UT Collections

The career of Terrence McNally (1939– ), the author of plays, musicals, and other works, is well documented by the drafts, scripts, correspondence, and production materials in his papers. Several of his works with homosexual characters or that explore the deepening AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s are represented in the collection, including Lisbon Traviata (1985, 1989), Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992), Corpus Christi (1998), the television movie Andre's Mother (1988, 1990), and others. The materials related to these works, as well as the correspondence McNally received from viewers and readers about the stories he depicts, including letters from the mothers of AIDS sufferers, may be of interest to researchers.

The Texas Farm Workers Union (TFWU) was established in August 1975 under the leadership of Antonio Orendain. Wanting a union that was accountable to them, a core of Rio Grande Valley farmworkers supported the foundation of the TFWU. Despite the financial problems it faced, the TFWU was able to focus the media spotlight on the plight of farmworkers. They campaigned for the establishment of a Texas Agricultural Board and the right of farmworkers to vote on union representation, but legislation died in subcommittee. In 1977 union members started a 420-mile march from San Juan to Austin. To gain more public support for their cause, Orendain led forty union members on a historical 1,600-mile march from Austin to Washington, DC. However, unable to maintain firm financial backing, the union continued to have a sporadic existence until its demise in the mid-1980s. In addition to the correspondence of TFWU labor organizer Orendain, the collection includes promotional materials such as the newspaper El Cuhamil, a half-hour film titled Los Trabajadores Agricolas de Tejas and several phonodiscs of songs for TFWU written by Esteban Jordan. Other items found in this collection are posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and banners.

The Texas Resource Center represented Texas' death row inmates during their trials and subsequent appeals processes from 1977-1999. The Center lost its federal funding after passage of the Effective Death Penalty and Anti-Terrorism Act in 1996. The collection contains the legal records of these cases, and it is grouped alphabetically by the inmate's last name.

The Transcription Centre began its brief but significant life in February 1962 under the direction of Dennis Duerden (1927-2006), producing and distributing radio programs for and about Africa. The organization was created with funding provided initially by the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) to foster non-totalitarian cultural values in sub-Saharan Africa in implicit opposition to Soviet-encouraged committed political attitudes among African writers and artists. The records of the Transcription Centre comprise scripts and manuscripts, correspondence, legal documents, business records, ephemera, photographs, and clippings. Particularly noteworthy is a large file of scripts and script fragments arranged topically as a broadcast and publishing resource, including material not represented elsewhere in the papers. Making up about a quarter of the papers, the correspondence series contains significant evidence of the Transcription Centre's efforts on behalf of African art, writing, and scholarship through broadcasting, conferences, and cultural festivals. The correspondence files include artists (Jimo Akolo, Julian Bienart) and writers (Chinua Achebe, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Rajat Neogy, David Rubadiri), as well as academics and other scholars (Ulli Beier, Sillaty K. Dabo, Gerhard Kubik, Margaret Laurence, Ivan van Sertima). The extensive body of correspondence with Wole Soyinka is especially noteworthy.