GENERAL FILES, 1936-1985

Documents Frances Grant's role as secretary and vice-president of the ILHR and chairman of its Latin-American committee. Over half the series is general correspondence and supporting materials filed by date. Also included items filed by country (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Yugoslavia) and by format (financial statements, grant proposals). Correspondents include league presidents Roger Baldwin, Jan Papanek, John Carey, and Jerome Shestack, and executive director Roberta Cohen. Document types include correspondence, minutes, financial statements, reports, publications, speeches, press releases, grant proposals, and unpublished papers.

Subjects covered include the league's attempt to document, publicize, and protest violations of civil and political rights in Argentina, Brazil, Burundi, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Namibia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Portugal, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Uganda, the U.S.S.R., Venezuela, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Zambia. General human rights issues addressed by the league included self-determination of colonial peoples, the rights of minorities, fair treatment of prisoners, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Also documents the league's relationship with the U.N., and with its affiliates and other human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, with which it sponsored joint actions. Also includes documentation of internal issues concerning the league's structure, funding, staffing, and direction.

Of particular interest are correspondence about human rights violations under the Carías dictatorship in Honduras (1946); reports on the imprisonment of students in Mexico (1970); an investigation of the 1971 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland by Samuel Dash, later Watergate counsel; documentation of attempts to help dissidents in the Soviet Union; reports on law, education, and women's rights in China (1974); correspondence and case histories concerning the disappearance of political dissidents in Argentina (1977); and an unpublished paper on the league's support for human rights in Namibia (1981).

Additional material in this series includes minutes of the Latin-American committee (1949-1951); materials related to the formation of the IADF in 1950; and financial statements and minutes of the International League Defense and Education Fund, the educational arm of the ILHR. The miscellaneous files consist primarily of publications and mailings from other human rights organizations. The reference files consist largely of documents and correspondence from the U.N., as well as some press releases and correspondence, generally not dealing with Latin America.

Oversize items stored separately include two broadsides.

See also: newspaper box 86