Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Executive secretary to Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy, 1930-1933, chairwoman of the Mayor's Unemployment Committee, later director of the Detroit Housing Commission, candidate for Detroit public office, and director of women personnel at the Willow Run Bomber Plant during World War II. Correspondence and diaries concerning the Murphy mayoralty, Clarence Darrow and the Ossian Sweet Murder Trial of 1925, and local Detroit politics; and photographs.

The Josephine Gomon papers have been divided into the following series: Correspondence; Clippings/Scrapbooks; Notebooks of news items; Diaries; Biographical/Personal; Materials concerning Frank Murphy; Materials related to Gomon's projected biography of Frank Murphy; Ford Motor Company materials; Photographs.

Student at the University of Michigan, Class of 1921. Student scrapbook containing memorabilia, programs, photographs, greeting cards, and other items.

Scrapbook containing memorabilia, programs of activities, scattered photographs of student groups, greeting cards, and other items accumulated while a student.

Teacher, wife of Upper Peninsula, Michigan logging superintendent. Transcription of diary detailing her life as wife of a logging superintendent on the Paint River in Iron County, Michigan.

Transcription of diary detailing her life as wife of a logging superintendent on the Paint River in Iron County, Michigan; contain accounts of the hazards and dangers (natural and human) of living and working in the Upper Peninsula.

Joseph Kumao Sano was a Japanese American veteran and lawyer whose family was forcibly removed to illegal detention centers during World War II. While incarcerated, Sano was recruited by the Army to serve as a Japanese language instructor for the Army Intensive Japanese Language School. Sano's military work extended beyond language instruction; he participated in the Strategic Bombing Survey in 1945 and served as a bilingual arbiter for the International War Tribunal for the Far East from 1946 until 1948. His papers consist of materials related to Japanese American incarceration; pedagogical notes for the Army Intensive Japanese Language School; and Sano's arbitration work. It also includes Sano's personal files, scrapbooks, and concentration camp ID cards.

The Joseph Kumao Sano papers are divided into three series: Personal Papers; War-time Imprisonment and Military Service; and Scrapbooks and Artifacts. His personal papers primarily consist of biographical material; identification and permits; and documentation from Sano's work with the California Bank. It also includes correspondence between Sano and his family.

Materials in the War-time Imprisonment and Military Service series document the forced removal of the Sano family from California to the Santa Anita detention center and the Jerome concentration camp; and Sano's work for the Army Intensive Japanese Language School, the Strategic Bomb Survey, and his service during the International War Tribunal for the Far East. It also includes his work post-war with the Bank of Japan.

The Scrapbooks and Artifacts series contains scrapbooks and albums documenting Sano's life until the forced removal of Japanese Americans in 1941, his work for the International War Tribunal for the Far East, certificates, Bank of Japan photographs, and personal photos of the Sano family. Also included are a number of objects collected by Sano during the war in the United States, and from Post-war Japan.

Researchers should note that this collection documents the forced imprisonment of Japanese Americans at the Santa Anita detention center and the Jerome concentration camp. For more information regarding language and the arrangement of this collection, please see the processing note.

Detroit (Mich.) businessman and chairman of New Detroit Committee, organization established after the 1967 Detroit Riot to investigate and remedy the causes of that civil disturbance. Correspondence, reports, speeches, articles, photographs, and printed material relating to the riot and to his work with New Detroit.

The papers of Joseph L. Hudson, Jr., date from 1967 to 1983 and measure 6 inches. The collection consists entirely of material relating to the New Detroit Committee, which Hudson chaired during its first year of existence.

The collection includes correspondence relating primarily to the composition of the Committee; membership lists; notes made by Hudson; speeches and articles by Hudson and by Kent Mathewson, who was chief executive officer of New Detroit; press releases and periodic progress reports of New Detroit; photographs; and newspaper clippings about the, riot and about New Detroit. Most of the material dates from the period 1967 to 1969, but a few progress reports from the 1970s and 1980s and a 1983 General Fact Book regarding New Detroit are also included.

The papers reflect the difficulties faced by Hudson and the Committee in trying to create an organization that included representatives of the white "establishment" and grass roots black organizations. It was necessary for the Committee to be responsive to the needs of various sectors of the community ranging from prominent white businessmen to militant blacks. A folder entitled "Important Considerations" contains a frank assessment--apparently by Hudson--of the credibility problems the Committee would face within the black community and outlining steps to be taken to mitigate such problems. The collection is also useful in documenting attitudes and divisions within the black community over the direction that should be taken in rebuilding Detroit. Included is correspondence of the Federation for Self-Determination, a militant black organization that rejected a grant from New Detroit and severed its relations with the committee early in 1968 because it found unacceptable the stipulation that a New Detroit Committee member oversee the project. Also included is correspondence of the more moderate Detroit Council of Organizations, which accused the New Detroit Committee of catering to militant blacks and ignoring the desires of moderate blacks.

Several photographs of the July 27, 1967 meeting of community leaders are contained in the collection.

Joseph L. Sax was a Professor of law at the University of Michigan from 1966-1989. Collection includes material relating to the passage of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act of 1970, materials from his career as a legal consultant on environmental issues, course syllabi, lectures, research materials, and manuscripts of published materials.

The Joseph L. Sax papers comprise a comprehensive collection of legislative history and documentation on the enactment of the "Thomas J. Anderson, Gordon Rockwell Environmental Protection Act of 1970" (MEPA). MEPA was originally drafted by Professor Joseph L. Sax of the University of Michigan Law School and was one of the first projects undertaken by the Law School's Environmental Law Society.

The papers collected herein should be useful to several groups. Students of the environmental movement have herein a rich source of information on the early activities of the movement in Michigan and the philosophies behind various-approaches to environmental control. Lawyers interested in the legislative history of the MEPA will find an extensive collection of documents tracing the bill's movement through a number of committees of the Michigan House and Senate. Arguments about many of the issues that continue to be raised in MEPA litigation are presented in full detail in materials in these files. Students of government and political science may discover documentation of value in studies of interest group politics and the legislative process. Other uses, not imagined by those who assembled this collection, no doubt will be made.

The project was motivated in part by requests made of Professor Sax and others by lawyers, historians, and legislators in the United States and abroad about the background of the Michigan Act. Professor Sax feared that the documents that he had collected, many of which are unique and irreplaceable, might begin to be scattered and/or deteriorate. Later, it was decided to supplement Sax's papers by assembling all available documentation in the state on the Michigan Environmental Protection Act. Materials in this collection trace the history of the Act from the first correspondence between the West Michigan Environmental Action Council and Professor Sax requesting that he draft a model environmental law, through the passage of the law by the Michigan Legislature and its signing by Governor Milliken on July 27th, 1970. The collection also contains post-enactment materials, including attempts to amend the bill, through April 1976. Plans are underway to add to the collection all relevant legislative and judicial documents relating to the law, its interpretation and amendment.

Highlights of the collection include the following: the original correspondence between Professor Sax and Mrs. Joan Wolfe relating to the idea for the drafting of a model environmental law in Michigan; correspondence on MEPA from the files of Representative Thomas Anderson in which he indicates his early hopes for and concerns over the Act and his strategy for shepherding the bill through the Michigan Legislature; various versions and drafts of the bill; analyses of the bill by the Governor's office and state agencies; and testimony delivered at public hearings on the bill. Also in the collection is a tape of the Senate Debate on the bill. (A complete listing of materials in the collection is found at the end of this document.)

Several sources contributed to this collection. The great majority of the material comes from the papers of Professor Joseph L. Sax on the passage of the Act and attempts to amend it. In addition, papers of Mrs. Joan Wolfe (who also has another collection in the Bentley Historical Library) were solicited and added. These include communications of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council at various points in the legislative consideration of the Act. Attorney General Frank Kelley indicated in a reply to a request for MEPA materials that most of the relevant documentation of the Department of the Attorney General on the Act had already been forwarded (courtesy copies) to Professor Sax. Requests were also made of the Executive office of the Governor, the Secretary of the Michigan Senate, and the West Michigan Environmental Action Council; any contributions from them will be added to the files when received.

An important supplemental source of information on the Act was found in Representative Thomas J. Anderson's papers on the MEPA in the State Archives of the Michigan History Division, Michigan Department of State: Personal papers, Thomas J. Anderson, [74-22, Accession boxes 403, 404, 405(B)]. Other materials from the State Archives were reviewed to insure that the MEPA Collection would be complete for legislative history and research on the State's environmental movement. Of relevance were House of Representatives, Standing Committees' Public Hearings, 1969-1973, [RG79-37, Lot 43, Box 1.) and House Committee, 1969-70, Conservation and Recreation [72-34, Lot 21, Box 4 and Box 51.

The State Archives material was not duplicated in total for this collection. Rather, those materials which record a significant event in the movement of the bill through the Michigan Legislature or highlight an important position on the bill by an interest group or governmental entity were reproduced for inclusion here.[7]Representative Anderson, who was the prime legislative mover in the passage of MEPA, received over 8000 letters or petitions about H.B. 3055. Many of these are included in his papers and are not found herein. Our efforts aimed to add to the Bentley Collection documentation from the Archives that would be of major interest to legal and history scholars.

[Archive material is noted in the files by a penciled asterisk (*) on the upper right hand corner of the document.]

Archive materials relating to MEPA after its passage were not searched for this study; there are several folders of post enactment materials and other relevant files in the Archives (e.g. 74-22 B405 FL "Newsclippings relating to H.B. 305511).

In 1982, the library received additional materials regarding the Michigan Environmental Protection Act. This new material collected by Professor Joseph Sax largely concerns similar kinds of legislation enacted in other states. Included are correspondence and legislative materials

In 1986, the library received an additional 13 feet of material, mainly case files detailing litigation arising out of the Act. The most important of these cases was perhaps the so-called Pigeon River case (West Michigan, Environmental Action Council v. Natural Resources Commission).

In 2014, the library received an additional 16 feet of material. This addition is organized into four series: Case Files, Teaching Materials, Travels and Lectures, and Publications and Research. Each series is further arranged in chronological order by year. Additional material related to this accession has been added to the Correspondence and Related Materials series, which includes correspondence from 1986-1998, a diary from a 1979 visit to Japan, and a copy of the finding aid from the American Heritage Center's Joseph L. Sax papers.

University of Michigan professor of political science, specialist in Philippine Island politics and government, vice governor of the Philippines in the 1930s; correspondence, collected Philippine materials, course materials.

As vice governor of the Philippine Islands during the 1930s, and later as advisor on Philippine affairs to General Douglas MacArthur during World War II, Joseph R. Hayden was recipient of much substantive documentation relating to the American phase of Philippine Island history. Hayden was an astute and discerning scholar of Philippine life and history, and as such used the opportunity of his frequent trips to the Far East to collect materials (official and personal) that he knew would be of value in his teaching and research, and that he also hoped would prove useful to scholars following after him. Although the Hayden papers include some non-Philippine materials, such as his University of Michigan files and those records from his service with the Michigan Naval Division during World War I, the Philippine Collection is the heart of the collection. Comprising more than 75% of the Hayden papers, the Philippine Collection is testimony to Hayden's foresight in drawing together official documents (because of the positions he held) and other records (sent to him because of his known interest in the Philippines). This collection of official reports, minutes of meetings attended, memoranda with government officials, photographs, clippings, and published materials is unique, especially because of the devastation to Philippine public records and historical documents that occurred during the war.

As vice governor of the Philippine Islands during the 1930s, and later as advisor on Philippine affairs to General Douglas MacArthur during World War II, Joseph R. Hayden was recipient of much substantive documentation relating to the American phase of Philippine Island history. Hayden was an astute and discerning scholar of Philippine life and history, and as such used the opportunity of his frequent trips to the Far East to collect materials (official and personal) that he knew would be of value in his teaching and research, and that he also hoped would prove useful to scholars following after him. The Philippine Collection is the heart of the collection comprising more than 75% of the Hayden papers. These files are testimony to Hayden's foresight in drawing together official documents (because of the positions he held) and other records (sent to him because of his known interest in the Philippines). These collected materials include official reports, minutes of meetings attended, memoranda with government officials, photographs, clippings, and published materials.

Over the years, researchers, unable to examine the originals, have requested microfilm copies of portions of the Hayden papers. This finding aid lists those files that have been microfilmed and which are available for inter-library loan. The bulk of these files date from the 1920s and relate in great part to the Philippine politics and to the affairs of the provinces. Many of the files relate to the Moros and to Mindanao and Sulu. The finding aid to the original collection is also available through the library's homepage.