Last week was highly productive in the sense that I got through a great deal of material. Unfortunately, much of that material consisted of things like insurance bills from 1975 and blank notebooks with dead flies stuck between the pages (yuck!) In other words, it’s bound for the “weed” pile. There was however, a diamond in the rough – a small collection of 8 x 10 glossy photos, most of which were taken at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles at the 1942 National Convention of the NAACP.
The photo to the right pictures Ralph Bunche on stage at the amphitheater. Bunche helped found the United Nations in 1945 where he and Eleanor Roosevelt worked together to ensure the creation of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In 1950, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work mediating the 1949 Armistice Agreements between Palestinians and the newly formed State of Israel.
There were two essay presentations given at the 1942 Convention which must have been of particular interest to Berry: “The Four Freedoms in America” an essay on race relations and the War by Roy Wilkins and an address by NAACP President Walter White on American racism as a detriment to the War effort. I write that these papers must have interested him because they were presented in the summer of 1942 while Berry was working as “Negro Morale Officer” in the Office of War Information. He began work with the agency in February of that year but was frustrated in his attempts to institute real change and soon realized that the position meant little to the administration. He resigned in protest in October. I could be wrong but I doubt Berry would have made any public statements about the problems he faced in the Office of War Information while he was working there. Still, I have to wonder what he must have thought about the speeches given his unique perspective as someone stuck between the administration, the war effort and his own wish to better the lives of his fellow African Americans.
Along with the 1942 NAACP Conference photos, I found this photo of Thurgood Marshall. I assume from the look of the photo and the sign in the background that it was taken in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1940s. Though I don’t know what event he and Theodore Berry might have attended at the time, I trust that a little more digging will turn up the answers I seek…
In 2010, the University of Cincinnati Libraries received a $61,287 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the Archives and Records Administration to fully process the Theodore M. Berry Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library. All information and opinions published on the Berry project website and in the blog entries are those of the individuals involved in the grant project and do not reflect those of the National Archives and Records Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the support of NARA.
