Scope and Content Note
The papers of James Rufus Forman (1928-2005) span the years 1848-2005, with the bulk of the material dating from 1961 to 2001. The papers document Forman's interest in a wide variety of domestic and international issues, his activities as executive secretary and director of international affairs of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and his endeavors as president of the Unemployment and Poverty Action Committee (UPAC), a nonprofit organization concerned primarily with voter education and voter registration. UPAC was first established under the name of the Unemployment Poverty Action Council, but the last part of the name was changed to committee in the early 1980s. The papers are in English, French, and Spanish and are organized into the following series: Diaries, Correspondence, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee File, Subject File, Speeches and Writings File, Printed Matter, Miscellany, Addition, Oversize, and Digital File.
The Diaries, 1957-2004, primarily chronicle Forman's activities as an activist with SNCC and two other organizations interested in improving the economic and working conditions of African-Americans, the Black Economic Development Conference and the Black Workers Congress. In the diaries Forman writes about SNCC, its leaders, other civil rights organizations, including the Black Panther Party, and the civil rights movement. Also described are speaking engagements and meetings and the background to the research and writing of two of his books, The Making of Black Revolutionaries: A Personal Account, Forman's autobiography, and an unpublished work on Frantz Fanon. Entries for the 1990s and 2000s reflect on SNCC, the civil rights movement, and his life and current events. The diaries also contain letters sent that he retained as diary entries. Copies or duplicates of these “diary” letters are usually located in the Correspondence series and Forman's correspondence in the SNCC series.
The Correspondence series, 1956-2005, documents Forman's interests and activities in national politics, foreign relations, civil rights, labor issues, and the political affairs of the District of Columbia. Many of the files concern his work as president of UPAC and a related organization, the Unemployed Poverty Action Council, Legal Defense, Education, and Research Fund, that Forman established for the protection of civil rights and human rights activists. Some of the correspondence also pertains to his endeavors as a consultant and as a journalist and founder of the Black America News Service.
Files in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee series, 1950-2003, contain both Forman's papers and those he collected from other members of the organization. The series documents Forman's activities with the organization such as fund-raising, press coverage, obtaining legal assistance for staff in jail, representing the organization at meetings with other civil rights groups, and collecting material to document the violent and dangerous circumstances endured by staff and those participating in voter registration and direct action protests against segregation. The papers include field reports and other records relating to SNCC's efforts in Alabama, including Selma and the counties of Dallas and Lowndes, and in Georgia, particularly Albany and other parts of southwest Georgia. The most extensive files relate to Mississippi and contain field reports, statements and affidavits concerning violence, press releases, clippings, and printed matter. Topics and organizations represented are the Mississippi Freedom Project (also known as Freedom Summer), the Mississippi Freedom Schools, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union. Featured as well are Africa, black power, the Black Panther Party, and the March on Washington in 1963. Subject files in the series include information about H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and Sammy Younge, the first African-American student to be killed in the civil rights movement. Forman knew Younge and wrote a book about his death in Tuskegee, Alabama. Files relating to the book are in the Speeches and Writings File.
The Subject File, 1848-2005, treats Forman's interest in politics, foreign relations, and civil rights before and after his affiliation with SNCC. Files pertaining to civil rights include Forman's trip to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1958, to report on school integration for the Chicago Defender; his work as a Congress of Racial Equality volunteer in Fayette and Haywood Counties, Tennessee, in 1960, assisting sharecroppers and their families who had been evicted for registering to vote; and his arrest in 1961 with SNCC volunteers protesting segregated facilities in Monroe, North Carolina. In addition, the series contains extensive material relating to Forman's involvement with the Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC) and the Black Workers Congress. While affiliated with the BEDC, Forman helped adopt a “Black Manifesto.” Forman presented this manifesto in May 1969, at the Riverside Church, in New York City, where he demanded 500 million dollars from white churches as reparations for the injustices and exploitation that blacks had suffered. Foreign relations topics featured are Africa and South Africa, Central America, the Middle East, and China. Also represented are numerous files relating to political campaigns and the District of Columbia, including his unsuccessful campaigns to be the first Democratic senator of the District and his tenure on the Adams-Morgan Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward One. This series also contains extensive papers documenting Forman's relationship from 1958 through 2005 with P. Anna Johnson, his friend and publisher.
The bulk of the Speeches and Writings File, 1872-2004, consists of books and book projects. Most of the files relate to The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Sammy Younge, Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement, and Forman's unpublished novel “The Thin White Line.” Included as well are extensive files relating to his thesis, “An Examination of the Question of Self-Determination and Its Application to the African American People,” later published as Self-Determination and the African-American People. The series also contains newspapers and periodicals that Forman established, the Washington Times, the Capitol Hill Express, and Tempo and the Times, a newsletter about labor issues, and press releases by him. Reflections about the civil rights movement and its leaders are also evident in Forman's miscellaneous writings and notebooks.
The Printed Matter series, 1934-2002, contains newspapers, periodicals, and newsletters featuring black radicalism, civil rights, communism and socialism, labor, and the District of Columbia. Included is a substantial collection of the Liberation News Service.
The Miscellany series, 1928-2005, consists chiefly of address cards and notes, family papers, business cards, financial and legal records, student files, and teaching files. The teaching file includes essays by Forman's students when he worked as an elementary school teacher in Chicago from 1960 to 1961. Also in the series is material from retrospective projects relating to the civil rights movement in Mississippi and other areas of the South. The Digital File consists of one JPEG file of a color photographic image of Forman in 2000.
The Addition, 1968-2005, consists of correspondence, diary typescripts, and subject files that supplement the first installment of the Forman papers. This series also includes tributes and other material relating to Forman's death in 2005.
Correspondents include Harry Belafonte, Fay Bellamy, Anne Braden, Stokely Carmichael, Bill Clinton, Ivanhoe Donaldson, St. Clair Drake, Tom Hayden, Faye Holt, Len Holt, P. Anna Johnson, Charles McDew, Alan McSurely, Josie Meeks, Constancia Romilly, Kathie Sarachild, Monroe Sharpe, Donald P. Stone, Flora Stone, Robert Penn Warren, Dorothy Zellner, and James A. Zellner.