Founding and legal documents, 1979-2015

There are areas of overlap between many parts of the Mary Lou Williams Collection, the Peter O’Brien papers, and the Mary Lou Williams Foundation Collection, such that one could argue that they are almost continuous. In most cases, for any borderline materials the “tie” would go with the Williams Collection: she is the reason that these collections were accessioned at the IJS in the first place. The Mary Lou Williams Estate posed a difficult problem. Any of the three collections could claim the Estate as part of its papers. The Mary Lou Williams Foundation was the recipient of nearly all of the material from Williams’s Estate; Peter O’Brien was the principal person involved in settling the estate; and, of course, the material comes from Williams in the first place. This arrangement elected to place the Estate materials with the Foundation for the following reasons: most of the activity was performed by Peter O’Brien, but in his continuing role as the main person driving the development of Williams’s legacy; the Foundation received almost everything; and in order to highlight the Foundation collection. While the Foundation and Estate are different organizations according to the letter of the law, they are continuous in spirit and in action.
This arrangement is in chronological order within the following groupings: Founding documents, significant subsequent legal documents, and the Estate materials.