The Sleepy Lagoon records were given to the UCLA Library in 1945 by Alice Greenfield McGrath and the
Manzanar records in 1946 by Ralph Palmer Merritt. These collections remain
among the most used collections in the Department.
The Sleepy Lagoon records have been used for scholarly articles, dissertations
and revised and published dissertations, documentaries, a play with music
that has become a classic of Chicano literature, and research for a large
traveling exhibit of Chicano art.
The Manzanar records were first used by Ansel Adams when he published in
1944 Born Free and Equal, a photographic record of the internees at
Manzanar. It was a traveling exhibit in the 1940s and since then has been
shown in numerous exhibits.
The George P. Johnson research materials and Spingarn materials were acquired
in the mid to late 1960s. Curator James Davis began a sub collection of the
Spingarn, juvenile and young adult works written by or illustrated by African
Americans, in 1990. Humanities bibliographer Oscar Sims added collections,
such as the purchase of a collection pertaining to Civil Rights Movements
in the U.S., largely, but not completely a record of voter registration and
other projects in the U.S. South.
Robert Vosper. Letter to Alice Greenfield [McGrath]. Los Angeles,
February 10, 1945. 1 leaf. Typed, signed [photo copy, reduced].
Then head
of acquisitions, Vosper graciously thanks Ms. Greenfield and states there
was faculty research interest in these records. Saving these records and placing
them in a research institution was a pioneering act of preserving the history
of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. This made available materials for the
history of this ethnic minority when the Dept. was founded and were probably
among the first of such holdings collected in a special collections institution.
