Scope and Content Note
The papers of Moorfield Storey (1845-1929) span the years 1876-1929 and include letters received and a few copies of letters sent, scrapbooks, articles, lecture notes, petitions, press releases, newspaper clippings, photographs, and miscellaneous papers. Only a small part of Storey's career is represented in the collection. Documented in the papers are his interest in the Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed United States ownership of the Philippine Islands, and his support of minority groups, shown in his service as president of the NAACP from 1910 to 1929 and his leadership of the opposition to excluding African-Americans from freshman dormitories at Harvard College in 1922-1923. The papers are organized into the following series: General Correspondence, Subject File, Writings, and Miscellany.
The Subject File includes typed excerpts from the diary of Fiske Warren, paper manufacturer and associate of Storey's in the Anti-Imperialist League, relating principally to United States foreign policy toward the Philippines between 1903 and 1907. The file relating to Edward Brown concerns efforts by the Harvard Medical College to deny Brown residence in university housing.
Of particular interest among the Writings series is Ralph Waldo Emerson's journal, "Wo--Liberty." The journal, once presumed lost, contains excerpts from two of Emerson's speeches and partial drafts of other speeches, essays, poems, and quotations on the history of liberty and higher law. The journal was used by Storey while preparing lectures for the commemoration in 1903 of the centenary of Emerson's birth. A fuller explanation of the journal, its contents, and its use by Storey is contained in "Emerson and Moorfield Storey: A Lost Journal Found," by John C. Broderick, American Literature, v. 38 (May 1966).
Over half of the collection consists of printed speeches and articles by Storey and pamphlets, journals, and congressional documents and reports collected by Storey for his book coauthored with Marcial P. Lichauco, The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States, 1898-1925.
Storey's service as secretary to Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, during which he participated in the attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson, and his presidency of the American Bar Association are not documented in the collection.
Among Storey's correspondents are Charles Francis Adams, William E. Borah, Charles Evans Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Judson King, William Gibbs McAdoo, Mary White Ovington, Joel E. Spingarn, George Sutherland, William Howard Taft, Walter White, and George W. Wickersham.