Scope and Content Note
The records of the Gilbert Jonas Company span the years 1947-1995, with the bulk of the material dated 1968-1995. Founded in 1962 by Gilbert Jonas (1930- ) and others, the company was for many years a principal fund raiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Material documenting this relationship is located in Part VII of the records of the NAACP in the custody of the Library of Congress.
The records in this collection cover the firm’s fund-raising and public relations work in behalf of nonprofit, child welfare, and social action organizations other than the NAACP. Those organizations include the Fund for an Open Society (OPEN), the Minority Business Enterprise Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Northside Center for Child Development, and Physicians for Social Responsibility. The records are arranged alphabetically by organization or project and include direct mail campaign files, financial statements, solicitation letters, reports, correspondence, subject files, memoranda, donor lists, newspaper clippings, and printed matter.
The Fund for an Open Society was established by builder and social activist Morris Milgrim to promote racially integrated housing in the greater Philadelphia area. The Northside Center for Child Development was founded by psychologists Kenneth Bancroft Clark and his wife, Mamie Katherine Phipps Clark, to provide mental health services to children in New York City’s Harlem community. The Kenneth Bancroft Clark Papers in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress also contains files related to the Northside Center.