The CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections just got a lot “freakier” with the acquisition of the archives of the L.A. Free Press, one of the first and most important underground newspapers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The collection had belonged to Art Kunkin, the publisher and editor of the Free Press from its inception in 1964 until 1972. When Kunkin passed away in 2019 at the age of 91, his daughter began looking for an archive to house the large collection. She chose the Gerth Archives due to their dedication to archiving alternative voices from the local community. “The L.A. Free Press was really one of the first newspapers for the community during the 1960s,” says ... Read More
archive
Japanese American Digitization Project Wins National Archivist Award
The CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections’ ongoing CSU Japanese American Digitization Project (CSUJAD) is an ambitious effort that preserves the history of California’s Japanese American communities, particularly those lost or uprooted during World War II. In recognition of the project’s scope and success, the CSUJAD has been awarded the 2021 Philip M. Hamer and Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Award from the Society of American Archivists. “It’s really heartening to be recognized,” says Greg Williams, director of the Gerth Archives and principal investigator for CSUJAD. “The award illustrates and recognizes the breadth and depth of the CSUJAD archives and the hard work of our entire team ... Read More
CSUDH Receives Grant to Continue Japanese American Digitization Project
(Carson, CA) – California State University, Dominguez Hills’ (CSUDH) Donald R. and Beverly J. Gerth Archives and Special Collections has received $282,102 from the National Parks Service’s (NPS) World War II Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program to continue its work on the California State University Japanese American Digitization Project (CSUJAD). The JACS grant will fund the digitization of several recently donated collections that include approximately 7,000 archival items related to the incarceration of 120,000 Americans during WWII. The new collections resulted from outreach efforts during the CSUDJAD’s previous two-year NPS grant in 2015. “We are thrilled with ... Read More
CSUDH Gets its Hands on a Huge Repository of Obscure and Radical Political Texts
Newsletters with evocative titles such as “Practical Anarchy” and “Bolshevik Tendencies” — tucked away in cardboard boxes bearing labels like “Anarchism Collection (Box 2) — sit, uncatalogued, in the library basement at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Shelves there contain more than 5,700 books devoted to fringe and mainstream political movements, and diverse subjects such as Nazi Germany, the Spanish Civil War and the American Civil Rights movement. And there are scrapbooks, buttons, video and audio tapes, personal papers of activists, and cheaply produced pamphlets — often discarded quickly, they are now rare — crammed into dozens of cardboard boxes. This hodgepodge of political ... Read More
CSUDH is New Home of Extensive Archival Library on Labor History
(Carson, CA) – The California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) Gerth Archives and Special Collections has acquired the vast Holt Labor Library – along with a donation of $200,000 to catalog and maintain the artifacts from the library’s founder, Apple Inc.’s fifth employee, Rod Holt. The collection is the largest archival donation in the university’s history and chronicles the history of the struggle to organize trade unions, the rise of anti-war and political movements, and the fight for civil rights and to protect the environment. “The Holt collection is a fantastic expression of 20th century dissent, as well as the labor movement in the U.S., and includes a whole host of ... Read More
