Walter Collins Correspondence Collection.
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| Format: | Kit |
| Language: | English |
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| Item Description: | "Louisiana activist Walter Collins was raised to oppose racism and government repression. Collins' maternal grandfather was a follower of Marcus Garvey and a leader of the early voter registration programs in the south. His mother, Virginia Collins, was a long time civil rights activist and served as a vice-president of the Republic of New Africa (RNA), a national board member of the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and a member of the executive board of the National Committee for Amnesty Now. The junior Collins, raised in the black section of New Orleans called Carrolton, is one of ten children--all of whom have been arrested in some connection with civil rights activities." "Collins, born in 1945, entered the civil rights movement from the ground floor. In 1963, he participated in the early sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters and theaters in New Orleans. Soon after, he joined SNCC to help register voters in Louisiana and Mississippi and with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project." "In late 1966, while working on his Ph.D. thesis on the subject of mathematics as related to social change, his draft board cancelled his deferment and reclassified him IA. Within two weeks of his reclassification, his draft board ordered his induction. Collins went to New Orleans to plead his case before his draft board and requested a conscientious objector application. He was told that since he was a full-time student, he would be reclassified. Collins was satisfied and returned to Michigan, dropping the CO matter. Upon arrival, he was greeted by an induction order dated before his trip. Since the date of induction had already passed, he returned immediately to New Orleans to clear himself and seek a CO form. The clerk instructed Collins that it was too late to apply for CO status because he had already been ordered to induction. He refused induction, convicted of five concurrent maximum five year sentences, fined $2,000, and incarcerated in the federal penitentiary in Texarkana, Texas." "Collins' political activism offers a strong indication of why his draft board wanted to put him away. Collins continued in the fight for social justice while in graduate school. At the time of his induction proceedings he was a staff member of the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), helping to form a black-white alliance of workers in the Masonite Corporation in Laurel, MS. According to Carl Braden, Collins's work paid off in a successful woodcutters strike during the early 1970s. Braden states, "The black white unity of the recent strike was, in a large part, due to the work of Walter Collins."." "Collins was also the regional director of the National Association of Black Students (NABS) and a founder of the National Black Draft Counsellors. The latter grew from Collins' own experience that blacks were consistently misinformed about their rights. He felt that African Americans needed a unified information agency. His arrest came weeks before he was to open the first convention of his new organization in Chicago." "Collins' conviction and the lengthy appeals process that followed spawned both a national movement for his release and FBI counterpressure on that movement's participants. Carl Braden, Virginia Collins and Amnesty International spearheaded the movement for Walter Collins' release, while the ACLU and other groups filed suits arguing that the racism pervading the Selective Service was sufficient grounds to nullify the conviction. The FBI in turn harassed Braden, the Collins family, and others associated with the campaign; Virginia Collins sued the FBI in an attempt to enjoin the agency's harassment of the activists associated with the campaign." "Upon his release from prison, Collins resumed his political activities, working with Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the movement for amnesty for draft resisters, emphasizing the connections between American imperialism abroad and the oppression of African Americans at home. He died of pharynx cancer in 1995, active until the very end of his life." "This archive consists primarily of Collins' correspondence with Steven Whitman, 1970-72, a long-time political activist who became a social epidemiologist and headed the Sinai Urban Health Institute in Chicago. The material comes from Whitman's estate. Whitman, a political activist died in 2014. During the period when their correspondence took place, Whitman was one of the principal outside supporters of the Atmore/Holman brothers imprisoned in Alabama, who had struck for both their freedom and better prison conditions. For further information on the Atmore/Holman brothers, see the following URL created by the Freedom Archives in San Francisco: https://search.freedomarchives.org/search.php?view_collection=1044." "The correspondence is divided into two 8.5x11” envelopes and one 8.5x11” folder. Collins' letters are handwritten, single-spaced originals; Whitman's Xeroxed copies that he made. Their correspondence - with letters usually running several pages in length -- offers an intense discussion between an African American and a white activist of the critical issues facing the civil rights, Black liberation, and anti-imperialist movements of the period." "Envelope I contains 72 letters exchanged between Collins and Whitman, 1970-72. Also included are nine copies of the Crossroads (the newsletter published by prisoners at the Texarkana Federal Correctional Institute), a few fliers, and miscellaneous SCEF materials." "Envelope II contains 48 letters exchanged in 1972, along with three issues of Crossroads, two SCEF pieces, a flier, and the copy of a letter from Whitman to a third party." "Envelope III contains eight letters exchanged from 1973-76, after Collins' release from prison, along with two Resurrection City fliers and an envelope containing letters from US Senators to Whitman, responding to his pleas re: the Collins Case, the Quincy Five, etc., and two SCEF pieces. By 1975, Collins was hard at work on the campaign to free Black political prisoner Gary Tyler."--Vendor's description. |
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| Physical Description: | 3 folders |