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East Germany's response to the Angela Davis trial (1971-1972): exploring and preserving a large-scale letter-writing campaign

East Germany's response to the Angela Davis trial (1971-1972): exploring and preserving a large-scale letter-writing campaign

  • In 1971-72, the American civil rights activist Angela Davis went on trial in California on charges related to a courthouse hijacking in 1970. Both within the U.S. and internationally, organizations and movements such as the United Committee to Free Angela Davis engaged in letter-writing campaigns and petitions to protest the trial and to support her release. Davis had studied with Herbert Marcuse and had received a doctorate in philosophy from the Humboldt University in Berlin; she was also a prominent leader in the Communist Party in the U.S. and therefore there was a strong reaction from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to her trial. As part of an organized, state-sponsored campaign, school classes and youth groups in the GDR sent large numbers of letters and postcards to Davis herself, to the headquarters of the United Committee to Free Angela Davis, and to Judge Richard Arnason and the Santa Clara District Court. While these letters and postcards follow a standard wording and template, they frequently contain additional personal messages of solidarity in German and English, drawings, photos, presents, and other memorabilia. After the trial ended, Stanford University Libraries obtained a substantial collection of materials related to the case from the United Committee to Free Angela Davis, including thousands of these letters, postcards, embroidered scarves, medals, and other items from East German students and school children. This presentation will not only discuss this collection and its context in the history of U.S. and international politics and as a record of East German life in the 1970s, but also the challenges and opportunities of dealing with this sizable collection of documents and artifacts, both for library staff and for researchers, particularly in combination with new methods of visualizing large data sets and developing techniques for making collections digitally available.

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Metadaten
Author:Kathleen M. Smith
Document Type:Conference publication (abstract)
Language:German
Year of Completion:2016
Contributing Corporation:Stanford University Libraries
Release Date:2016/02/15
Tag:Angela Davis; DDR-Briefkampagne
Angela Davis; East German Letters
Themes:Historische Sammlungen, Provenienzforschung, Bestandserhaltung
German Bibliothekartage / BiblioCon:105. Deutscher Bibliothekartag in Leipzig 2016 = 6. Bibliothekskongress / Themenkreis 4: Wissen organisieren und erhalten / Bibliothekarisches Kulturgut organisieren und erhalten (15.03.2016, 09:00-11:00, Vortragsraum 10)
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Keine kommerzielle Nutzung-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen
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