Kenneth R. Warren papers

The Kenneth Warren papers mainly document Reverend Warren’s work with the Cape Cod Refugee Relief Committee in Barnstable, Massachusetts. The committee was established to assist the 96 Reverse Freedom Riders who arrived in the resort town of Hyannis, Massachusetts between May and October 1962. Warren was the chairman of the committee, committed to assisting the arrivals as best possible in finding housing, employment and transportation. All arrivals but one family—Mrs. Victoria Bell and her children—left Hyannis due to a lack of jobs and low-income housing availability.

The collection provides documentation through committee correspondence, minutes and reporting about the arrivals, including names, ages and original residence, as well as final placements in Massachusetts. Additionally, committee minutes and reports detail work placement, problems and impressions of individual arrivals, as well as coordination of relief efforts with other organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Hyannis and Boston, and the Massachusetts Council of Churches. There was also cooperation with the local Kiwanis Club, and Cape Cod B’Nai B’rth, and other government welfare relief agencies.

Of note is correspondence both favorable and negative reaction to Warren and the committee’s efforts and the publicity the Reverse Freedom Rides were generating in the press. Much of the negative correspondence comes from individuals in the south protesting Warren’s work and can be considered hate mail. There is a significant amount of collected news clippings documenting the publicity the rides received and the activities of Warren and the committee, as well as George Singelmann, a member of the Greater New Orleans Citizens’ Council who organized the Reverse Freedom Rides. Additionally, collected new clippings from southern newspapers are often focused on crime supposedly committed by Blacks in the south, the Communist Party and conspiracy theories. These clippings were most likely attached to the negative letters Warren received. Additional topics in the news clippings include interracial marriage, police brutality and integration. Of note are clippings portraying Black Muslims in Los Angeles as a dangerous cult.

Of interest is collected ephemera consisting of racist propaganda including a flyer titled “Lynch Rockwell?” This flyer highlights the protests to a speech at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania that Lincoln Rockwell, the president of the American Nazi Party, gave on February 5, 1962. Additional printed items include a flyer, “Land of One Race,” by the Association of Citizens’ Councils in Greenwood, Mississippi, protesting integration and mixing of the races. Lastly, there is a catalog page from The Truth Seeker, edited by Charles Lee Smith, an American atheist, free-thought activist, anti-Semite and white supremacist.

Publications of note within the collection include an issue of The Thunderbolt (April 1962) stamped “Sample Copy” with the tag line “The White Man’s Viewpoint”; Let Us Understand the Negro by Paul Clark (Clarksdale, Mississippi: Paul Clark), [195?]; and On the Morning of March 15 (Boston: Massachusetts: Portuguese-American Committee on Foreign Affairs), [1961]. The pamphlet, On the Morning of March 15, is a graphic photographic record with first-hand accounts by survivors of the murder and mutilation of Europeans and their African employees on the day the Union of Peoples of Angola attacked trading centers, plantations and government outposts in northern Angola.