Collection primarily relates to Pickens' work as NAACP Field Secretary and Director of Branches, and contains a great deal of correspondence with NAACP officials. Of interest is material chronicling Pickens' and the NAACP's involvement in the...
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Collection primarily relates to Pickens' work as NAACP Field Secretary and Director of Branches, and contains a great deal of correspondence with NAACP officials. Of interest is material chronicling Pickens' and the NAACP's involvement in the Scottsboro Case in Alabama. Correspondents relating to the NAACP include James Weldon Johnson, Walter Francis White, Mary White Ovington, Arthur B. Spingarn, Joel E. Spingarn, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Other correspondence is between Pickens and friends, acquaintances, fellow scholars, and business associates. There is correspondence with many organizations with which Pickens was involved, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, League for Industrial Democracy, Socialist Party of America, National Council of the Young Men's and Women's Christian Association, American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, and the Council for Pan American Democracy. Correspondents include Claude A. Barnett and Percival L. Prattis of the Associated Negro Press, and other individuals in government, education, and church affairs, among them John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church of New York. Writings are primarily composed of typescripts (manuscripts and editorials), speeches, and mimeographed Associated Negro Press columns and newspaper clippings of articles and editorials written by Pickens. Subjects dealt with in these different formats cover a wide range and serve to reveal Pickens' broad interests and intellectual scope.
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