Research Guides: HIST 064A: Cities and Social Movements: Primary Sources at Swarthmore

Access Swarthmore College Special Collections

Swarthmore College Special Collections is a department within the library where manuscripts, archives, rare books, historic photographs and images, and other special materials are held. There are four units within the department, each with a distinct mission to collect items within their subject area:

College Archives (SCA): visit the SCA website or contact archives@swarthmore.edu
Friends Historical Library (FHL): visit the FHL website or contact friends@swarthmore.edu
Peace Collection (SCPC): vist the SCPC website or contact peacecollection@swarthmore.edu
Rare Book Room (RBR): visit the RBR website or contact librarian@swarthmore.edu

Students are welcome and invited to use Special Collections. Our materials are only available in our Reading Room, and an appointment is required, but Swarthmore students can easily book a Special Collections appointment online. The Special Collections Reading Room is located in McCabe Library, to your left as soon as you enter the building (room #130).

If you have any questions, please reach out to Celia Caust-Ellenbogen (she/her) at ccauste1@swarthmore.edu

Select Suggested Sources in the Friends Historical Library

Friendly Presence Working Group
Friendly Presence was a Quaker group trained in nonviolent response to conflict situations in Philadelphia. It was organized at the time of the Black Panther Party convention in Philadelphia in 1970. It also monitored police relations with MOVE, the communal organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that emphasizes Black power and the rights of African Americans while advocating for a back-to-nature lifestyle. Following the police blockade of MOVE in the spring of 1978, the group held a vigil outside of the blockade.
Quaker Emergency Service - Civilian Readjustment Center
After the end of World War II, the Quaker Emergency Service established a Civilian Readjustment Committee/Center. It operated a psychiatric Rehabilitation Center that focused on men arrested for homosexual solicitation or "immoral acts" and were referred by the Magistrates Court (as well as 4Fs and destitute veterans referred by the Selective Service and juvenile delinquents referred by Children's Court). The program for gay men was ostensibly aimed at trying to change them or at least reform their behaviors, and specifically to keeping the men out of prison.
Friends Neighborhood Guild
Friends Neighborhood Guild was a settlement house and urban mission organized in 1879 in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. Its initial aims were to provide religious and moral uplift, “a refining influence” for poor European immigrants living along the North Philadelphia waterfront. Early activities included worship services, youth meetings, a sewing school, and temperance meetings.
Fair Housing Council of Suburban Philadelphia and Suburban Fair Housing Records
Friends Suburban Housing, Inc., was a non-discriminatory real estate brokerage firm in the Philadelphia suburbs. It was founded in 1956 by a group of concerned individuals, mostly Quakers, who worked towards racial intergration in housing. In 1963, its name was changed to Suburban Fair Housing to reflect a broadened base of support. In 1968, the group broke legal ground with a successful lawsuit against the Main Line Board of Realtors.
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting: Committee on Economic Problems
The Committee on Economic Problems was a Philadelphia Quaker group established in 1937 with Clair Wilcox, a Quaker professor of Economics at Swarthmore College, as its first Chair. The Committee was interested in a variety of related issues, including industrial relations and labor unions, unemployment, and economic and social research.
Early 20th Century Prison Reform
Anna Wharton Morris (1868-1957) was the youngest daughter of industrialist and philanthropist Joseph Wharton. She became deeply interested in prison reform. This concern probably stemmed from her horror over newspaper reports of cruelty to the young inmates at Glen Mills. In 1914, she met Thomas Mott Osborne, the famous prison reform advocate; the two formed a close friendship which lasted until his sudden death in 1926. Anna's reports of conditions in prisons throughout the country and, particularly, in the Philadelphia region, are preserved in her journals. A highlight of the collection is a series of fourteen cartoons drawn by Eastern State Penitentiary inmate Frederick Funk while incarcerated in the 1920s.

Select Suggested Sources in the Peace Collection

Jane Addams (Hull House)
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a Nobel prize-winning peace activist.
Movement for a New Society
Movement for a New Society began in 1971 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a national network of activists committed to building a nonviolent revolution. Movement for a New Society grew to be a community, based in several areas around the United States. While Movement for a New Society was always an activist organization, it was also a co-housing and/or communal society
Peacemaker Movement Collected Records
The Peacemaker Movement, often simply called "Peacemakers," emerged from a call for a conference in Chicago following Mahatma Gandhi's death. The founders of Peacemakers were pacifists seeking to rally others to the ideals of nonviolence, based on a spiritual philosophy of life as an effective social technique. Local organizations were called "cells" and were considered the basis of the movement. In later years, its aim was to resist conscription and refuse war tax payment to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service
World Constitution and Parliament Association
Organized in 1947 as the People's Convention for a Federal World Constitution; established to demonstrate the need for a world federal government.
Posters from the New York Urban Coalition, 1960-1979
Including: "Why Not Give a Damn About Your Fellow Man? LIFE. The Negro and the Cities," 1968-1969; "We should honor him not with useless mourning and vain regrets...It's me again. I've learnt a really great thing...signed: (a student) (US)", 1969 [Image might be King?]; "Black is beautiful. Crucifixion on to a Redemption and a Resurrection of the Spirit. (US), 1969 [Features Coretta Scott King]"

Select Suggested Sources in the College Archives

Reference Files on projects in Chester
Urban Problems photographs
Subcategorized by date; includes Chester March, Wade House
Swarthmore History Online - additional resources
If you're interested in Swarthmore College history, resources like the digitized "Phoenix" newspaper archives contain a information about just about any topic you can think of.