Berkeley in the Seventies

The Sexual Freedom League (SFL) was founded in New York City in 1963 in order to promote the political ideals of sexual freedom. It became associated with the Bay Area when Jefferson Poland, one of its founders, moved here and concentrated his organizing efforts at the University of California, Berkeley. Poland founded the Psychedelic Venus Church, an offshoot of the League, circa 1970. As a catalog entry from the Sexual Freedom League Collection at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University points out, these records are of interest to scholars researching sexual attitudes (and sexual politics) in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s.

These flyers from the Psychedelic Venus Church are invitations to events the group held in Berkeley. (Sexual Freedom League Records, BANC MSS 83/181)

--- M. Bryer

Miss Rural Electrification

Jan Brown, a student at Angelo State College in Texas, was named "Miss Rural Electrification of 1966" at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's (NRECA) annual meeting in Las Vegas. Brown represented the Central Texas Electrical Co-Op at Fredericksburg. The cover story noted that she "proved that beauty and brains go admirably together." If we view pageants not merely as trivial or exploitative, but as civic rituals that produce political subjects, then we can see Brown as the feminine embodiment of the values of the co-op she represented.

According to its website, NRECA was organized in 1942 to overcome shortages of electric construction materials during WWII, get insurance for newly constructed rural electrical cooperatives and "mitigate wholesale power problems." "Rural Electrification: Non-Partisan, Non-Profit, One-Cent Electricity for Rural America," was the Association's monthly publication. Today, NRECA represents "the national interests of cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve." They still publish "Rural Electric Magazine" on a monthly basis.

We found this issue in the Grace McDonald papers (BANC MSS 85/139). McDonald, a consumer advocate, helped form the California Farm Research and Legislative Committee and was Executive Secretary of the California Farmer Consumer Information Committee. In addition to lobbying on behalf of farm laborers, McDonald also worked on occupational health and safety issues. Her 1951 novel, "Swing Shift," written under the pseudonym Margaret Graham, told the story of organized and unorganized railroad men, miners and tobacco workers.

--- M. Bryer

African American Ephemera

James de Tarr Abajian (1914-1986) was librarian of the California Historical Society from 1950-1968. He also served as curator of the Kemble Collections on Western Printing (until 1977) and as archivist for the San Francisco Archdiocese of the Catholic Church (until he retired in 1983). Abajian compiled many significant bibliographic resources on African Americans in the United States. These included Blacks in Selected Newspapers, Censuses and Other Sources: An Index to Names and Subjects and Blacks and Their Contributions to the American West.

Abajian also collected ephemera that documented the lives of African Americans. The following images were culled from his collection of Black ephemera (BANC MSS 82/77). These flyers and pamphlets offer a window into a wide variety of social, political, economic and religous activities in African American communities throughout California, circa 1968-1969.

--- M. Bryer

A message of peace for the holidays

Several months ago I was surveying the Paul Seabury papers, Banc MSS 91/115, currently an unprocessed collection. I came across something unique among the papers in the collection and extraordinary in itself. Although I am still not quite sure it was authored by Seabury, a few clues do point in that direction.

"And the Shrimps Eat Mud" is a sort of primitive graphic novel, like a picture book for adults, mostly revolving around themes of power inequity and war. It tells the story of a mythical Charles Darwin, fretting over the ways that powerful men oppress their less powerful fellows, and how the oppressed are often forced into war.

It is dozens of pages long, and I found the cartoon drawings very touching, especially in the way the faces of downtrodden or underdog characters are portrayed on many pages.





































































In the story, eventually the downtrodden peasants revolt and refuse to engage in the rich men's war, and Darwin is no longer plagued by sleepless nights.




















The estimated dates for "And the Shrimps Eat Mud" are not consistent with the bulk of the collection-- the paper it's drawn on, the style of drawing, and the outfits of the military figures all suggest the cartoon was created after the first World War but before the second. Yet Seabury was born in 1923, too late to experience the effects of World War I firsthand, and he as far as I can tell he did not come to teach at Cal until the 1950s (I think)-- and the bulk of his papers date from the 1950s-1980s.

However, Seabury's calisphere entry notes that while he was often labeled a reactionary, he was also a harsh critic of the powerful whether in politics or religion, which is the central point of "And the Shrimps Eat Mud." He is also characterized as whimsical, which the cartoon definitely is.

Whomever the author, this piece has captivated my attention. It is one of those rare gems in the archives with the immediacy to connect us to the humanity beyond the stacks. Items like this one make every day of the survey worth its weight in gold.

Happy Holidays everyone!
- D. Miller, 12/21/2009

Motto: Be Merry

Surveying account books and ledgers is never very exciting. However today when I was surveying the Mokelumne Hill Canal and Mining Company account books I was surprised to come across some drawings!




I can only guess that these were done by a child of someone who worked at the mining company or who kept these books before they were acquired by the Bancroft.

Later on in the volume there are some rules and a list of officers for a club.




The rules read:
Come to every meeting you can.
Don't be silly.
Obey orders.
Keep the Promise.

Promise?

Motto: Be Merry

Now depending on what the promise is (they were smart enough not to write it down) this sounds like a fun club to be a part of!


Banc mss C-G 280, Mokelumne Hill Canal and Mining Company account books, 1854-1907

-A. Croft

History, now playing on an ipod near you

While surveying part of the Charles Collins Teague Papers today, I opened a box marked St. Francis Dam Disaster. I had never heard of the disaster in an historical or scholarly context before, but I did know the story through a pop culture reference- a 2001 song of the same name by Frank Black and the Catholics (penned by Frank Black of Pixies fame).

Southern California Edison Company construction camp near Los Angeles- Ventura County lines, where 145 men lost their lives.

The St. Francis Dam Disaster occurred a few minutes before midnight on March 12, 1928, when a concrete dam located 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles broke violently apart and the resulting tidal waves of water rushing to the ocean ruined towns and took hundreds of lives. Charles Teague was deeply involved with the development of agriculture in Southern California, and served as president for various companies and associations connected with the citrus industry. At the time of the St. Francis Dam Failure, Teague was Chief of the Santa Clara Water Conservation District, where the disaster took place.

View looking North on South 4^th St. Santa Paula, California

According to Wikipedia, the St. Francis Dam flood killed 600 people and ranks among the worst civil engineering disasters in American history, effectively ending the career of its chief engineer, William Mulholland.

This document from the Teague papers estimates the death toll at 385 (penciled in at bottom) rather than 600.

Above are some images and a document from Teague's files on the St. Francis Dam failure, while the lyrics of the Frank Black song follow below. A google map search for the town of Piru enables one to see all of the towns mentioned in Black's lyrics; the "water master man" Black refers to is clearly Mulholland; "powerhouse #2" may refer to the Edison camp pictured in the top photo.

St. Francis Dam Disaster

Frank Black and the Catholics

There was a well known water master man

He was the king

He could do anything

The Saint Francis Dam disaster man

Thought she was all right

Until around midnight

Because that water seeks her own

She had a desire to flow

She was looking for somewhere to go

She was a slave to the great metropolis

She was feeling choked

She pushed the wall till it broke

When they heard

The great apocalypse

At power house number two

Well there was nothing they could do

Because that water seeks her own

Five and one half hours she would flow

She had fifty-three miles to go

A cascade down to Santa Clara way

Near sixty feet high

Now she's a mile wide

It was clear she was going far away

And whole towns were too

A few got lucky in Piru

Because that water seeks her own

But four more hours she would flow

She had twenty-nine miles to go

She carried in her every kind of thing

House, trees, and telegraph pole

Some say a thousand souls

At three A.M. she gave Santa Paula a ring

She was still twenty-five feet high

Under a peaceful sky

Because that water seeks her own

But two more hours she would flow

She had nineteen miles more to go

It was a real bad night in little Saticoy

El Rio then Montalvo

How many no one really knows

Ventura Beach was very scary boy

Humanity a pile

She went her final mile

Because that water seeks her own

Into the sea the water flowed

And now for forever she would go

In an interview for Blogcritics, Black quipped that he had the song for a number of years before putting lyrics to it at the urging of his bandmates, "It was a grey and windy day... lyrics are, you know, about stuff. " Black may in fact have had a grudge against Mulholland. He also penned a song in 1994 called Olé Mulholland. I may find myself perusing my Frank Black CD collection tonight when I get home to look for more historical commentary.

Charles Collins Teague papers, BANC MSS C-B 760, Box 4.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam and http://www.frankblack.net/tabs/
and http://blogcritics.org/music/article/the-blogcritics-frank-black-interview-is/

---D. Miller

Label Humor

Some creative container labeling has happened at The Bancroft, as these three labels from the 1960s and 1970s clearly show. But before we go further, let me dispel any worries about labeling standards at Bancroft by saying that all the containers had appropriate labels as well. Whew!

The first two labels come from the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown papers (BANC MSS 68/90 c), a 1,029 carton behemoth of a collection of the papers of Pat Brown who served as Governor of California from 1959 to 1967. Despite the interesting material and the importance of the collection, while we were surveying the collection I sometimes felt we would never see the end and I imagine the archivist tasked with creating all the carton labels felt the same way, possibly typing these two labels to alleviate the monotony.
The first label is funny on its own, but makes more sense when you realize that there are nearly 100 cartons of Senate and Assembly bills in the Brown collection. After 80 or 90 cartons of legislative bills, wouldn't you want them to rest in peace too?

I can't remember exactly where the second label was found so it will just have to speak for itself.

And now the best for last. This third label was found stuck on a carton in the Papers on European and American printers (BANC MSS 74/150 c). I'm not sure if the person typing the label was commenting on their feelings about the subject matter of the collection or possibly aspects of the archival profession, but I'm sure all archivists can relate.


--E. Van Lith