The Civil Rights History Project: Survey of Collections and Repositories

Thomas A. Gaudette papers

Repository: Loyola Marymount University

Collection Description (CRHP): In the interview Gaudette discusses his career as a community organizer, including the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. Topics include the intersection of housing and civil rights.

Collection Description (Extant): The materials in this collection were collected by Thomas Gaudette himself during his long career as an organizer. The textual materials include newspaper clippings, magazine and journal articles, book reviews, correspondence, conference materials, community organization flyers, brochures, newsletters, and annual reports. Non-textual holdings consist of photographs, video tapes, and audiocassettes. The photographs (usually Kodak color) are mainly personal photographs that Thomas Gaudette made of the organizing meetings he attended and organizers he met. The chronological span of the holdings is from 1938 to 1996, with the majority of the materials found after 1960. Thomas Gaudette arranged in binders, in chronological sequence by year and then month, many of the textual materials and photographs. This suggests that he used the binders as a resource and probably intended that they serve as a record of his activities in community organizing, as well as the movement in general with which his life was so strongly associated. Correspondence in the holdings indicates that he solicited materials, especially newspaper articles, from other community organizers for this task, further evidence of his desire to document the history of community organizing and the community organizers and organizations with which he had worked. After retiring from organizing, Gaudette, either in 1993 or 1994, gave his holdings to one of his proteges, John Baumann, S. J., of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization. Father Baumann then transferred them to the CSLA Research Collection in 2000, at the direction of Kay Gaudette, Thomas Gaudette's widow.

This collection has been organized into series based on the arrangement conceived by the material's originator, Thomas Gaudette. Series 1 consists of the binders documenting the career of Thomas Gaudette, as well as the organizers and community organizations with which he was associated. Series 2 consists of miscellaneous materials, loose articles and notebooks. Series 3 consists of video tapes and audio cassette tapes. Specific research strengths and types of materials for each series are noted in its particular description found below. The arrangement of the materials of each series in boxes and folders is described in the box and folder lists, which can be accessed through selecting the appropriate links found in the series descriptions. There are number of reel-to-reel tapes as well, presently unavailable for public use.

Date(s): 1938-1996

Existing IDs: CSLA-18

Finding Aid URL: http://www.lmu.edu/Page5490.aspx

Language: English

Interviewees: Thomas Gaudette

Rights (CRHP): Contact the repository which holds the collection for information on rights

Subjects:

Civil rights workers
Community organization
Northwest Community Organization

Genres:

Interviews
Sound recordings