Scope and arrangement
This collection includes correspondence, reports, speeches, minutes, notes, clippings, and other material documenting Collymore's activities at the vanguard of civil rights in Westchester County, New York. There are files for all of the major organizations with which Collymore was associated and held office, including the NAACP (White Plains Branch) and the nation-wide anti-lynching campaign; the Colored Republicans Committee with information on Black Republican activities and politics in Westchester County; the YMCA-White Plains; and American Unitarian Association (which he and his family integrated in 1927 when they joined the White Plains congregation). Correspondence and miscellaneous documents provide a glimpse into his personal and professional lives.
The Errold D. Collymore papers are arranged in six series:
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This series contains biographical material; documentation of Collymore's awards and honors; Howard University memorabilia; and various documents such as the family's World War II ration cards, Cynthia and Duncan Collymore's elementary school report cards, and financial documents relating to household expenses and the dental practice that provide a glimpse of the family's private life. Also documented in this series are several speeches. Collymore spoke to a range of audiences (including Howard University dental school students, Jewish Men's Club, and NAACP League of Women Voters) on a variety of topics, such as civil rights, blacks in medicine, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its potential impact on the civil rights struggle. In general, Collymore's speeches articulated his political sensibilities and vision for society.
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This series is arranged into six subseries: Personal; Professional; Family; Barbados; Silver Bay; and general files.
The personal correspondence is mostly from friends, although there are some from activist acquaintances, such as sociologist Kenneth B. Clark. These letters sometimes provide a view into the African-American situation in other cities and states. Also included here are letters relating to Collymore's home purchase and his 1947 retirement claims to the Isthmian Canal Commission as a former employee on the Panama Canal Zone.
Letters in the professional folder generally relate to Collymore's dental practice, professional memberships, and difficulties experienced as a black professional trying to serve poorer members of his community.
The family letters comprise correspondence to and from various family members, including Collymore's parents and siblings. Letters between Errold and Magdalene and those to and from the Collymore children are filed separately within the sub-series. Of particular note in the latter group of letters are a five page letter to Cynthia from her father in which he discusses their lineage (and, in the process, gives her a lesson on slavery and the West African past); letters from Duncan's tenure at Michigan State University, which include news of the campus NAACP's student chapter and its activities; and a letter to James's third grade teacher objecting to his playing Tar Baby in a school play.
Letters from friend St. Clair Harlow comprise the bulk of the Barbados files, which offer some view of life and attitudes there; the remaining letters are from family members, some requesting money.
The Silver Bay and general letters relate to the Collymores' vacations at Silver Bay, the YMCA Conference and Training Center founded in 1902, and household and business matters.
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This series documents the various strategies, organizational and personal, that Collymore employed in the civil rights struggle. It is arranged into seven subseries: Correspondence; NAACP; United Colored Republican Clubs; Urban League; White Plains Community Church; YMCA; and other organizations.
Apart from demonstrating the breadth of Collymore's social awareness, the range of his activism, and the high esteem in which he was held, evidenced through the number of invitations to give talks, or notes of appreciation for talks given, the community involvement and mentorship correspondence also provide a sense of Collymore's commitment to the advancement of upcoming generations. For Collymore the personal was political and his activism interjected into the personal lives of many within Westchester County's black community, tenaciously encouraging various individuals to greater educational and professional heights. Significant facets of this aspect of his activism represented in this sub-series are his efforts to integrate the White Plains police force and his mentorship of several students, including DuDonna Tate who studied at Bennett College.
The NAACP sub-series primarily covers Collymore's activities while President of the White Plains NAACP, which he founded. When he became Chairman of the United Colored Republican Clubs, Collymore resigned the NAACP position as he found "…it was too much to do that and also serve as Chairman of the political organization" (letter to Mrs. Grace Johnson, April 25, 1938; filed in "Personal Correspondence").
Reflecting both the organization's and Collymore's concern for the dignity and equality of blacks, this sub-series includes: a February 1937 letter regarding the use of the word "nigger" on a local radio station; instructions to newspapers not to mention color or race when describing persons suspected of criminal activity, or even generally, "unless the fact of color or race is essential to proper presentation"; and responses to complaints of discrimination at department stores, in the hiring practices of local hospitals, and in attempts to purchase homes in all-white neighborhoods.
Overall, the rich documentation of correspondence, records of anti-lynching activities, memoranda, and printed matter in this series offer insights into the local civil rights battles that helped win larger national wars.
Rallying behind candidates (blacks or whites perceived sympathetic to African-American concerns), voter education, and assisting qualified black workers with finding employment were key efforts documented in the United Colored Republican Clubs, which also includes materials from other Republican groups such as the Westchester Negro Republican County Committee and the Westchester County Negro Republican Women's League. This sub-series is generally useful for a mapping out of the African-American political landscape in the early twentieth century, as these organizations operated during a time of shifting political loyalties within the African-American community.
In addition to correspondence and meeting minutes, the Urban League folder contains research on housing for blacks in Westchester County; an article by Collymore, "White Plains Forty Years Later" which ruminates on the condition of blacks in that community since his arrival there in 1926; and some documents relating to Max Meyer, who founded the Urban League of White Plains in 1918.
The White Plains Community Church sub-series pertains mostly to his activity as an officer in that congregation; however, there is also correspondence with the American Unitarian Association, with which the WPCC was associated, particularly relating to an intergroup relations commission chaired by Alfred McClung Lee. Also documented is a discussion, some years after his death, about incorporating Collymore's experiences into the church's Sunday school curriculum.
Together, the correspondence, notes (such as a 1929 list of "some fatherless boys"), clippings, and a few reports on the conditions of local blacks contained in the YMCA sub-series, and the correspondence, reports, and printed matter in the other organizations sub-series further illuminate the plight of Westchester County's black community in the early decades of the twentieth century. Represented in the other organizations sub-series are the Welfare League for Colored People, Westchester Citizens' Committee on the Family Court, White Plains Committee for a Housing Authority, and the Mayor's Committee on Minority Housing, among others. Other views of African-American life are given by a few materials from out-of-state organizations such as the Baltimore Urban League and the Street Manual Training School in Alabama.
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1929 - 1997
This series contains both clippings of Collymore's activism and the activities of the organizations with which he was involved, as well as articles pertaining to civil rights matters nationally. There are a few articles that demonstrate Collymore's other interests. Most of the material is from the 1940s and 1950s, although there are a few clippings from the 1990s when Collymore was named among the most influential residents of Westchester County. Publications from which the clippings were culled include the New York Herald, The New York Times, Amsterdam News, and White Plains' journals the Reporter Dispatch, Daily Reporter, Journal News, and Evening Dispatch.
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This series consists mainly of some biographical and personal material, clippings documenting her social and community activities, correspondence, programs for dance performances and for plays in which she performed or assisted as a member of the Paul Robeson Players and the Amateur Fine Arts Dramatic Club, radio scripts, and theatrical documents such as scripts and stage diagrams.
The correspondence includes letters to her step-children and from her in-laws. There are also a few letters from servicemen friends of hers stationed in U.S. World War II training camps. Among these are letters from Vincent E. Saunders, a nephew of sociologist Charles S. Johnson, who was sent to Fort Monroe to train as a Master Gunner. In one letter he informs Lewis that he sold a few sketches drawn under the tutelage of Aaron Douglas; one of these was published as frontispiece for the volume Growing Up in the Blackbelt.
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This series contains, among other things, some correspondence; a brief sketch of Jenkins's father, George Armstrong Jenkins (the first African American to be appointed to public service in Westbury, Connecticut); a 1954 essay on the Negro Mutual Fund Market; a 1971 statement given by Jenkins against building on a vacant plot in the town of Greenburgh; and two manuscript drafts, "Bean Pole Bean" and "The Huckleberry", the latter self-described as a "sort of an autobiography of a country boy growing up". Jenkins's family lived in the northern Connecticut city of Bristol and the memoir documents his reminisces as well as gives a sense of the race relations of that time. It also records herbal remedies his mother used to cure ailments suffered by her family and neighbors.