I'm currently doing a preliminary inventory of the papers etc. of a New Orleans woman who was VERY involved in politics. How involved? Well, she was on a first name basis with the late Hale Boggs, and the file has a picture of her with Ladybird Johnson. Her files are a treasure trove of political information--and misinformation.

This afternoon I got to a folder labelled "Radical Right." It had a bunch of stuff opposing integration (dated '60s) and claiming that this president or that candidate would sell our souls to the godless communists. (You have to have been an adult in the 1960s to understand and relate to these things.) At any rate, I came across a "newspaper" that was anti-everything, starting with Semitic. Having a dark skin was right behind it.

The crowning article said that JFK had been married and divorced before marrying Jackie. They cited some family genealogy, a copy of which had (conveniently) been "stolen" from the Library of Congress--but not before these people had made copies of the so-called "proof."

I also found something I've been looking for for almost twenty years--a copy of the "citizenship" test that people had to take when registering to vote.

When I first registered to vote in Louisiana I had to take one of these, but I seem to recall that it had more questions, and one was worded in a manner that there were two logical possible answers. Otherwise, it was pretty much standard civics, such as "from where does the president get his power?"

I made copies of these things, in case I get to teach again. I found many of my students somewhat ignorant of what I consider basic civics questions, and had told them the story about the citizenship tests. (My favorite student blooper comes when I ask as a bonus question "how many U. S. senators is Alaska entitled to?" I've gotten answers ranging from a blank space to 17.)

At any rate, I'm having a marvelous time reading through the issues of forty years ago. We were here in Slidell 1963-68, then in Florida till 1976 when we returned here, so I was around here for a lot of this stuff.

The files have the potential to be a treasure trove for historians. Quite a few topics have just about all the newspaper articles and letters to the editor written about them. It would be a lot easier to go to this resource instead of newspaper microfilms. I will be noting the individual topics on my final inventory. One of these days the archival materials will be in the university computer system so that people can search for topics from anywhere, instead of just from the women's center library computers.

But these political files are fascinating. I have one more box to go, then I'll do the full-scale processing. A lot has to be copied because newspaper is toxic to other paper. As the newspaper deteriorates it stains adjacent material brown. And I don't even want to think about the copies made on the thermal-type paper. That has faded to unreadability in some cases.

All the politics made for a very interesting day.