American Jurisprudence Collections at the Mudd Manuscript Library

The organization that became Americans United for Separation of Church and State was founded in 1947 to protect church-state separation and religious freedom, as well as to educate lawmakers, religious leaders, and the general public regarding Constitutional religious liberties. The records document the administration and issues of the organization from its founding and include correspondence, meeting materials, and publications.

The Records of the Fund for the Republic document the activities of the Fund for the Republic, Inc. and its defense of civil rights and civil liberties from 1952 through 1961. The records provide an invaluable look at the Fund's struggle to uphold the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights during the years of McCarthyism and its aftermath.

The Law Students Civil Rights Research Council (LSCRRC), founded in 1963, is a non-partisan organization dedicated to facilitating discussion on civil rights and providing research for civil liberties cases. The documents consist of minutes, correspondence, reports, pamphlets, notes, and briefs related to the LSCRRC. Through these materials the collection highlights the organization’s growth, student protests and arrests, and activism in civil rights issues and lawsuits.

The New Jersey Committee for Fair Representation formed in July of 1964 in response to a Congressional effort to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Reynolds v. Sims. The New Jersey Committee for Fair Representation records document the committee’s history through correspondence, reports and miscellaneous files.

Taos Pueblo lost thousands of acres of land as well as Taos Lake, a sacred Pueblo shrine, when Carson National Forest was created in 1906. After a sixty-four year fight, the government returned the land to the Pueblo. This collection brings together four discrete collections: the papers of Barbara Greene Kilberg, a White House Presidential Fellow at the time of the dispute; the papers of Corinne Locker, secretary to Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) president Oliver LaFarge (1901-1963) and later AAIA Southwest Field Secretary; the papers of Rufus G. Poole, regional attorney for the AAIA in New Mexico, and the papers of William G. Schaab, an Albuquerque attorney who became involved in the fight in 1967.