John Dowlin used the bicycle as a means of political, diplomatic, and environmental activism. In 1974, after recently relocating to Philadelphia, he co-founded the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition. Dowlin and the Coalition saw the bicycle as a viable, cheaper alternative to the car and the answer to environmental concerns, as well as traffic and congestion issues in the City. With a goal to increase bicycle ridership, they pushed for accommodations for bicycles on all public transit, including buses, trains and even planes, and safe bicycle lanes on city streets and even the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
Dowlin was director of the Bicycle Parking Foundation, founder of the international Bicycle Network, and editor of Network News and the Cycle and Recycle reusable wall calendar. Internationally, Dowlin led Tour de Cana, bicycle touring in Cuba and Latin America, and was president of Citizen Diplomats, ‘people-to-people’ diplomacy in Cuba. In the 1980s, Dowlin participated in Bike for Peace, during which he and other bikers rode together from Leningrad to Washington, DC. He was also an active neighbor in West Philadelphia’s Powelton Village. Together with Drexel University and the Powelton Village Neighbors Association, he worked on the Westbank Greenway Project to improve the Schuylkill River banks in West Philadelphia.
A small selection of John Dowlin’s papers documenting his work is on display in the Greenfield Special Collections Research Center Reading Room, Charles Library, for the month of December 2022.
Dowlin, with the assistance of his daughter Debby, donated his papers to the SCRC in Summer 2020. Staff are preparing the collection for research use. Among his many projects, Dowlin also worked with Rick Shnitzler on Taillight Diplomacy, promoting the preservation and restoration of Cuba’s old cars. Shnitzler’s papers, also in the SCRC, were recently opened to research use.
In the Broadway musical Hamilton, George Washington tells Alexander Hamilton, “You have no control … who tells your story.” In archives and special collections, stories are preserved and told every day, whether they are the stories of presidents and politicians or those of everyday people. While the Special Collections Research Center is better known for its collections documenting modern day people and events, we do hold some materials related to our founding fathers, including those represented in Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton. Order on First Bank of United States, May 16, 1794. Cochran History of Business Collection
Alexander Hamilton’s own handwriting can be seen in the original 1794 document “Order on First Bank of United States,” which shows Hamilton in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury authorizing the Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, to be paid $900 for “certain expenses which have occurred in the West Indies in relation to public service.” His work is also represented by his publication The Soundness of the Policy of Protecting Domestic Manufactures (Philadelphia: printed by J. R. A. Skerrett, 1817).
Eighteenth century printed materials in SCRC demonstrate that the personal attacks shown in the musical were just as vindictive in real life: the pamphlet Letters to Alexander Hamilton, King of the Feds (New York: orinted by Richard Reynolds, 1802), attributed to expert scandalmonger James Thomson Callender (the man credited with revealing Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds), attacks Hamilton for 64 pages.
Cover of An American Colonel: A Story of Thrilling Times During the Revolution and the Great Rivalry of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, by Jeremiah Clemens (Akron, Ohio: Wolfe Pub. Co., 1900)
Multiple books in SCRC detail the life and death of Hamilton, including Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton’s The Conqueror: Being the True and Romantic Story of Alexander Hamilton (New York: Macmillan, 1902) and William Coleman’s 1804 publication A Collection of the Facts and Documents, Relative to the Death of Major-General Alexander Hamilton (Boston: Reprinted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904).
Aaron Burr’s troubles did not end after he killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. In 1807 he was arrested for treason at the behest of President Jefferson. The trial is extensively detailed in the two volumes of Reports of the Trials of Colonel Aaron Burr (Philadelphia: published by Hopkins and Earle. Fry and Kammerer, printers, 1808). For Burr apologists, the book An American Colonel: A Story of Thrilling Times During the Revolution and the Great Rivalry of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, by Jeremiah Clemens (Akron, Ohio: Wolfe Pub. Co., 1900) tells the story of Hamilton and Burr’s rivalry in pro-Burr fashion.
Marquis de Lafayette letter to “My dear sir,” December 19, 1784. Jay Edwin Sturgis Nagle Papers.
Marquis de Lafayette is represented in SCRC collections by a handwritten 1784 letter from the Jay Edwin Sturgis Nagle Collection, as well as multiple printed eulogies given upon his death in 1834. An unusual take on the Marquis is given in Walt Whitman’s short publication, Lafayette in Brooklyn (New York: George D. Smith, 1905), in which he describes being picked up and kissed by Lafayette as a small child.
Thomas Jefferson, of course, is well documented in many resources, including two letters from the Alexander James and George Mifflin Dallas Papers. SCRC also holds an early edition of Jefferson’s only full-length book, Notes on the State of Virginia(Philadelphia: R.T. Rawle, publisher, John Thompson, printer, June, 1801). The Dallas Papers also contain one letter by James Madison.
Letter, James Madison to George Mifflin Dallas, June 23, 1821. Alexander James and George Mifflin Dallas Papers
George Washington, like Jefferson, is extensively documented. One particularly beautiful Washington-related book is an 1858 publication of his farewell address upon his retirement from the presidency–the basis for the song “One Last Time” (Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States: Embellished with Arabesque Designs & Illuminations. Philadelphia: Devereux & Company, 1858).
–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC
Stu Goldman, an award winning syndicated editorial cartoonist, produced illustrations for the Philadelphia newspaper, The Jewish Exponent, from 1981 until his retirement in 2009. For many years, Goldman also served as a regular and feature cartoonist for a variety of periodicals: Centre Democrat (Bellefonte, PA), Prince George’s Sentinel (Hyattsville, MD), and the predecessor to the alternative press publication, Philadelphia Weekly, previously known as Welcomat, which featured “Eavesdrawing,” a cartoon illustrating eavesdropped true-life conversations heard throughout the city.
[Jewish Voter Roll] political cartoon, 1988
At the height of syndication, Goldman’s editorial cartoons were featured in over 70 publications. Similar to the work of fellow Philadelphia newspaper cartoonist Samuel R. Joyner, also held by the Special Collections Research Center, Goldman’s cartoons used political satire to comment on issues that affected his own community as well as those of national and international importance. During the 1988 presidential campaign season, for example, Goldman drew a number of cartoons depicting the struggle between then Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis and then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush to attract the Jewish vote.
Dr. Who Convention, February 23, 1985
In addition to his editorial cartoons, Goldman’s papers also includes his sketchbooks, many of them produced during his travels in the United States and abroad. His sketchbooks contain images on a range of subjects from the 1984 annual meeting of the American Jewish Press Association in Washington D.C. to a 1985 Dr. Who Convention at the Valley Forge Convention Center.
To learn more about Stu Goldman’s Editorial Cartoon Collection, contact the Special Collections Research Center at scrc@temple.edu .
Page from a notebook kept by Walter Massey Phillips recording tugboats seen on the Delaware River, 1920s. Walter Massey Phillips Papers, SCRC 136, Special Collections Research Center.
Walter M. Phillips, Sr. (1912-1985) was active in Philadelphia civic affairs for more than thirty years, particularly during the period of the 1940s-1960s, which was known as the “Philadelphia Renaissance.” During this time, political organizers worked for reform of what was seen as an immensely corrupt city government. While Phillips was an enormous political presence behind the scenes, he never held a political office, and by all accounts his reticent personality kept his significant role in the Philadelphia reform movement from wider renown. However, noted architect and city planner Edmund Bacon once called Phillips “the greatest single figure in the renaissance.”
A graduate of Episcopal Academy, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, Phillips was a chief organizer of the City Policy Committee, President of the Citizens’ Council on City Planning, Board Member of the Greater Philadelphia Movement, President of the Philadelphia Housing Association, Executive Secretary with the Delaware River Basin Advisory Committee, Trustee of Lincoln University, Director of the Honey Hollow Watershed Association, and Board Member of the Committee of Seventy. He managed Joseph Clark’s successful race for Mayor of Philadelphia in 1951, served in Clark’s cabinet as City Representative and Director of Commerce through 1955, and was the (unsuccessful) reform candidate against Mayor James Tate in the 1963 Democratic primary election.
Walter Massey Phillips during the 1963 mayoral race, May 1963. Walter Massey Phillips Papers, SCRC 136, Special Collections Research Center
After retiring, Phillips initiated an oral history project, and, between 1974 and 1980, interviewed approximately 160 of the local civic and government leaders with whom he had worked. The interviews generally discuss Philadelphia city government and history between the late 1930s and the 1970s.
The Special Collections Research Center holds Phillips’ personal papers as well as cassette tapes, transcripts (many of which are now available online), and background information from his oral history project. His papers document his life, career, and the nature of civic decision making at the policy level in mid-twentieth century Philadelphia. In addition to records from and related to the many Philadelphia organizations and networks in which Phillips was involved, there are also personal items, such as family photos and a diary of Phillips’ 1936 trip to the Yukon.
–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC
In the 1960s, Franklin H. Littell took a public stand against political extremist groups in America. He created The Freedom Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College; developed an Early Warning System to prevent genocide; and exposed radical radio preachers and the John Birch Society with the support of the Institute for American Democracy. All these activities supported Littell’s work to educate about and guard against the development of totalitarian regimes.
Ideological programs dominated segments of the American radio industry in the 1950s and 1960s. The Institute for American Democracy (IAD) and Littell worked against radical radio preachers such as Billy James Hargis and Carl McIntire. Along with the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Churches, the IAD utilized the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine as a means to expose and rally against extremist speech. In an effort to comply with the FCC Fairness Doctrine, Hargis offered Littell equal airtime on his weekly radio broadcast to rebut statements Hargis made against him. Hargis cites his Christian principles “as a minister of God” as reason for extending the opportunity to Littell, but labeled Littell “one of the most dangerous men in United States.”
Courtney Smerz, Project Archivist
Please join us in celebrating the opening of the Littell Collection, April 9, 2:00 pm, Paley Library Lecture Hall. For more information visit http://library.temple.edu/scrc/conwellana-templana-collection/franklin-littell
