| Part of a series on |
| Anarchism |
|---|
 |
The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, originating from the collection of radical ephemera built by Detroit Anarchist Jo Labadie, is recognized as one of the world's most complete collections of materials documenting the history of anarchism and other radical movements from the 19th century to the present. [2]
The Labadie Collection became a part of the Special Collections Library (then called the Rare Book Room) in 1964. It is named after individualist anarchist Joseph Labadie (1850–1933). With the help of his devoted wife, Sophie, Labadie collected and carefully preserved a vast amount of literature on social movements from the 1870s to his death in 1933, including his own writings and publications. Although offers for this unique and valuable collection came from several institutions, including the University of Wisconsin, "Jo," as he was known, insisted it should go to the University of Michigan. Not only did he want it to be geographically closer to him, but he also felt the conservative Michigan institution needed some ideological balance in its collections. In a 1912 letter to John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin, Labadie thanked him for trying to acquire his collection, and said, "I made up my mind it should go where it was most needed—old moss-back Michigan,—conservative, reactionary, and positively crass in some things… I know how well you Wisconsin folk would have done with it, but when you consider what a light it will be to the U of M, I know your discernment will approve my conduct in the matter."
The exact size of the original contribution is unknown, but the first shipment arrived in 1912 in about 20 boxes. [3] In addition to materials created on Labadie's printing press and his vast correspondence, there were books, pamphlets, by-laws, newspapers, newsletters, announcements, membership cards, photographs, broadsides, and badges reflecting his activities in various labor and protest movements. Although the Board of Regents graciously accepted the gift, the conservative library administration was at a loss as to what to do with this radical trove of literature. For years after the materials were deposited in the Library, absolutely nothing was done with them. Inquiring researchers would be given a key and sent into a locked cage area on their own, left with boxes of unaccessioned, unprocessed and uncataloged materials. Items undoubtedly disappeared.
This might have remained the fate of the materials had it not been for wealthy Detroit activist, Agnes Inglis, who began doing research in the Labadie Collection in the early 1920s. Inglis had already been involved in radical political activities, organizing lectures for Emma Goldman, other anarchists and the IWW, and rallying support for labor and civil liberties causes, and assisting and even putting up bail money for World War I draft law violators and political prisoners. Her family eventually reduced her allowance to a modest living stipend so that she would not squander her inheritance on radical causes, as she was likely to do.
Inglis was acquainted with Jo and Sophie Labadie, and knew of their donation to the Library. After her first encounter with the Labadie Collection her inherent organizing instincts took over, and she stayed to "sort out" the materials and bring some order to the chaos. [4] This decision changed her life, for she stayed at the Labadie Collection for over 20 years as the collection's unofficial curator. Inglis donated her time to the effort, working without a salary of any kind except for one brief period when she received a small stipend. [3]
Inglis died at age 81 on January 29, 1952. Despite the promise of Dr. Warner Rice, the new head Librarian, that the library would continue to add to the Labadie Collection, Inglis was not replaced for several years. The Collection was neglected, or worse, was ravaged by the unsupervised patrons who were given free access to its carefully cataloged contents. Due to this abuse, Inglis's precise filing and locating system has been lost forever (though her index cards, mostly handwritten with notes and analytics, are still in use today, filed in an old card catalog).
In 1960, Edward Weber, who had been working as a reference librarian in the Social Sciences section of the Library, was assigned full-time to the Labadie Collection. Weber brought his own anti-authoritarian attitude with him, in keeping with the spirit of the Collection and carrying on its tradition. Weber also brought his own social/political interests, which included the radical elements of sexual freedom, gay liberation, Freethought, and civil liberties. Because there was still no acquisitions budget, Weber relied on donations and sympathetic library workers, who “adjusted” the accounts somehow and funneled subversive literature into the Collection. Weber was an outspoken critic of censorship and ignorance, as well as a prolific letter writer, and the extensive correspondence he generated throughout his 40-year tenure kept the Collection growing.
In 1964, the head of the university library, Frederick H. Wagman, inspired by Ralph Ellsworth’s work at the University of Iowa, directed Weber to start collecting materials on the right as well as the left, so the library got onto the mailing lists of some White-supremacist and ultra conservative organizations. Weber began applying a broader interpretation to the Collection to reflect changing times and movements. His ingenuity and connections both within and outside the library helped bring in materials not many other institutions were collecting at that time: pamphlets and posters from the student, gay, civil rights, anti-war and Black, Chicano, and women's liberation movements, as well as underground newspapers, leaflets, political buttons, and other ephemera. It was not until the mid-1970s that the Labadie Collection was finally given a book budget. Weber was, for the first time in the history of the Collection, able to make legitimate purchases.
In 1994 Julie Herrada was hired as the first Assistant Curator, and first trained archivist in the Labadie Collection. When Weber retired in 2000, Herrada took over as curator.
The Collection currently contains over 50,000 books, 8,000 serials titles (including nearly 800 current periodical subscriptions) records and tape recordings of speeches, debates, songs, and oral histories, sheet music, buttons, posters, photographs, and comics. On the Labadie Collection's website one can view over 900 photographs, read descriptions of over 100 archival collections, peruse listings of some non-print materials, explore its online exhibitions, and browse a directory of nearly 9,000 subject files, containing brochures, leaflets, clippings, and other ephemera.
Since its creation in 1911 hundreds of people have made donations out of trunks, attics, garages, basements, and even prison cells. In addition to anarchism, in which the Collection is particularly strong, other topics include socialism, communism, primitivism, labor (especially late 19th and early 20th century), sexual freedom (including the gay liberation movement), animal liberation, feminism, ecology, youth and student protest, censorship, Black liberation movements, anti-war and pacifist movements, and the radical right. After his arrest, Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, officially designated the University of Michigan as the recipient of his writings, letters, and other papers for the Collection. [5] Kaczynski's writings, which the Labadie agreed to collect in 2000, are among the most popular archives in the University of Michigan's special collections. [6]
The university's online catalog includes the Labadie holdings. Some of the Labadie's collections have been digitized for online access. [7]
Coordinates: 42°16′34.8319″N83°44′25.4112″W / 42.276342194°N 83.740392000°W
Robert Charles Black Jr. is an American anarchist and author. He is the author of the books The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and Defacing the Currency, and numerous political essays.
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist ecophilosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocates drawing upon the ways of life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication, language, symbolic thought and the concept of time.
Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. The word has origins which date back to Ancient Greece, but its current definition was only established in the 20th century; it was then that the most common definition of the word was affixed: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". The exact categorization of ephemera still remains ambiguous, and various interpretations of it have been offered. Menus, newspapers, postcards, posters, plastic champagne glasses, portable classrooms and stickers have all been described as ephemera.
Ross Winn was an American anarchist writer and publisher from Texas who was mostly active within the Southern United States.
Neo-Luddism or new Luddism is a philosophy opposing many forms of modern technology. The term Luddite is generally used as a pejorative applied to people showing technophobic leanings. The name is based on the historical legacy of the English Luddites, who were active between 1811 and 1816.
Charles Joseph Antoine Labadie was an American labor organizer, anarchist, Greenbacker, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet.
The Clockmakers’ Museum in London, England, is believed to be the oldest collection specifically of clocks and watches in the world. The collection belongs to and is administered by the Clockmakers’ Charity, affiliated to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, founded in 1631 by Royal Charter. Since 2015 it has been housed in a gallery provided by the Science Museum in South Kensington, having formerly been located in the Guildhall complex in the City of London since 1874, where it first opened to the public. Admission is free.
The University of Michigan Library is the academic library system of the University of Michigan and the second largest research library in the world by volumes held.
Agnes Inglis (1870–1952) was a Detroit, Michigan-born anarchist who became the primary architect of the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan.
Laurance Labadie was an American individualist anarchist and author.
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in Bobst Library at NYU, documents American labor history. Together the two units form an important center for scholarly research on labor and the left.
Michigan State University Libraries is the academic library system of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. The library system comprises nine branch locations including the Main Library. As of 2015-16, the MSU Libraries ranked 26th among U.S. and Canadian research libraries by number of volumes and 11th among U.S. and Canadian research libraries by number of titles held.
The Progressive Librarians Guild(PLG) was founded in New York City in January 1990 by librarians concerned with the library profession's "rapid drift into dubious alliances with business and the information industry, and into complacent acceptance of service to an unquestioned political, economic and cultural status quo," according to the organization's statement of purpose. The initial three organizers were Elaine Harger, Mark Rosenzweig and Elliot Shore. The PLG addresses issues especially relating to librarianship and human rights.
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, is an American domestic terrorist and former mathematics professor. He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive life. Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment. He issued a social critique rejecting leftism, opposing industrialization and advocating a nature-centered form of anarchism.
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia, sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.
The William L. Clements Library is a rare book and manuscript repository located on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Specializing in Americana and particularly North American history prior to the twentieth century, the holdings of the Clements Library are grouped into four categories: Books, Manuscripts, Graphics and Maps. The library's collection of primary source materials is expansive and particularly rich in the areas of social history, the American Revolution, and the colonization of North America. The Book collection includes 80,000 rare books, pamphlets, broadsides, and periodicals. Within the other divisions, the library holds 600 atlases, approximately 30,000 maps, 99,400 prints and photographs, 134 culinary periodicals, 20,000 pieces of ephemera, 2,600 manuscript collections, 150 pieces of artwork, 100 pieces of realia, and 15,000 pieces of sheet music.
Rosalyn Fraad "Ros" Baxandall was an American historian of women's activism and an active New York City feminist.
Industrial Society and Its Future, generally referred to as the Unabomber Manifesto, is a 35,000-word essay by Ted Kaczynski, published in 1995. The essay contends that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought upon by technology, whilst forcing humans to adapt to machinery, creating a sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential. The manifesto formed the ideological foundation of Kaczynski's 1978–1995 mail bomb campaign, designed to protect wilderness by hastening the collapse of industrial society.
Anarchist archives preserve records from the international anarchist movement in personal and institutional collections around the world. This primary source documentation is made available for researchers to learn directly from movement anarchists, both their ideas and lives.
Unabomber: In His Own Words is a 2020 crime documentary four-part miniseries about Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, that looks at his 17 years of terror from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 23.
