- unitid
-
{"value"=>"21218", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"Sc MG 541", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"b18136174", "type"=>"local_b"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1933-1955", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1933/1955"}
- unittitle
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{"value"=>"George Marshall papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"36 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"13.6 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear_feet"}]}
- repository
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{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division</span>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"George Marshall was a leading advocate for the abolition of the Un-American Activities Committee of the United States House of Representatives, a noted conservationist, and a pioneer in the U.S. civil rights movement. The George Marshall collection documents Marshall's involvement in the 1940s with civil rights issues, his legal defense against a contempt citation from the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his management of the Robert Marshall Foundation's grant-making program."}
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"English"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Marshall, George, 1904-2000", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Born in 1904, George Marshall was a leading advocate for the abolition of the Un-American Activities Committee of the United States House of Representatives, a noted conservationist, and a pioneer in the U.S. civil rights movement. His father, Louis Marshall, an influential lawyer and philanthropist, was instrumental in the founding of the Jewish Agency for Palestine under a League of Nations' mandate to Britain, and served on the board of the American Jewish Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His brother, Robert Marshall, with whom he shared a passion for preservation of the wilderness, died in 1939, leaving him as the manager and a trustee of his fund for protection of the environment, consumer education and civil liberties. He married Elizabeth Dublin, a fellow civil liberties advocate, in 1930 and fathered their two children, Roger Marshall and Nancy Marshall Schultz.</p> <p>Marshall was a graduate of Columbia University (B.A., 1926; M.A., 1927) and the Brookings Institute of Economics (Ph D., 1930). He worked as an editor and writer for the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and for several years as an economist in the New Deal National Recovery Administration. Some of his early associations with civil rights issues documented in the collection include: the National Association for the Defense of Political Prisoners; the Contributors' Information Service, a select group of affluent donors to liberal and radical causes organized by Corliss Lamont; the American League for Peace and Democracy, launched in 1933 as the American League against War and Fascism, which dissolved itself in 1940, citing the \"advent of war\" and the need for \"a different program and type of organization;\" and a citizen campaign to abolish the F.B.I., chaired by the anthropologist Franz Boas. Marshall wrote in 1950 of the Secretary of the National Association for the Defense of Political Prisoners, Joseph Gelders, that \"his example and determination had a great influence on me ... at a time when I was beginning to become increasingly active as an adult in the progressive movement\". A native Alabaman active in the Scottsboro case and in the defense of a communist organizer sentenced to 380 days on an Alabama chain gang for possession of communist literature, Gelders was abducted on the outskirts of Birmingham in September 1936, flogged and left unconscious in a ditch. His attackers included a lieutenant in the Alabama National Guard and a member of the American Legion.</p> <p>The National Federation for Constitutional Liberties (NFCL) was founded at a national conference on civil liberties held in Washington, D.C. in June 1940. Delegates at the conference represented trade-unions, churches, African-American, civil rights and professional organizations. The purpose of the new organization was to coordinate the activities of those various groups toward the realization of greater democratic freedoms. Marshall was elected to the Federation's Executive Committee and chaired its finance committee. A national office was established in the nation's capital, and Rev. Owen Knox of the Michigan Civil Rights Federation served as NFCL's first chairman. He resigned in October 1941, charging Communist domination of the group and contending that, with the Soviet Union's entry in the war against Nazi Germany, the Federation had abruptly reversed its position against the war.</p> <p>Marshall who replaced him as chairman believed on the other hand that \"the over-shadowing threat of Nazism\" had become the greatest danger against the extension of the Bill of Rights.</p> <p>Under Marshall's stewardship, the Federation supported vigorous prosecution of the war effort and made the fight against \"native seditionists\" and their supporters in Congress one of its chief concerns. Similar campaigns were waged for the abolition of the Dies Committee and its successor the Rankin Committee, two early manifestations of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In August 1942, the Federation published a 47 page pamphlet, \"Investigate Martin Dies! The case for a grand jury investigation of Martin Dies\", accusing the Texas congressman and author of the House resolution that established the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities in 1938, of sheltering native fascists and seditionists opposed to the war effort and to the New Deal. Dies in return took to the floor of the House and denounced the Federation as \"part of what Lenin called the solar system of organizations, ostensibly having no connection with the Communist Party, by which Communists attempt to create sympathizers and supporters of their program among those who would never affiliate themselves openly with the party\".</p> <p>In December 1945, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, known as the Rankin Committee, called on the Federation to open its books for an investigation of subversive activities. Rejected as \"insulting and wholly unwarranted\", that request was followed by a summons to Marshall to appear before the Committee with a list of NFCL contributors. Marshall first appeared before a HUAC subcommittee led by Congressman Parnell Thomas on April 8, 1946, and three days later before a closed hearing of the full Committee in Washington, D.C. At his appearance before the full Committee, Marshall brought ample evidence of the Federation's activities and pronouncements, but declined to produce any list of contributors, and was cited for contempt of Congress. Rankin called him \"the most contemptuous person\" to appear before the Committee and went on to label the Federation \"one of the most viciously subversive organizations of the Communist Party\".</p> <p>The Federation also led numerous anti-lynching, anti-poll tax and anti-discrimination campaigns. Its legal work through hired attorneys and public opinion campaigns encompassed the defense of Communist leaders like Harry Bridges and Earl Browder who were targeted for deportation and imprisonment, and victims of Jim Crow justice like Samuel Buckhannon, Recy Taylor, and Willie McGee whose case was first brought to national attention by Marshall. Its labor advocacy included protection of the Wagner Act against encroachments from various anti-New Deal legislative proposals, and the defense of government employees labeled as subversive by the Kerr Committee. A proposed \"Anti-Fascist Civil Rights Declaration for 1944\" called for a permanent Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), equality of training and treatment in the Armed Forces, legislation against anti-Semitism and the spread of race hatred, a ban on discrimination based on race, color, creed or national origin in employment and in housing, the abolition of Jim Crow practices in the District of Columbia, and passage of a federal anti-lynching bill. The Federation publicized its campaigns and other activities through numerous pamphlets and through \"Action Letters\" mailed to thousands of local leaders, unions, churches, civic and professional groups. It organized conferences, public meetings and banquets with outstanding speakers and civil liberties advocates. Its Academic Council led the defense of educators like Josephine Adams and Max Yergan, blacklisted for their political beliefs.</p> <p>In April 1946 in Detroit, at a national conference attended by over 300 delegates from church, labor, civil rights and community organizations, the Federation merged with the International Labor Defense to form the Civil Rights Congress; Marshall was elected chairman. The Congress continued the Federation's dual agenda of fighting discrimination, and organized the legal defense of victims of Jim Crow justice and advocates of radical causes. It also inherited the enmity of the Wood-Rankin Committee in Congress which labeled it a \"Communist front\". Marshall was especially active in the McGee case and in the campaign to save the Trenton Six. William Patterson, CRC National Secretary, called him \"one of the outstanding leaders in the fight against Jim Crow\". Marshall was also Secretary of the CRC Bail Fund, established in 1946 as a separate body with five trustees responsible for its operation. The Bail Fund posted $5,000 each for the Communist leaders indicted under the Smith Act, and $20,000 for the German Communist Gerhart Eisler that was forfeited when Eisler fled the U.S. in May 1949 as a stowaway on board a Polish ship.</p> <p>The case against Marshall for contempt of Congress, dating to his appearance before HUAC in 1946, was tried in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia in April 1948. His lawyers, Abraham Isserman and Osmond Fraenkel, argued that HUAC's request for NFCL lists of contributors violated their client's First and Fourth Amendments rights. The only evidence presented by the prosecution was Congressman Dies's 1942 speech. The Court sentenced him to three months in jail and a $500 fine. In his appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court, Marshall pleaded that Congress had acted unconstitutionally when it created HUAC, and argued that his conviction and sentence were motivated by his militant fight for civil rights, for prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and for the abolition of HUAC. The Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the sentence against him, ruling that although there was no evidence in NFCL literature of subversive activities, the organization may have been involved in the \"silent and secret diffusion of subversive propaganda\". The U.S. Supreme Court refused twice to review his case. He served his sentence at the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky from June to September 1950. He resigned as CRC chairman on the eve of his imprisonment; he had previously resigned from the Bail Fund in September 1949.</p> <p>Following his incarceration, Marshall appeared to have severed all contacts with his former leftwing associates and organizations. In 1955, he appeared under subpoena in front of a New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Charitable and Philanthropic Organizations investigating allegations that CRC had diverted monies raised on behalf of the Trenton Six for the legal defense of indicted Communist leaders. Marshall testified under oath that he had never been a member of the Communist Party, but declined knowledge of any wrongdoing in funds allocation. The Civil Rights Congress dissolved itself in 1956 at the height of the McCarthy anti-Communist witch hunts. Marshall remained active in wilderness preservation issues. He died in 2000.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The George Marshall collection is divided into six series, and documents Marshall's involvement in the 1940s with civil rights issues, his legal defense against a contempt citation from the House Un-American Activities Committee, and his management of the Robert Marshall Foundation's grant-making program. The decade of the 1940s, as documented in this collection, was not a period of high radicalism or revolutionary politics, but of the united front to win the war against fascism. With the advent of the Cold War in 1946, progressives like Marshall would fight a rearguard defensive battle to preserve the gains made during the New Deal and were confronted with new repressive legislation and a growing anti-communist hysteria that would send many of them to jail. The internal evidence in the collection suggests that Marshall may have purged his papers of valuable correspondence with representative personalities in the civil rights and cultural realms for fear they would be incriminated or blacklisted through their association with him.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The George Marshall papers are arranged in six series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1288589'>Personal</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1933-1955</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>0.4 linear feet</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Consists for the most part of correspondence about Marshall's contempt case and incarceration, and various drafts of articles, statements and speeches written by him. Included are a nine page letter written by Marshall in Bavaria, Germany, in 1933, chronicling the Nazis' rise to power, and a selection of letters and memoranda authored by Marshall between 1939 and 1950. Also included are notes and transcripts of Marshall's testimony in front of the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Charitable and Philanthropic Organizations in 1955.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1288611'>George Marshall Contempt of Congress Case</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1945-1950</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>1.6 linear feet</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series is a densely documented archive on the use of subpoena power and contempt citations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and on organized and legal opposition to the Committee prior to the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy as the leading opponent of communism in the United States. Organized in loose chronological order, it includes Marshall's testimony and statements, and compilations of NFCL publications presented at his first and second appearances before the Committee; and legal correspondence, clipping files and campaign materials compiled by Marshall and his defense team toward his April 1948 trial in the District Court in Washington, D.C., his unsuccessful appeal of the lower court verdict, and his subsequent incarceration. Marshall's defense followed a two-pronged approach: to argue, with the help of expert witnesses, the unconstitutionality of the Un-American Activities Committee, and to establish the non-subversive character of the Federation through an accumulation of its publications and documents. The defense also contrasted the Committee's zeal in prosecuting perceived Communist front organizations with its reluctance to document activities of the Ku Klux Klan and other right wing groups.</p> <p>Original NFCL materials submitted to HUAC in 1946 pertained to the extension of democratic rights, the elimination of discrimination, full employment legislation, voting rights, the rights of labor, support for the war effort, the fight against lynching, the danger of native fascism, and the elimination of the Committee itself. Other documents include a 146-page legal memorandum on the constitutional invalidity of the Wood-Rankin Committee; a 72-page digest of newspaper articles on the Committee's procedures and investigations, and of Congressman Rankin's more pronounced anti-Semitic and racist comments of that period; briefs, opinions, letters of support, speeches, evidence and exhibits, motions to dismiss, legal correspondence, campaign material and other court documents regarding Marshall's case and other HUAC contempt cases, including the Hollywood 10. There was a level of duplication inherent in the creation and the compilation of those files; their original order and titles have been preserved for the most part.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1288678'>National Federation for Constitution Liberties</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1939-1946</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>8.2 linear feet</div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1288907'>Civil Right Congress</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1946-1951</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>2.8 linear feet</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Comprises the following subseries: Administrative, Conferences, Case Files, Subject Files and Printed Matter. These are Marshall's files as Civil Rights Congress Chairman, active participant and key financial contributor, and also as Secretary of the CRC Bail Fund.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1288989'>Other Organizations</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1936-1946</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>1.2 linear feet</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Includes one box of material from the International Labor Defense Fund which merged with NFCL in 1947 to create the Civil Rights Congress. Included in the ILD files is a 199-page \"Memorandum on Violations of the Rights of Free Speech and Assembly and Undue Interference with the Right of Labor to Bargain Collectively\" submitted to the La Follette Committee of the U.S. Senate (1936), with sections on lynching, lawless police and vigilante activity against striking workers, farmers' unions and the unemployed. The Files of the American League for Peace and Democracy consists of minutes, reports, publications, some correspondence with Harry F. Ward, chairman of the League, and a 48-page transcript of a January 1939 meeting of the National Labor Committee which was affiliated with the League. The file of the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom, chaired by Franz Boas, reflected some of its activities against censorship, racial prejudice and communist witch-hunts (Rapp-Coudert investigation in NY State's public schools).</p> <p>The Citizens Emergency Conference for Interracial Unity initiated by Marian Anderson and Rabbi Stephen Wise in 1943, called for actions that would address the causes of the Harlem Riots of that year; its file includes minutes, conference reports, resolutions, some correspondence and newspaper articles. The file for the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners includes letters from Joe Gelders, data on violations of the rights of Alabama cotton pickers and Kentucky coal miners, documents related to Gelders' kidnapping and flogging in Birmingham, and a memorial tribute for Gelders written by Marshall. Other organizations represented in this series are the Contributors' Information Service founded by Corliss Lamont, the Council on African Affairs, the National Negro Congress, the National Council on American-Soviet Friendship and the Southern Negro Youth Congress.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/scm/21218#c1289015'>Robert Marshall Foundation</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1940-1950</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>1.6 linear feet</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>In keeping with its mission statement (\"The education of the people of the United States of America to the necessity and desirability of the development and organization of unions of persons engaged in work or of unemployed persons and the promotion and advancement of an economic system in the United States based upon the theory of production for use and not for profit\"), the Robert Marshall Foundation awarded grants to trade-unions and labor advocacy groups, progressive research groups and schools, alternative newspapers and civil rights organizations. The files consist for the most part of correspondence between George Marshall, director of the fund, and the funded groups, grant proposals and tracking sheets, activity reports, and general information about the organizations involved.</p> <p>Funded newspapers and publication projects include The Allied Labor News, Charlotta Bass's California Eagle, the weekly Chicago Star edited by William Sennett, Federated Press and Adam Clayton Powell's People Voice. The Foundation funded various projects of the National Farmers Union and Farm Research Inc., including educational and organizational work in the South and farm-labor cooperation. The file for the Southern Negro Youth Congress includes correspondence with Executive Secretary Louis Burnham and several grant proposals. The Southern School for Workers file holds correspondence with directors Louise Leonard McLaren and Brownie Lee Jones, reports, grant proposals and a 98-page transcription of a public hearing on the minimum wage organized by the School. Other correspondents include Marion Bachrach of the Council for Pan-American Democracy; Willard Uphaus of the National Religion and Labor Foundation; Terry Pettus, editor of the Seattle New World and the Washington New Dealer, Doxey Wilkerson of the People's Voice; and James Dombrowski of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>Arranged into six series: I. Personal papers; II. George Marshall Contempt of Congress Case; III. National Federation for Constitutional Liberties; IV. Civil Rights Congress; V. Other Organizations; and VI. Robert Marshall Foundation.</p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
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{"value"=>"<p>Gift of George Marshall and Nancy Marshall Schultz, 1994, 2000.</p>"}
- processinfo
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{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Andre Elizee, 2009</p>"}
- relatedmaterial
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{"value"=>"<p>The records of the International Labor Defense Fund and of the Civil Rights Congress are housed at the Schomburg Center. There is also a small collection of Trenton Six materials located at this site. George Marshall's papers related to his work with the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club are at the University of California at Berkeley. The papers of Robert Marshall and his Civil Liberties Trust Fund are housed at the American Jewish Archives and at Columbia University Libraries, with additional materials in Roger Baldwin's papers at Princeton University. The Robert Marshall Wilderness Fund records are at the Denver Public Library. For additional material on the Robert Marshall Foundation, consult the Gardner Jackson Papers at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, NY.</p>"}
- date_start
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1933
- keydate
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1933
- date_end
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1955
- date_inclusive_start
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1933
- date_inclusive_end
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1955
- prefercite
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{"value"=>"[Item], George Marshall papers, Sc MG 541, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library"}