Thomas N. Gardner papers

This collection contains the papers of Thomas Gardner, an alumnus of the University of Virginia, a leader in the Southern civil rights and national peace movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and Professor of Communication at Westfield State University.

The collection documents Gardner's social and political activism and involvement with civil rights, labor, anti-war, and anti-prison movements through different organizations such as the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), and the Union for Concerned Scientists (USC).

The documents date from the 1960s-1980s and include materials such as the Virginia Weekly clippings and drafts, informational pamphlets, agendas, memos, notes (taken by Gardner about meetings, to-do lists, goals, and ideas), handbooks, prospectus, correspondence, pamphlets, reports, proposals, and invitations for meetings, to the causes of the different organizations Gardner served.

Mentioned are specific cases involving unfair treatment of African Americans by the police and justice department including Snake Jones of Charlottesville, Virginia in 1970 and the Thomas Wansley case (falsely charged with rape based on an incorrect eyewitness account) in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1963, which gained national attention and was overturned after Wansley served 5 years in prison.

There are also political newspapers including Right On, Black Community News Service of the Black Panther Party, The Call, The Red Worker of the Communist Party in Georgia, and The New South Student.

There is also more recent work with the Union of Concerned Scientists from the 1980s. The collection includes topics on nuclear weapons, the prison reform system, unions and worker movements, and strikes.

The collection also documents Gardner's work on an unpublished book about Edgar Daniel Nixon, a union leader who played a critical role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Included are interviews on audiocassettes, transcripts, photographs, correspondence, research, newspaper articles, and drafts of Gardner's unpublished book. The interviews with Nixon cover a variety of topics including the Bus Boycott, the Brotherhood, the NAACP, bombings at Montgomery, E.D. Nixon's early life and life as a porter, and his community work since 1957.