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Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, financial records, photographs, memorabilia, and printed materials. The Foundation's correspondence files consist of letters from different organizations and foundations, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Social Change, The NAACP, the United Negro College Fund, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the YWCA. Also included in this collection are community dialogues on race relations (1974-1975); proposed dialogues (1979) on such subjects as the Boy Scouts of America, Columbia University, and the National Council of Christians and Jews; and files on the Whitney M. Young Fellows Retreat Conferences (1980-1984). The collection contains many files on Ed Wilson's bust of Young (1991), including contracts and agreements, records of payments to Wilson, documents concerning the bust's placement in various locations, correspondence with Wilson (1983-1991), and miscellaneous photographs and pictures. The contributions files contain annual listings of contributions and records of contributions from the National Urban League, assorted organizations, corporations, individuals, foundations, and Philip Morris.

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.

Professional and personal files including Armstrong's correspondence with professional associations, other engineers, and friends, his research notes, circuit diagrams, lectures, articles, legal papers, and other related materials. Of his many inventions and developments, the most important are: 1) the regenerative or feedback circuit, 1912, the first amplified radio reception, 2) the superheterodyne circuit, 1918, the basis of modern radio and radar, 3) superregeneration, 1922, a very simple, high-power receiver now used in emergency mobile service, and 4) frequency modulation - FM, 1933, static-free radio reception of high fidelity. More than half the files concern his many lawsuits, primarily with Radio Corporation of America, over infringement of the Armstrong patents. Litigation continued until 1967. Other files deal with his work in the Marcellus Hartley Research Laboratory at Columbia University, 1913-1935, and with the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I, his Air Force contracts for communications development, Army research during World War II, the Radio Club of America, the Institute of Radio Engineers, FM development at his radio station at Alpine, N.J., the use of FM in television, his involvement in Federal Communications Commission hearings and legislation, and his work with the Zenith Radio Corporation. Also, letters to H.J. Round