LURA BEAM-HARLAN PAUL DOUGLASS. PAPERS, 1906-1918. 0.8 linear feet.

Lura Beam (1887-1978) wrote the book He Called Them by the Lightning (1967) about her experiences as an A.M.A. teacher at Gregory Institute, Wilmington, North Carolina (1908-1910), and LeMoyne Institute, Memphis, Tennessee (1910-1911), and as A.M.A. assistant superintendent of education (1911-1919). She gave the Center papers from the time H. Paul Douglass was A.M.A. executive secretary. The papers supplement his personal papers as describe below.

AUGUSTUS FIELD BEARD, 1833-1934. PAPERS, 1865-1935. 0.4 linear feet.

Augustus Beard was born in 1833 and lived seven months past his one hundred and first birthday. A graduate of Yale University, he served as pastor of the American Church in Paris for several years prior to 1883, when he became general secretary of the A.M.A. The papers contain only about two hundred items, chiefly letters written by Beard between 1923 and 1934. There are also speeches and sermons from his earlier life. Among the subjects discussed are the publication program of the A.M.A. reunions and alumni of Yale, especially William Pickens and Henry Lee De Forest; and teachers and conditions of A.M.A. schools. Additional Beard materials are in the A.M.A. Archives.

FREDERICK LESLIE BROWNLEE, 1883-1962. PAPERS, 1894-1966. 6.4 linear feet.

Frederick Brownlee served as general secretary of the American Missionary Association from 1920 to 1950. After retirement, he served for a short time as provost of Fisk University. More than half of the papers is correspondence, chiefly with LeMoyne College in Memphis, of which Brownlee was temporary president in the 1930s, but also with friends and publishers. Other items are scrapbooks, photographs, clippings from periodicals, and writings, including books, articles, sermons, and speeches. Additional Brownlee materials are in the A.M.A. Archives.

HARLAN PAUL DOUGLASS, 1871-1952. PAPERS, 1889-1966. 2.0 linear feet.

H. Paul Douglass was superintendent of education for the American Missionary Association from 1906 to 1910, supervising the seventy-five schools then conducted by the Association for Negroes, Indians, Mexican Americans and Appalachian Whites. In 1910, he became general secretary of the A.M.A. and held this position until World War I, when he left to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces in France as a Young Men's Christian Association secretary and member of the Army Educational Corps. From 1921 to 1933, he was research director of the Institute of Social and Religious Research, and from 1930 to 1934, he also directed the China Survey of Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry. In 1937, he became secretary of the Commission to Study Christian Unity of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, a post he held until 1943, when he was made chairman of the Federal Council's research department. In 1945, he was appointed director of the Committee for Cooperative Field Research for the Church of Christ. His published writings are voluminous and he was editor of Christendom (1938-1948) and Ecumenical Review (1948-1950). One of his best known books is Christian Reconstruction in the South, an History of the Educational Work of the American Missionary Association among Southern Negroes.

The papers include correspondence, journals, original manuscript copies of speeches and publications, photographs, clippings, and scrapbooks. In addition to Dr. Douglass's own papers, the collection includes papers of his mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Truman Orvill Douglass, among which are their full-length autobiographies containing reminiscences of Western migration to Iowa, the abolitionist crusade, the Civil War, and the development of Congregationalism in the West. Additional Douglass materials are in the Beam-Douglass Papers and the A.M.A. Archives.

RUTH A. MORTON, 1900-1989. SCRAPBOOK, 1934-1950. 0.4 linear feet.

Ruth Morton was director of community schools for the American Missionary Association from 1936 to 1951, the time when the A.M.A was phasing out its school work below college level. The scrapbook consists of materials that she generated or collected during her tenure with the A.M.A., including notes, reports, A.M.A. pamphlets, photographs, including some by Marion Palfi, press clippings, and other printed items. Among the institutions represented are schools and community centers for African Americans, Appalachian whites, and Puerto Ricans. Additional Morton materials are in the A.M.A. Archives.

JOSEPH EDWIN ROY, 1827-1908. SCRAPBOOK, 1891-1896. 1 item.

Joseph Roy was born in Martinsburg, Ohio. He received a B.A. from Knox College in Illinois in 1848. He completed his studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1853. From 1852 to 1855, he was an American Missionary Association missionary pastor at Brimfield Congregational Church in Illinois. In 1855, he became pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Chicago. He served for a year as district secretary in Chicago for the A.MA., when, in 1861, he became an agent for Northern Illinois and Northern Indiana for the American Home Missionary Society. For three months in 1865, he toured the South and the border states for the A.H.M.S. in order to determine post-war needs. In 1872, he also became a field superintendent for the A.H.M.S. He went back to work for the A.M.A. in 1878 as field superintendent until 1885, when he became district secretary in Chicago, a position he held until his retirement in 1903. In 1893, he served as chairman of the African Ethnological Congress at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The scrapbook, the only one of at least two that he kept that seems to have survived, contains press clippings about the A.M.A. its schools and churches, African missions, and the World's African Ethnological Congress. Roy correspondence may be found in the Archives of the A.M.A. and the A.H.M.S.

EDWARD PARMELEE SMITH, 1827-1876. PAPERS, 1819-1967. 2.2 linear feet.

A native of South Britain, Connecticut, Edward P. Smith, was educated at Dartmouth, Yale, Union Theological Seminary, and Andover. Prior to the Civil War, he pastored a Congregational Church in Pepperell, Massachusetts. He joined the United States Christian Commission during the Civil War, eventually becoming its field secretary in Philadelphia. He joined the American Missionary Association in 1866, serving first as district secretary at Cincinnati and then as general field superintendent. In 1871, he became U.S. Indian Agent to the Pillager and Chippewa tribes in Minnesota. Two years later, President Ulysses Grant appointed him Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He resigned in 1875 and was elected president of Howard University. However, before assuming the Howard presidency, he went to Africa on a special commission for the A.MA. and died there in July 1876.

The papers include correspondence; diaries; church minutes; photographs of the Smith family, Union soldiers, and Native Americans; Smith's logbook for work with the U.S. Christian Commission; and considerable genealogical material collected by his descendants, especially his granddaughter, Ruth Crawford Mitchell. In addition, there are eighteen reels of microfilm of selected documents from the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs held by the National Archives and photocopies of originals at the Minnesota Historical Society. Additional Smith materials may he found in Amistad holdings of the A.M.A. and A.H.M.S. Archives.

LEWIS TAPPAN, 1788-1873. PAPERS, 1845-1846. 23 items.

Lewis Tappan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. From 1826 to 1837, he was a business partner with his brother Arthur in New York City. After Arthur founded the New York Journal of Commerce, Lewis became its publisher from 1828 to 1831. From 1841 to 1849, his firm maintained the Mercantile Agency, the first commercial credit-rating agency in the United States, which later became Dun and Bradstreet. He was among the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833), the Amistad Committee (1839), the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (1840), and the American Missionary Association (1846), of which he was long-time treasurer and a major financial supporter.

The items are photocopies of original correspondence at Rutgers University and pertain primarily to the business of the Union Missionary Society, anti-slavery activities, education of African Americans in the North, and the A.M.A.'s Mendi Mission in what is now Sierra Leone in Africa. Many more Tappan items are in the A.M.A. Archives.