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Civilian Public Service Personal Papers and Collected Materials
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Held at: Swarthmore College Peace Collection [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore 19081-1399
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Civilian Public Service (CPS) was set up to provide alternative service for conscientious objectors during World War II. It was operated primarily by the historic peace churches and the U.S. Selective Service, coordinated through the National Service Board for Religious Objectors.
In 1964, the Swarthmore College Peace Collection created a collection called Civilian Public Service, Personal Papers, in which it placed many smaller collections of papers acquired from individuals and organizations after 1946. This was reprocessed in 1991, and the title was changed to Civilian Public Service Personal Papers and Collected Materials.
This collection is organized into three series. Series I contains material that documents the experience of individuals connected with CPS, primarily authored during the years that CPS was in operation. The material appears in the boxes according to when it was given to the Peace Collection. Series II contains material about specific CPS camps and projects, collected from various sources. The items in this series may duplicate what is in other CO or CPS collections. Series III contains documents about CPS reunions, conferences about CPS held in later years, memoirs, and questionnaires from those who investigated CPS assignees etc. Certain restrictions, as noted, apply to the material in these series.
In December 2002, the records of the Big Flats CPS Camp #46 were added to Series II. This camp had been overseen by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which had kept the correspondence it received from the camp's directors, as well as its weekly and monthly reports, while the camp was in operation. The camp also sent many weekly and monthly forms and reports to the National Service Board for Conscientious Objectors (NSBRO), which served as a clearinghouse for all CPS matters and a liaison between Selective Service and the Historic Peace Churches which ran many of the CPS camps. Thus, material on the Big Flats Camp can be found in the records at the Peace Collection of both the AFSC (DG 002) and NSBRO (DG 025: now called Center on Conscience and War).
However, upon examination of the boxes of records of the camp, received in 1963 [acc. 63A-029] from Earlham College, it was found that there was unique material in these files that went beyond what had been collected by the AFSC and NSBRO. The records include notes from conferences and camp meetings attended, correspondence, and reports that should have been sent to NSBRO but were not (for some reason not known now), among other material. It seems obvious that a special effort was made to keep these files from being destroyed. One staff person, Tom Bassett, went so far as to make a list of all the office files and to note what the disposition of these files should be once the camp shut down. It is not known, however, why the collection was given to Earlham College before it was sent to the Peace Collection. At some point, Peace Collection staff assigned the collection to DG 002 (American Friends Service Committee: Civilian Public Service records), but it was decided in December 2002 to transfer it to DG 056 because of the inconvenience of trying to fit more boxes into the logical place in DG 002.
The directors of the Big Flats Camp were Paul Johnson, Winslow Osborne, Thomas Potts, Stephen Cary, Roderic Davison, John Hollister, and Clarence Angell.
Guide to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, 2nd ed., p. 17.
Connect to finding aid: http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/DG051-099/dg056cpspers.htm
The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is the official repository for these papers/records.
Gift of various donors.
For the catalog record for this collection and to find materials on similar topics, search the library's online catalog.
Processed by Peace Collection staff.
Items removed: - Photos and slides were removed to the Photograph Collection (includes slides of camps #46 and #94 taken by Mel Zuck [acc. 99A-004]) - Quilt made by wives and widows of CPS unit #98 in 1990s [acc. 02A-005] removed to Memorabilia Collection - Audiocassettes, computer diskettes and a video were removed to the Audiovisual Collection
People
Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- Swarthmore College Peace Collection
- Access Restrictions
-
Cynthia Eller requires researchers to obtain permission from her before quoting directly from any interviews that she conducted that are part of the collection. Stanley A. Leavy requires that the rights to publication for his papers (excluding brief quotations) remain with him and his heirs. Rachel Goossen's questionnaires on women and CPS require personal information to be anonymized. Paul Wilhelm's questionnaires/study require personal information to be anonymized. These restrictions are in place until 2025. Contact peacecollection@swarthmore.edu for more information.
- Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendents, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
- Use Restrictions
-
The records of the Big Flats CPS Camp #46 are restricted until the year 2025, the identity of the individual/s concerned may not be disclosed. Researchers wishing to use this material must sign a form agreeing to this stipulation before being allowed access to this part of the collection.
Collection Inventory
[file of Tom Leonard]
[see also Chicago Conference for Social Action, Series II]
[most removed to DG 002]
[photos removed to Photograph Collection]
[removed to Photograph Collection]
[removed to Memorabilia Collection]
Rutgers Oral History Project online copy available)
[photos removed to Photograph Collection]
[includes 20 replies]
2 folders
2 folders
2 folders
2 photos removed to Photograph Collection
[see also Series III]
They transferred from Camp 52 in Powellsville Maryland to camp 94 in Trenton, North Dakota. They gathered in South Orange New Jersey on Saturday April 29, 1944 and started hitch-hiking on Monday May 1st, arriving in Williston, North Dakota on Friday May 5, 1944. [Photocopy, scanned from original, which remains in Crosman family hands; Acc.2014-053]
Photographs-removed to Photograph Collection and Graphics by William Wallace-removed to graphics and oversze graphics collections
[also titled "The 40th Reunion Newsletter of CPS Unit No.115, The Life Raft Experiment, and Parolee CO's: Massachusetts General Hospital, 1943-1946, Reunion July 1983, Boston, Massachusetts"]
including recollections by CPSers]
1 items
Restrictions Apply
Restrictions Apply
audiocassette tapes (with transcriptions on Mac Write diskettes) removed to Audiovisual Collection
removed to Audiovisual Collection]
Partial Restrictions Apply
oversize photo removed to Photograph Collection; audiocassettes removed to Audiovisual Collection]
Partial Restrictions Apply
[copyright retained by the author]
[photocopy of photograph only]
[Chapter Five from Sowing My Quaker Oats]
[photos removed to Photograph Collection]
[may be an excerpt from Planting the Good Seed: Letters from a Quaker Relief Worker, Wilmington College Peace Resource Center, 2007]
[part of the public television series The War: Stories from the Front Lines and the Home Front; acc. 2013-056; DVDs removed to Audiovisual Collection]