This is a guest post by Angela Fritz. Fritz has a Ph.D. in American history from Loyola University-Chicago where she was awarded the Crown Fellowship in the Humanities. She currently serves as interim head of Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Libraries. For questions about this blog post or the Special Collections department, contact her at fritz@uark.edu, or 479-575-5576.
The University of Arkansas Libraries is pleased to announce that the Special Collections department has been awarded an 18-month grant in the amount of $73,989 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to process the James D. Bales papers.
To date, this grant is the largest grant that Special Collections has received and the second largest NHPRC grant to be awarded to the state of Arkansas. “The availability of new archival collections, such as the Bales papers, is critical to support new knowledge, innovative research and creative teaching and learning experiences that expand our perspectives and understandings of the complexities of twentieth–century life in the American South,” said Dr. Angie Maxwell, Director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society.
Spanning 435 linear feet, the Bales papers document his 40-year teaching career at Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas where Dr. Bales became nationally known for his conservative political activism and his anticommunist stance. His papers include biographical documents, scrapbooks, correspondence, speeches, lectures, teaching materials, unpublished manuscripts, and a range of research files.
“Due to the ephemeral and shifting nature of many conservative groups in the mid-twentieth century, it can be challenging for historians to track down collections that tap into the true complexity of conservative anti-communist ideology. The Bales papers offer a treasure trove of correspondence and ephemera that promises to shed light on the landscape of conservatism in ways that other archival collections cannot match,” stated Dr. Adam Laats, Associate Professor of Education and History at Binghamton University.
Over the course of his career, Bales published more than 75 books, many from his own Bales Bookstore and its distribution arm, the Bales Book Club. His works include Apostles or Apostates (1944), Americanism Under Fire (1965), Communism and Race in America (1962), A Dictionary of Communist English (1964), Senator’s Fulbright’s Secret Memorandum (1962), and Communism: Its Faith and Fallacies (1962). Bales’s personal library is also being processed and will be available in the University of Arkansas Libraries’ online catalog.
“Taken as a whole, the Bales papers illustrate an elaborate labyrinth of radical conservative organizations highlighting how these organizations and leaders were networked through print and radio outlets,” said interim Head of Special Collections, Angela Fritz. “By presenting the distinct print subcultures of the U.S. political right as ‘movement literature,’ the Bales papers illuminate the complexities of political activism of the 1950s and the 1960s and provide an important supplement to publications from left-leaning political groups, in turn, presenting a more complete record of dissonant voices and opinions of the time.”
The Bales papers will support emerging studies on cold war politics, the civil rights movement and educational reform as well as a host of topics relating to the development of U.S. cultural, economic, and political policies for a range of national and international researchers. “Scholars who are currently working on transnational anticommunism and international evangelical networks will find the Bales papers to be a peerless resource.” said Dr. George Lewis, Director of the Centre for American Studies at the University of Leicester, England. In addition to documenting the development of the modern conservative movement, the Bales papers include a wide range of research materials on the civil rights movement encompassing information on a variety of African American organizations and leaders throughout the 1950s and the 1960s.
Complementary holdings in Special Collections include the papers of Billy James Hargis, founder of the Christian Crusade Against Communism; the papers of Commonwealth College, a labor school operating in Mena, Arkansas from 1923 to 1940; the papers of William Gilbert, a socialist activist and community leader of the 1920s and the 1930s; a collection of pamphlets, leaflets, and other materials published and distributed by the Citizens’ Councils of America from 1947 to 1969; the Orval Faubus papers; and the J. William Fulbright papers, documenting the career of one of Bales’s perennial targets.
“Seeing Red: James D. Bales and the Southern Red Scare” was one of seven grants awarded by the NHPRC this year as part of its “Access to Historical Records” grant program which supports archival repositories in preserving and processing primary source materials that encourage understanding of “democracy, history, and culture.” The Archivist of the United States is the Chairperson of the 15-member Commission which includes representatives from all three branches of Federal government as well as leading archival and historical associations.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), supports a wide range of activities to preserve, publish, and encourage the use of documentary sources, created in every medium ranging from quill pen to computer, relating to the history of the United States. For additional information, see the NHPRC website.
