Joseph C. Hutcheson, Jr., was a federal judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. A large portion of the collection relates to Hutcheson's service on the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems in Palestine and Europe from 1944 to 1946. The committee was charged by President Truman to examine the “political, economic and social conditions in Palestine as they bear upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement [in Palestine] and the well-being of the peoples now living therein.” The Hutchinson papers include correspondence; memoranda; photographs; printed documents; publications; speeches by Hutcheson; transcripts of hearings held in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East; reports by the committee; and reports submitted to the committee by other bodies including the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the American Jewish Committee. A detailed finding aid to the collection is available online at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/rare/findingaids/hutcheson.pdf.
Mallory Blair was a member of the post-World War II International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, which tried defendants charged with conspiracy, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and membership in Nazi organizations. His bench notebooks include procedural materials, testimony, and personal notes relating to Case No. 3, U.S. v. Josef Alstoetter, et al., jurists of the Reich Ministry of Justice. Judge Blair served on the 3rd Court of Civil Appeals in Austin, Texas, from 1923 to 1947. A finding aid is available at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utlaw/00022/law-00022.html.
Leo Blackstock prosecuted Japanese war criminals as Chief of the Prosecution Division, General Headquarters, Tokyo (1945–1948). After he was released from active duty as a colonel in 1946 he remained in Japan as a civilian attached to the army and continued his work in the prosecution of war criminals. The collection contains correspondence, reports, and case files relating to Blackstock's service as prosecutor in trials of Class B and Class C war criminals in Japan, and courts-martial. Blackstock was on the faculty of the University of Texas from 1927 to 1971. A detailed finding aid to the collection is available online at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/rare/archives-lfaculty.html.
John Greer was a defense attorney for the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East following World War II. The collection contains trial and background materials relating to the prosecution of Japanese war crime trials before the Military tribunal following World War II. A finding aid is available in the Tarlton Law Library’s Rare Books & Special Collections office. A description is available online at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/rare/archives-ushis.html#mss0035.
The collection includes the documents, exhibits and transcript of evidence of a war crimes trial held in Manila before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and appealed to the Supreme Court of the Philippines. The defendant, Tatishi argued that he could not be tried in this court because he was a national of the Philippines and therefore a U.S. citizen. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review this case, but then dismissed it as moot when the Philippines gained its independence. No finding aid is available for this collection.
Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean diplomat and opponent of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, was assassinated by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 21, 1976, together with Mrs. Ronni Moffitt. An investigation concluded that Chilean secret police were responsible for the assassination. The bulk of these materials consist of four bound volumes of briefs filed by the governments of the United States and the Republic of Chile before an international commission, established under a bilateral treaty, that determined the amount of a settlement due Letelier ’s survivors. Information on the collection is available online at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/rare/archives-ushis.html.
Oliver LaFarge was an anthropologist and novelist who helped draft a constitution for the Hopi Indians, documented in his 116-page manuscript, Running Narrative of the Organization of the Hopi Tribe of Indians (1936). The LaFarge collection contains papers, manuscripts, and correspondence relating to Indian rights and the Hopi Constitution. The collection also includes works of non-fiction, novels and short stories, and the book A Pictorial History of the American Indians. A finding aid can be located at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/lafargeo.hp.html.
From 1946 to 1949, Michael Josselson worked as a cultural affairs officer for the US War Department's Office of the Military Government in Berlin. From 1949 to 1950 he worked on the public affairs staff of the US State Department's Office of the High Commissioner for Germany and was responsible for the "de-Nazification" of top German intellectuals and leaders. Josselson left the State Department in1950 to help lead the newly created Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), a liberal, anti-Communist organization founded by American and European intellectuals to expose Communist cultural oppression and to oppose all forms of totalitarian rule. As the Administrative Secretary of the CCF, Josselson arranged for financing of organizations that operated as fronts to channel CIA funds. After his resignation, Josselson continued to informally advise former CCF associates who created a new organization, the International Association for Cultural Freedom, which disavowed the CCF and the CIA but continued many of the CCF's programs. A finding aid for the collection is located at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/josselson.html.
George Lister was a career foreign service officer who held State Department posts in Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, and Bogota, and worked in the State Department’s Bureau of Latin American Affairs. He played a leadership role in the creation of the Bureau of Human Rights, Democracy, and Labor. Because of his important behind-the-scenes work in making human rights an important consideration in diplomacy, he was labeled “Mr. Human Rights” by historian Arthur Schlesinger. The Benson Collection received his papers in 2005 and is in the process of cataloguing them. A general description of the collection can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/lister.html.
Nine members of the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1982 were put on trial by the Buenos Aires Federal Court of Criminal Appeals, a civilian court, and were charged with crimes including homicide, torture, illegal detention, and robbery. The collection consists of photocopies of case transcripts of testimonies by 828 witnesses at the 1985 trial of these military commanders. The 7630 sheets of testimonies, chiefly by released prisoners like Jacobo Timmerman, document instances of kidnapping, illegal detention in clandestine centers, systematic torture, coerced collaboration, and death under torture. Transcripts are arranged chronologically and a list of witnesses is included. There is no online finding aid, but the collection is catalogued in UTNetCat under the author “Argentina. Camara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional de la Capital Federal.”
A group of academics at the University of Texas at Austin working at the Central America Resource Center (CARC) compiled a collection of news articles on the current events in Central America from 1983 to 1999. The articles documented human rights violations in Central America which immigration attorneys used in their political asylum petitions. Central America NewsPak is a collection of newspaper articles from all over the U.S. and Central America. In 1992 CARC changed its name to the Human Rights Documentation Exchange (HRDE) and expanded its mission to collect documentation for asylum cases worldwide. From 1993–1999 the Mexico Newspak provided current events news from Mexico.
Eduardo Idar was a Mexican American lawyer and legal rights activist. The materials document Idar's career as an attorney in Texas with the Attorney General's office, his involvement with organizations such as the American G.I. Forum, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Political Association of Spanish Speaking People, and his activism for Mexican American rights in schools and in the political and legal process. A large part of the collection documents the case of Ruiz v. Estelle, which found widespread abuses of prisoners in the Texas state prison system and placed it in federal receivership administered by the Office of Special Master. Finding aid: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utlac/00109/lac-00109.html.
The Political Asylum Project of Austin began in 1987 with the Immigration Resource Center. These two organizations worked together for three years before merging and incorporating under PAPA in 1990. Their mission today is to ensure that asylum seekers and immigrants in Central Texas continue to receive the resources and advocacy that they need to stay in the United States. The organization also provides education for other advocates and for law enforcement on legal and social resources related to immigration issues and political asylum. Finding aid: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utlac/00104/lac-00104.html.
In the court order in the case of Ruiz v. Estelle, Federal District Judge William Wayne Justice found widespread abuses of prisoners in the Texas state prison system and placed it in federal receivership administered by the Office of Special Master. The Special Master records span the period of federal receivership from 1979 to 1992. A description of the collection can be located on the Internet at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00297/cah-00297.html.
This collection on slavery in the southern United States includes personal and legal papers dating from 1793 to 1864 of slave owners. These papers include slavery bills of sales and business and financial records of ante- bellum businesses and plantations in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. More information about this collection is available at http://www.cah.utexas.edu/guides/SlaveryResources.html.
The Field Foundation was founded by Marshall Field III in 1940. Until 1988 it funded and provided support to organizations and individuals promoting human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, child welfare, and social change. These organizations included the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Children’s Defense Fund. This collection includes correspondence, reports, minutes, legal documents, printed material, clippings, and photographs documenting the many movements and groups the foundation supported as well as the foundation's role as an active participant in social change. A guide to the collection can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00091/cah-00091.html.
As an attorney working for the Legal Aid and Defender Society of Travis County Frances Jalet-Cruz represented Texas inmates in suits against the Texas prison system and became one of the central figures in the Texas prison reform movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. The collection includes correspondence, legal documents, diaries, newspapers, clippings, and printed material documenting Jalet-Cruz's activities as an attorney and activist on this issue. A guide to the collection can be found at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00348/cah-00348.html.
Founded in 1977 by Robert "Mort" Schwab, the Texas Human Rights Foundation is devoted to protecting human rights within Texas, with a primary goal of ending discrimination against homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and persons living with AIDS and HIV. The collection includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, audio-visual recordings and other documents relating to the work of this organization between 1978 and 1992. No finding aid is available for this collection.
Ruth First (1925–1982) was a South African journalist, university lecturer, and anti-apartheid activist. She helped draft the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress (ANC) and was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's military wing. She was forced into exile in 1964, and was assassinated with a parcel bomb in Mozambique in1982. She was married to Joe Slovo, long-time president of the South African Communist Party. UT owns microfilm copies of Ruth First's papers. The originals are housed in the University of London's Institute of Commonwealth Studies. A full description of the archive is available online at http://www.sas.ac.uk/commonwealthstudies/archives/first.htm.