Tag: printed ephemera

Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers — a spotlight exhibit in Special Collections

This spotlight exhibit and blog post were created in conjunction with Somos ND, a campus-wide initiative to honor the history and legacy of Latino and Hispanic contributions to the University.

Campbell Soup Boycott

By Emiliano Aguilar, PhD, Assistant Professor History, University Of Notre Dame

In 1979, a small cadre of University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College students organized to push a boycott of Campbell Soup and Libby Manufacturing goods on their campuses. The group formed the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s College Farm Worker Project in February to support the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), a Midwest-based labor union and advocacy group that supported the rights of migrant farm workers. FLOC had initiated a nation-wide boycott campaign earlier that year to convince these major food manufacturers to pressure their suppliers to negotiate with FLOC to improve migrant farm workers’ salaries and labor conditions.

The immediate goal of the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s College Farm Worker Project was to convince the undergraduate student bodies to pass a campus-wide referendum to join the boycott of both Campbell and Libby on their campuses. To do so, the organizers needed to convince most students to not only vote in favor of the boycott but to also participate in the election at all. While the vote favored the boycott, not enough students chose to vote—bringing the ballot initiative short of the university’s guidelines.

However, the organizers were not dismayed. When the students reconvened for a new semester, they stressed the need to make their classmates aware of both the issue and the impending ballot initiative. Members of the committee plastered the campus with impromptu posters urging their peers to boycott Campbell and Libby products. Donning small buttons urging a boycott of the companies and handing out business cards that listed all the goods included in the boycott, organizers initiated an awareness campaign and voter drive.

The calls for a boycott placed the university at the center of a moral battle between the company and Midwestern farmworkers. With a successful vote, Notre Dame would become the first major university to boycott Campbell and Libby goods in solidarity with FLOC. This potential shift would lead the company to engage in an extensive public relations campaign, including publishing editorials and letters in the campus newspaper, The Observer.

A chief piece of ephemera passed around by campus protesters was “The Farmworker Struggle: A Debate By Letter.” This eight-page pamphlet featured FLOC leader Baldemar Velasquez’s response to letters written by the Director of Customer Service at Campbell Soup, D.Y. Robinson. Within his letter, Robinson stressed that the company did not directly employ farmworkers and was not responsible for the demands leveled by FLOC. Robinson asserted Campbell’s policy that the company “should not and will not inject itself into the labor negotiations between our suppliers and organizations representing the employees of their suppliers.”

Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry Records (CCUM) / University of Notre Dame Archives

While Robinson argued that it would be “impractical” for the company to get involved, Velasquez’s response noted that the company was directly responsible for creating the conditions the migrants labored in – whether it was the field or a canning facility. Velasquez retorted that when the company dictated prices, that “the wages were automatically set for the farmworker, because the growers can afford only a limited amount of overheard.”

As a tool to educate and mobilize, the pamphlet offered not only multiple perspectives in direct conversation with each other but a partial list of supporters and a reprinted card, listing the goods included in the boycott. This pamphlet became one of many entry-ways for campus organizers to educate their peers and the broader community.

Campbell Soup also crafted materials to dissuade the boycott. A contemporary advertisement, for example, invoked the company’s popular “Labels for Education” school fundraising promotional program—as well as its support for Catholic education across the United States—to leverage Campbell’s Catholic identity against FLOC and the increasing support the farmworkers found within the Church. Featuring two young children, the ad hoped to emphasize that the pictured students were both the recipients of the company’s corporate philanthropy and victims of the boycott.

On Monday, February 25, 1980, the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s referendum passed by a close margin, with exactly half of the campus voting. With 2,012 students in support and 1,321 opposed, Notre Dame began a boycott of Campbell and Libby. As one student organizer proclaimed, “We are not stopping. We are moving into South Bend and across the nation through the Catholic Church and the universities” (“FLOC Referendum Takes Voter Majority,” The Observer Feb. 26, 1980, pp 1, 6). Despite students graduating, the campus maintained the boycott for six years.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee and its boycott against Campbell Soup, a quintessentially American company, even led to a line in Jesse Jackson’s famous speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, “The Rainbow Coalition.” FLOC organizers and activists were on hand with fliers that invoked the company’s iconic can image, relabeling the soup as “Cream of Exploitation.” The reverse side implored delegates to partake in a floor action during Jackson’s speech, holding signs in support for the nearly 2,000 farmworkers on strike in Campbell’s tomato fields.

On February 19, 1986, after seven years of protest, FLOC, the Campbell Soup Company, and their growers, entered into a historic three-way labor contract in Ohio and Michigan—recognizing the union, establishing farmworkers as paid employees, and guaranteeing minimum earnings and benefits.

Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — RBSC 2025 Spring and Summer Exhibition

Rare Books and Special Collections’ spring and summer exhibition, Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture, is open and will run through July 31st.

This exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945). It showcases over forty works on paper, including posters, maps, propaganda ephemera, illustrated books, photographs, and first-hand accounts. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books & Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition explores a diverse assortment of themes ranging from Fascist Racial Ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War.

By examining these topics through images created by both ordinary people for personal use and for state-sponsored propaganda purposes, the exhibition presents a visual narrative of the war’s profound impact on individuals and societies, offering deeper insight into how war was experienced and remembered.

Please mark your calendars to join us for:

Monday, March 31, 2025 – 4:30 pm  

Curator-led tours will be offered at 3:30 pm

Martina Cucchiara (Professor of History, Bluffton University) will present her lecture, “Fervent Faith, Relentless Persecution: The Daily Life of Erna Becker-Kohen, a Catholic of Jewish Descent in Nazi Germany.” 

Thursday, April 10, 2025 – 4:30 pm 

Curator-led tours will be offered at 3:30 pm

Robert M. Citino (American military historian and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the National WWII Museum) will present his lecture “The Fascist Lair: the Battle of Berlin.”

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 – 4:30 pm 

Curator-led tours will be offered at 3:30 pm

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Program commemorating the victims of Holocaust and featuring a live performance of “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Lori Laitman, performed by Anne Slovin (Soprano, University of Notre Dame)  and Jason Gresl  (Clarinet, Saint Mary’s College). This piece features musical settings of texts by children living in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Following the performance, a discussion on the spiritual resistance of the arts during the Shoah will be led by Philip B. Bohlman (Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and Humanities, University of Chicago) and Nicolette van den Bogerd (Postdoctoral scholar in Jewish Studies, Indiana University).  

The exhibition is open in the Rare Books & Special Collections exhibit room, Hesburgh Library, Monday-Friday 9:30am-5:00pm. All events will take place in the main Reading Room.

Curator-led tours and all events are free and no reservations are required.

Exhibition tours may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting rarebook@nd.edu.

Discovering Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland

by Matthew Knight, Irish Studies Librarian and Curator

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to showcase this recently-catalogued item, Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland. This journal was published sporadically between 1935-36 by an organization called Na Fianna Éireann—also known as the Boy Scouts of Ireland. The goal of the publication was to rekindle a spirit of patriotism in a new generation of Irish youth. It featured songs, poetry, and prose in English and Irish; biographical sketches of republican heroes and martyrs; patriotic editorials that focused on the glorious past; essays on the joys and benefits of camping; and updates on the various sluaite (troops) across the country. Hesburgh Libraries houses the only complete run of this extremely scarce publication in which, among other things, 13-year-old Brendan Behan saw his first articles in print.

Background

Legendary member of the Fianna, Oisín, tells St. Patrick about the deeds of his father, Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Ua Concheanainn, Tomás. Fianna Éireann. Brún agus Ó Nólláin, n.d.

Na Fianna Éireann was founded in 1909 by Countess Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson to create an Irish nationalist alternative to British uniformed youth groups like the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts (from which the Boy Scouts of America would later be formed). Taking its name from the Fianna, the legendary band of warriors in ancient Irish mythology, the young members of Na Fianna Éireann were provided with both military training and a nationalist education, emphasizing the importance of Irish language, history, and cultural traditions.1 Although generally aged between eight and seventeen years, these boys were prepared, mentally and physically, to make the ultimate sacrifice for Ireland.2

Due to the military nature of Na Fianna Éireann, however, controversies regarding the role of girls in the organization quickly arose. Even though Countess Markievicz, one of Ireland’s most famous woman activists, was a founding member of the Fianna, the annual Ard-Fheis (National Convention) of 1912 voted to make the organization open to boys only.3

RBSC has a copy of the 1924 Fianna Handbook, revised and expanded from the original 1914 version. Special Collections Rare Books Small DA 954 .F53 192

Members of Na Fianna Éireann were also involved in the production and distribution of Irish nationalist publications, including the 1914 Fianna Handbook and a monthly newspaper, Fianna, which first appeared in February 1915 and ran until Easter 1916. British authorities included this work in a list of publications that they considered to be disseminating “seditious propaganda.” Although the publication contained mostly innocuous fiction, poetry, jokes, historical essays, and a monthly column on folklore written in Irish, it is apparent that British authorities were aware of the nationalist undertones of the contents and likely of Na Fianna Éireann itself.4

Detail from page 29. Drill terms in Irish from Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, 1935. These terms were in use from the time of the founding of Na Fianna Éireann.

Current and former Fianna participated in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the organization later worked alongside the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). As with the broader republican movement, Na Fianna Éireann experienced internal divisions over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, ultimately taking an anti-Treaty stance (Pro-Treaty members having left the group). The ensuing Irish Civil War (1922-23) nearly destroyed Na Fianna Éireann, as membership numbers collapsed, and many leaders and affiliates were killed or imprisoned. After the Civil War, Countess Markiewicz once again revived her beloved organization, though with a fundamental change in philosophy that disassociated the children’s group from any actual military activity. Instead, they became an independent, non-political, civilian group focused on educating and training young boys to be good Irish citizens.5 Theirs, however, was still to be a republican education.

Revival of Fianna

Revitalizing Na Fianna Éireann proved difficult, as the Free State government did not buy into the notion that the group was truly non-political; thus, in 1931, the IRA and the Fianna were declared illegal organizations. Na Fianna Éireann also faced competition from other youth organizations, especially the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland founded in 1927, but membership did continue to increase each year. When Éamon de Valera and his Fianna Fáil party gained power in 1932, and freed republican prisoners and suspended the Act proscribing Na Fianna Éireann, membership exploded across the country.

Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, vol 1., no. 1 (October 1935)

High-ranking officials in the organization decided to revive the Fianna journal for a new generation of youth. With the help of poet Norah O’Kane of Derry, they published the first issue of Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland in October 1935.6 Serving and former members of Na Fianna Éireann who died in the Easter Rising were praised and promoted as role models in historical essays, and contributors like young Brendan Behan provided wonder tales and heroic biographies of their own.

Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland June 1936, page 130; and
Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, July-August 1936, page 148

Interestingly, despite its continued existence as a boys-only organization, this incarnation of Fianna devoted as much space in its columns to the past and present contributions of women to the nationalist cause, reprinting the works of—and offering tributes to—Rose Kavanagh, Alice Milligan, Countess Markievicz, Anna Johnston (AKA Ethne Carbery) and several others, while issuing regular reports on the activities of Cumann na mBan, Cumann na gCailíní, Cumann na Gael, and Mná na Poblachta. Since one of the leading editors was Norah O’Kane, one might perceive her guidance, and potentially even the primacy of her input, in these choices.7

Detail from Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, July-August, 1936, page 137.

Na Fianna Éireann was made illegal in the Free State in the summer of 1936, along with other Republican organizations, and Fianna was shuttered after the July-August issue. The proscription of this journal and its sponsoring organization, along with its association with a children’s cause, may have led to its scarcity in the historical record. Yet, it offers much to researchers interested in the under-studied topics of women’s and children’s contributions to Irish independence. Notre Dame is excited to house this rare publication, and we hope that you will visit Rare Books and Special Collections to see more of this fascinating periodical, and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Women’s History Month at the same time.

 

Footnotes

1. For more information on the history of Na Fianna Éireann see: Marnie Hay, Na Fianna Éireann and the Irish Revolution, 1909-23: Scouting for Rebels. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.

2. At age eighteen the Fianna would ‘graduate’ into the Irish Volunteers military group or, after 1919, the IRA.

3. Some girls joined the Clann na Gael Girl Scouts, an auxiliary to the Hibernian Rifles. When Cumann na mBan (League of Women) was formed in 1914 as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, many of the young women who joined were former Fianna. It was not until 1930 that Cumann na mBan established their own republican scouting organization for girls, Cumann na gCailíní, or the Irish National Girl Scouts. See: Hay, Na Fianna Éireann, 11-12.

4. The organization later revived the journal Fianna—in 1921 and 1926—but it shuttered after one issue each time.

5. See John R. Watts, “Na Fianna Éireann: A Case Study of a Political Youth Organization,” PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1981. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/1907/

6. Many boys had fathers who served in the British army during WWI, so it was necessary to indoctrinate them into the republican cause. For more on the editors of Fianna see: S.G. O’Kelly, “I Knew the Real Brendan Behan,” in Irish Digest, vol. 78, No. 12, 1964, 67-70.

7. Note the masthead, unlike previous iterations of the journal, depicts a girl opposite a young boy scout. Also, the inclusion of all women’s groups is especially interesting, as Mná na Poblachta had recently split from Cumann na mBan on political lines. This lack of an editorial preference for which group to highlight in its pages is telling. The Fianna were still referring to Cumann na gCailíní as their female counterpart in 1964 and finally began to accept girls as members in 1968–69.

Previous St. Patrick’s Day Blog Posts:

2022: The Breastplate of Saint Patrick — Thomas Kinsella and the Dolmen Press
2021: Competing with Finian’s Rainbow
2020: St. Patrick’s Day Postcards
2019: St. Patrick and the Nun of Kenmare
2018: St. Patrick’s Day in America, 1872

Women’s History Month 2025

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history by celebrating Women’s History Month.

The First Women’s Political Party

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired a small collection of mostly printed materials of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) and its short-lived precursor, the Congressional Union (CU). Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, CU’s founders, believed the mainstream National American Woman Suffrage Association’s methods were neither effective nor aggressive enough. Paul and Burns engaged in militant (non-violent) protest—like picketing the White House—to bring attention to women’s suffrage. By 1916 the NWP had formed in states where women had won the right to vote. It was the first women’s political party and had a single plank: immediate passage of a suffrage amendment to the Constitution.

After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the NWP turned to campaigns for women’s full and equal rights at home and abroad. The party championed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution and opposed any legislation that constrained women’s choices in the labor market.

“The Woman’s Party and the Minimum Wage for Women” flyer, circa 1923.

Protective labor legislation, put into place beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, safeguarded women from exploitative working conditions. The NWP argued that by restricting the number of hours a woman could work, for example, these laws kept women from competing for the better-paying positions held by men, whose hours were not restricted. Although these arguments did not make much headway during the 1920s, by the 1930s and after World War II, as the job market and women’s place in it changed, the NWP’s campaigns helped dismantle gender-based restrictions on women’s labor. 

“Feminist Leaders From Other Lands Conferring At Woman’s Party Headquarters,” Equal Rights, 1924.
Equal Rights, 1937.
The NWP’s international focus.

The NWP also stressed the importance of creating international ties among women and raising the status of women everywhere. The party formed an international organization and worked for gender equality in the League of Nations and later, the United Nations. The 1937 issue shown here, for example, included news and reports on women from Ireland, the Philippines, Mexico, and in the legal codes of Hinduism and Vedicism, in addition to the United States.

The NWP gained some political traction for the ERA in the immediate postwar period, bringing the amendment to a vote in the Senate in 1946. Ultimately, however, the party was unable to secure the measure’s passage. In a notable political success, the NWP helped ensure that the wording of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin) included women in its purview. The NWP operated as a political action committee until 1997.

“Equal Rights Amendment Reaches Vote In Senate, July 19, 1946,” Equal Rights, 1946.

Always a small vanguard of feminist women, the NWP’s forceful tactics and focus on women’s equality in the United States and around the world made it one of the most important political and social organizations of the twentieth century. 

This collection holds a variety of printed formats: flyers, pamphlets, brochures, programs, a publicity photograph, and a long, although incomplete, run of the NWP’s magazine, Equal Rights—from 1924 to 1951. While the magazine is partially available online (see the Hathi Trust catalog record), access to physical copies in RBSC enhances researchers’ experience of these records. 

Previous Women’s History Month Blog Posts:

2024: Second-Wave Feminist Articles from an Underground Newspaper
2023: Women for Peace and Disarmament
2022: The Feminine “Math-tique”
2021: Writing to Rehabilitate in the House of Detention for Women in New York City
2020: Mary Taussig Hall and Social Reform
2017: A Woman’s Sardonic Eye

Upcoming Events: March 2025

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, March 6 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: M.A. Student Presentations (University of Notre Dame) — This semester’s speakers are: Samantha Civitarese and Carolina Minguzzi.

Friday, March 28 at 5:00pm | Faith in Action: Solidarity with Regional Migrant Farmworkers — view the RBSC Spotlight Exhibit, “Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers,” and join a robust conversation afterward with curator Dr. Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor in the Department of History). After viewing the exhibit, visitors will gather in room 125 for refreshments and discussion.

Monday, March 31 at 3:30pm | Exhibit Tour – Tragedies of War: Images of WWII in Print Visual Culture.

CANCELLED: Monday, March 31 at 4:30pm | Exhibit Lecture: “Fervent Faith, Relentless Persecution: The Daily Life of Erna Becker-Kohen, a Catholic of Jewish Descent in Nazi Germany” by Martina Cucchiara (Bluffton University). This event has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The Spring 2025 Exhibition — Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — will open shortly and runs through the end of July 2025. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books and Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) and will explore a diverse assortment of themes including Fascist Racial Ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War.

Curated by Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian, University Archives) and Julia Schneider (German Language and Literature and Italian Studies Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries).

The current spotlight exhibit is Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers (January–April 2025). In 1980, the University of Notre Dame became the first major university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of Midwestern farmworkers represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Toledo, OH). In a few short months, a small and dedicated cohort of students tapped into a growing movement and convinced the campus to act in solidarity.

Curated by Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies).

Special Collections is open regular hours during Notre Dame’s Spring Break (March 10-14).

Black History Month 2025

We join with The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

Remembering the Harrisburg Trojans, Champion African American Football Team

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In recognition of Black History Month and in conjunction with the upcoming Super Bowl, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight the recent acquisition of a unique vintage homemade fan poster about the Harrisburg Trojans.

Although mostly forgotten today, the Trojans were one of the best African American football teams in the World War Two-era and the winner of the unofficial “World Negro Football Championship” in 1941. This 28-inch by 22-inch poster made by an unknown fan in about 1945 celebrates the accomplishments of the Trojans and provides a rare insight into fan culture around African American sports teams during the era of segregation.

Willie Moon

Founded in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1938, the Trojans were composed mainly of African American athletes who had played high school football in the region, and they quickly developed a reputation as a talented team. The Trojans attracted considerable press coverage and routinely drew big crowds for the high quality of their play against both white and African American semi-pro, amateur, and professional teams. 

The Trojans regularly competed at the highest levels of African American football. On Sunday, November 2, 1941, for example, the New York Brown Bombers, one of the best and most well-known African American teams in the country, visited Harrisburg and played the Trojans in a game billed as the “World Negro Football Championship.” 

Lunch Atwell

In a thrilling and hard-fought game, the Trojans upset the favored Brown Bombers 12 to 7 to claim the title of best Black football team in the country. Willie Moon was the star for Harrisburg, accounting for all of the Trojans’ points. In the second quarter, Moon blocked a Brown Bombers’ punt and recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown. Trailing 7-6, late in the fourth quarter, Harrisburg’s Lunch Atwell recovered a Brown Bombers fumble on a punt return to set up more heroics by Moon. With one minute left in the game, Moon made a leaping catch in the end zone of a 22-yard pass by Sammy Greene for the game-winning touchdown. 

The local Harrisburg Telegraph newspaper (November 3, 1941, page 12) described the action:

When Willie Moon rose up in back of the goal line to snare a long forward pass for a touchdown, in the waning minutes of play, the Harrisburg Trojans football team yesterday beat the highly-touted New York Brown Bombers, 12 to 7, and cinched the World’s Negro football championship.

Moon’s spectacular leap into the air for the pass thrown diagonally across the field by Sammy Greene, was the climax of one of the most thrilling grid battles seen here for a long while, and it was also a signal for hundreds of the more than 4000 persons in the stands to rush onto the playing field at Island Park to congratulate the ultimate victors.

Sammy Greene

In 1942 and 1943, the strong Washington Lions team visited Harrisburg to challenge the Trojans for the “Negro Football Championship.” In 1942, the two teams played to a 7-7 tie, and, the following year, the Lions beat Harrisburg 8-0 to earn the title.

The Trojans’ financial and administrative affairs were handled in these years by business manager Ned R. Givens and promoter William E. “Bud” Marshall. The Trojans continued playing each fall through about the 1950 season.

Unusually, although the players on the Trojans were predominantly African American, the team added white players to its roster for both the 1942 and 1945 seasons. In 1942, the Trojans fielded white players Dusan “Duke” Maronic—who would go on to play in the NFL for the Philadelphia Eagles from 1944 through 1950—and John Krovic. In 1945, the team included white players Andy Anderson and Bob Sostar.

Years after, Duke Maronic recalled his time with the Trojans: “Later, I played for the Harrisburg Trojans. They were an all-Negro team. I was the only white guy on the Team. I never gave much thought to it. Neither did the black guys, but once in a while one of the opponents would make a remark.”

George House, Ernest McLaughlin, and John McLaughlin

Besides old clippings from the 1930s and 1940s in central Pennsylvania newspapers or in the African American press, however, there is little available information about the Harrisburg Trojans. Fortunately for researchers, the anonymous creator of this remarkable fan poster has preserved an exceedingly rare source about the Trojans. 

Phil Mason

On a piece of black cardboard underneath a heading that reads “1938-Harrisburg Trojans-1945,” the unknown fan has pasted clippings from a promotional pamphlet written and published by business manager Givens. Except for these extracts, there are apparently no other known extant copies of Givens’s pamphlet. It is also unknown if the publication originally included more material than is seen here.

In a clipping from the poster about the history of the team, Givens wrote that the Trojans’

“… policy always was and still is, to play the best teams that they could get, and they never asked anyone for favors or setups. This team was organized in 1938, as one body of athletes, clean living, clean sportsmanship, and sport loving lads. In order to do this, many sacrifices have been made by these boys. Through the guidance of Bill Simpson, Phil Mason and Lewis Carlton they were recognized as one of the most outstanding Negro Professional football teams in the United States.”

Coach Vince Whiting

The poster features rare images and short bios from Givens’s pamphlet about 17 different men who played for the Trojans. The pictures capture talented and serious African American football players ready for action. And the remarkable piece of fan art provides a glimpse into the significance of African American sports teams during the mid-twentieth century and the way in which at least one fan related to the Trojans.

In his pamphlet, Givens concluded his brief historical summary of the team by writing: “And to the boys who are now playing as members of the Trojan team, and to those who have played, I dedicate this book.”

Today, we remember and celebrate the accomplishments of the Harrisburg Trojans and dedicate this post to their legacy.

Previous Black History Month Blog Posts:

2023: African American Women Activists and Athletes in 1970s Feminist Magazines

2022: Searching for Claude Monroe Paris, Unheralded African American Basketball Pioneer: Documenting Black History Using Notre Dame’s Joyce Sports Research Collection

2021: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s New Literary Tradition Packaged to Sell

2017: African Americans and Populism

Upcoming Events: February 2025

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, February 27 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “‘Anticolonialism(s) as antiracism(s)?’ Italian Radicals Facing ‘Race’ and the Colonial Question at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” by Silvana Patriarca (Fordham University).

The Spring 2025 Exhibition — Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — will open in February and run through the end of July 2025. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books and Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) and will explore a diverse assortment of themes including Nazi racial ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War. Curated by Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian, University Archives) and Julia Schneider (German Language and Literature and Italian Studies Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries).

(The Fall 2024 Exhibition, Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924, ends January 30. Come see the exhibition while you still can!)

The current spotlight exhibit is Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers (January–April 2025). In 1980, the University of Notre Dame became the first major university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of Midwestern farmworkers represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Toledo, OH). In a few short months, a small and dedicated cohort of students tapped into a growing movement and convinced the campus to act in solidarity. Curated by Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies).

Happy Holidays from Special Collections!

Rare Books and Special Collections is open Monday through Thursday this week (December 16-19, 2024)—appointments are recommended. We will then be closed from Friday, December 20, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.

Special Collections will reopen on Thursday, January 2, 2025.

This is the last blog post for 2024.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from
Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

This post features the December 1909, “Christmas Number-American Sports,” catalog published by Boston-based sporting goods company Iver Johnson. The colorful catalog over depicts Santa Claus driving an automobile—a relatively new popular consumer item in the first decade of the twentieth century—stuffed with presents from the Iver Johnson catalog. Santa’s goodies include sleds, toboggans, skis, snowshoes, winter caps, suitcases, cameras, flags and wrapped presents.

Founded in the 1870s, Iver Johnson was best known for selling bicycles and firearms, but, as shown throughout this 30-page catalog, the company sold a wide range of sporting goods, household wares, and other items. This Iver Johnson catalog (EPH 5036-7) is part of the Joyce Sports Research Collection’s Sporting Goods Catalog Collection (EPH 5036), which is open and available to researchers.

The “Christmas Number” catalog particularly featured Iver Johnson’s winter sports toys and products, as seen in this picture of children pulling their sheds through a snowy field.

The catalog also advertised an oversized toboggan that looked to seat five to six children with a bit of doggerel:

Just a glimpse in passing
But, O you—

No wonder every child wants
a Flexible Flyer and most
young people a Double Runner

Iver Johnson is the Place to Buy Either.
When you buy the sleds,
look at the
Skates—Skees—Snow Shoes.

For undecided shoppers, the catalog also helpfully printed a guide called “Christmas Gifts You Can Get at Iver Johnson’s” broken down into the categories of “Father,” “Mother,” “Sister,” and “Brother.”

So, if any readers are doing some last-minute holiday shopping for their loved ones, perhaps they can find inspiration from the 1909 Iver Johnson Christmas Number catalog!

“Christmas Presents You Can Get at Iver Johnson’s”

Upcoming Events: December 2024

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, December 5 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “A Reckless and Scandalous Doctrine: Matthias Ferchius, a Franciscan in the Index” by Eva Del Soldato (University of Pennsylvania).

The exhibition Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924 is now open and will run through the end of January 2025.

Tours of the exhibit may be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting Greg Bond at gbond2@nd.edu.

The current spotlight exhibits are Wollstonecraft: Revolution & Textual Evidence (September–December 2024) and A Fourteenth-Century Chanson de Geste Fragment (September–December 2024).

RBSC will be closed during the University of Notre Dame’s Christmas and New Year’s Celebrations,
December 21, 2024 – January 1, 2025.

War Games: Playing Propaganda in World War One

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In honor of Veterans Day, Special Collections is pleased to highlight its recent acquisition of two British World War One-era patriotic board games. Marketed to the public to generate support for the war effort and to improve morale on the home front, the two manual dexterity marble-based maze games imagined the progress of battles in Europe and reflected British wartime propaganda against Germany. 

The two games, manufactured by British toy company R. Farmer & Sons, are encased in wood and under glass, and players must navigate a small metal ball around a recessed playing board and avoid holes distributed around the course.

The first game which dates from about 1914 is titled “The Silver Bullet, or the Road to Berlin,” (MSSP 10091) and the playing board depicts the route of a military campaign through Germany with players winning by advancing to Berlin. Along the way, competitors must avoid their ball dropping in holes that depict obstacles like “entrenchments,” “bridge destroyed,” and “road mined,” while also bypassing German cities including Cologne, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Dresden, Hanover, Hamburg, Spandau, and Potsdam.

The reverse side of the board promotes this “new war game” and includes the rules for players. “Amateur Strategists,” the manufacturers wrote, “will soon discover the methods whereby the danger zones may be successfully evaded, but the ever present difficulties tend to make the game of fascinating interest to players and onlookers.”

Perhaps as a warning to the public to be cautious about the progress of the war, the rules concluded that: “Beginners will be encouraged to know that the proficiency generally begets over-confidence, and the expert often fails amidst the hearty laughter of the company when he least expects to.”

Following up on the success of “The Silver Bullet, or the Road to Berlin,” R. Farmer & Sons published its second game “Trench Football” (MSSP 10092) in about 1915. Probably in reference to the informal Christmas Truces of 1914 that saw German and Allied soldiers mingling and playing soccer, the “Trench Football” game simulates trench warfare in the guise of a soccer match. Players start at “kickoff” and must navigate their ball around trenches and holes manned by caricatures of German military and political leaders. Competitors win the game by completing the course, avoiding the oversized mouth of the Kaiser, and maneuvering their ball into the “goal.”

The reverse of the playing board calls “Trench Football the great international game,” and the instructions, labeled “mode of attack,” mock and parody the German leaders on the game board. The instructions, for example, describe the first two defenders that players have to bypass, German Crown Prince Kaiser Wilhelm and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the head of the German Navy, who supported unrestricted submarine warfare:

You have a feeble opponent in “Little Willie” at “Outside Right.” Loot Ball is his speciality and passing the outsider with the contempt he deserves, you negotiate the skulker Von Tirpitz (notorious for his foul play) on his first ever appearance in the open as “Centre Forward.”

Other German military figures came in for similar ridicule by the makers of the game:

  • “Although Von Kluck is now used to being ‘left outside’ he is an honest thruster but is not clever, and in an important match of recent date he lost his nerve and broke down badly when within shooting distance of goal.”
  • “Von Hindenburg at ‘Inside Right’ has not been played regularly of late, the Grand Duke having badly shaken his confidence. Competent critics are of opinion that he was greatly overrated, and is not likely to re-gain his form or to give trouble on this or any future occasion.”
  • “Count Zeppelin at ‘Right Back’ is the gas-bag of our opponents, he has been badly pricked of late, and is far less dangerous than he appears on paper.”
  • “Von der Goltz, stiff and stodgy at ‘Right Half’ has never been able to think clearly since the Belgian International outwitted him.”

The game reserved its harshest criticisms—and accusations of foul play—for Germany’s Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II:

“Lord High Everything, Canting Bully Bill” in “GOAL” you must keep your eye on, he holds the record for mouth, and foul play.

To obtain a goal you must dodge his mouth, it is the chief difficulty. He has proved himself mentally incapable of understanding the rules of the game or the meaning of fair play. Many complaints have been lodged against him, and it is probable that he will in the near future be “suspended indefinitely.”

Vigour and decision is necessary in dealing with him.

The Silver Bullet and Trench Football games are both open to researchers and available to the public.