Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

Personal, administrative, political, and investigative files of Nickerson. The papers deal almost entirely with his eight years as County Executive, and consist of correspondence, memoranda, manuscripts of speeches, notes, press releases, photographs, and clippings. Among the major correspondents are James A. Farley, Hubert H. Humphrey, Robert F. Kennedy, Edward I. Koch, and Percy E. Sutton. The Investigation Files, which amount to nearly half the collection, document investigation into corruption and mismanagement in numerous Long Island businesses and governmental departments. These investigations, instigated and overseen by Nickerson, were carried out largely by the Commissioner of Accounts, Milton Lipson, and later by Samuel Greason, the first governmental ombudsman in the United States. These files consist primarily of memoranda, transcripts of hearings, payroll and financial accounts, notes, and tape recordings.

The George Chauncey papers include materials documenting Chauncey's research and activism related to LGBTQ+ history and activism. The collection reflects Chauncey's teaching, public speaking, and writing, including notes and other files related to his groundbreaking book, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. The collection also includes all the proposals submitted for a conference Chauncey organized in 2000, The Future of the Queer Past, (ultimately 200 papers, 50 panels, people from a dozen countries, funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations), which provides a fascinating snapshot of the LGBTQ+ history field as it was just beginning to take off.

Manuscripts of Sokolsky, including notes and typescripts for his newspaper columns, magazine articles, radio broadcasts, and for several of his books, including Outlines of Universal History, Tinder Box of Asia, and We Jews. Also, scrapbooks and envelopes of clippings of his newspaper columns and articles; and approximately 1,800 transcriptions of Sokolsky's radio broadcasts.

Correspondence, reports, memoranda, news releases, photographs, sound recordings, financial records, and printed material. These files, more than three-quarters of which are in the Greek language, contain correspondence with Greeks, Greek-Americans, Greek officials, and diplomats, American congressmen, senators and other elected officials, print and media journalists, publishers, and other Americans regarding the dictatorship of the Greek colonels from 1967 to 1974. Also, routine requests for information on Greece, including the loan of audio-visual and pictorial materials, for use by journalists, teachers, students, publishers, etc. The files of letters dealing with the Greek Junta and Greek-American relations contain numerous photocopies of letters from American government and elected officials. Also included are nine sound recordings of Greek language broadcasts in the United States; pamphlets on Greece, and clippings from American newspapers on Greece and Greek-American relations; and photographs of one 1971 anti-Junta demonstration held in New York City. There are some financial records dating back to 1956, including account books, check registers, and cancelled checks.

Wesley McCune founded Group Research Inc. in 1962 after a successful career as a journalist for such magazines as "Newsweek", "Time", "Life", and "Changing Times. Group Research Inc. was based in Washington DC until ceasing operations in the mid-1990s. The organization collected materials that focus on the right-wing and span four decades. The archive includes information about and by right-wing organizations and activists in the form of publications, correspondence, pamphlets, reports, the newspaper "Congressional Record," and magazine clippings and other ephemera. McCune and his small staff also published an initially bi-monthly but in later years monthly newsletter Group Research Report which kept its subscribers abreast of the latest views and actions of right-wingers.