically by title include articles written by Back during the 1930s about motion picture actors from Wisconsin such as Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy, and Spencer Tracy. There is also background information for coverage of the 1948 Presidential inauguration and a 1948 feature on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The miscellaneous writings category contains unidentified scripts; impressions of a 1965 trip to Vietnam; a manuscript, photographs, and an unprocessed film relating to two trips to Germany; and editorials about national wartime news in 1942.
