Accession Number: RG 9.Allen, Julia
Julia Allen Collection, 1945-1974
.4 linear ft.
Series I - Biographical Documents
II - Social and Political Activities
Series III - Historical Setting of Allen's
pre-Civil Rights Liberalism
Series IV - Speeches
Access and Use
Provenance: Materials in this collection were
donated by Professor Dorothy Tredennick or preserved as part of
the faculty records of Berea College.
Preferred Citation: Julia Allen Collection, Berea College Special
Collections & Archives, Berea, Ky.
- RG 7 YWCA Records
- HC 23 Fellowship of Reconciliation
1 Manuscript Box
Clippings and correspondence in this series describe the personal qualities
and public achievements for which Allen was honored in her lifetime and at
her death. Her career and some of her activities are documented through Berea
College records, and her wide personal acquaintance is evident in the correspondence.
- Clippings/Articles by or about Julia Allen.
- The Julia Allen Fund (a scholarship established in her honor).
- Letters to/from Allen. Correspondents include: Norman Cousins, The Hon.
John Sherman Cooper, Barry Bingham, President William J. Hutchins, Dean Katharine
Bowersox, and Dean Louis Smith.
- "And I Was There" - brief YWCA memoirs, 1953-54, including one
- The First Annual Women's Day: The Hunting Hall Awards, April 22, 1965.
- Letters about Allen following her death, 1974.
||Social and Political Activities
||Box 1, cont.
Documents in this series record Allen's support of integration, voting rights,
unions, and pacifism. Early in her career she led an integrated team of students
to survey conditions in Arkansas as guests of the Southern Farmers Tenant Union.
The students were able to document a paucity of health care and decent housing,
the context of racial prejudice, and the resilience and solidarity of the union
members. Years later, when President Francis Hutchins refused Berea's campus
as a training base for students preparing to register voters in Missippippi,
Julia Allen notified a long list of Berea alumni, with a request that they
protest President Hutchins' decision. Some of those letters are in this series.
- Southern Conference for Human Welfare correspondence (efforts
to eliminate the poll tax).
- Correspondence re: Southern Farmers Tenant Union Student Project, 1938-39.
- Letters protesting Berea College's cancellation of a program for voter
registration volunteers, 1964.
- Documents re: Thomas Rodd, a Vietnam -era conscientious objector who attended
||Historical Setting of Allen's Pre-Civil Rights Liberalism
||Box 1, cont.
Historian Carolyn Bashaw, in the two papers in this series, placed Allen's
actions opposing segregation as a Southern woman in the context of white liberal
activism prior to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Carolyn Terry Bashaw. "'The Witness We Tried to Make':
Julia F. Allen and Racial Injustice at Berea College, 1935-1974," in Essays
in Twentieth Century Education: Exceptionalism and Its Limits, ed Wayne
J. Urban. Garland Publishing: 1999: 129-162.
- Carolyn Terry Bashaw. "'One Kind of Pioneer Project': Julia F. Allen
and the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union College Student Project, 1938." Paper
presented to the Southern Historical Association in Orlando, FL 1993.
||Box 1, cont.
Julia Allen said she could talk about issues better than she could write about
them. Yet several speeches in this series were written out and typed, so they
may have been more than ordinarily important to her. Her talks for the YWCA,
however, were organized in detail on note cards, and several sets are included
in this series.
- Presentation to the General Faculty: "Some Industrial Trends
in Our Region." Berea College, Nov. 29, 1940.
- Talks and speeches within the Berea community between 1939 and 1969.
- Handwritten notes for speeches, primarily for the YWCA.
Home > Special
Collections & Archives > Berea
College Archives > Faculty and Staff > Guide
to the Julia Allen Collection