Temple University Libraries

URBAN ARCHIVES

Gray Panthers

Accession 835
Records, 1950s-mid 1990s, 220 linear feet
Part 1, Background and History, Etc.

The inventory for the Gray Panthers Collection is in four parts: Processed by Sarah Sherman Urban Archives Consultant
© Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, PA
BACKGROUND
Ageism hurts us all; Aging is shared by all

"The Gray Panthers envision a future when the rigid life-span boxes of youth, adulthood and old age with their corresponding functions of education, work, and leisure will be broken open so all ages will go to school, participate in productive life and enjoy periodic leisure. There will be a new structure to the workplace starting with alternatives like job sharing, the four-day work week, flex time, sabbaticals and work-retirement scheduling. Opportunities for education will be life long. Health care will be available to all and preventive care and health education will be top priorities."

Although the above was not articulated until the 1990s, this is what the Gray Panthers have always been about. Founded in 1970, by a group of six women who were pressed into mandatory retirement, the Gray Panthers seek to eliminate the insidious aspects of ageism which pervade our thinking and to coalesce everyone into forces for good. They are an intergenerational advocacy group whose objective is to bring about positive attitudes towards aging (it is after all something we all share), disclosing age related inequities and injustice, influencing social policies, and providing structure for grassroots populations to facilitate social change at the community level.

Activist as well as Visionary

Putatively at the center of their universe: espousing a "health consciousness" (in lieu of a "disease orientation"), a system of preventive care as opposed to one of critical care, a system that is responsive to the needs of the patients and not wagged by the tail (i.e. shaped by insurance companies) and one, above all, that is intelligently and sensibly financed.

Everything, however, is connected. The number one health issue during the 70s and 80s, according to the Panthers, was the arms race. If our society's future is not guaranteed, then our health is compromised. Running a close second and closer to home, home or housing. Affordable housing, more flexible definitions of workable housing situations (shared housing), these too are issues at the core of healthy environments for all.

Initially dubbed the Consultation of Older (and later "and Younger") Adults, their initial form took place as meetings in such places as Philadelphia, New York and Washington, DC. By the end of 1970 the group consisted of 50 retired men and women. In 1971 they reached out to students at several Philadelphia area colleges (Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore) to dialog with them on areas of mutual concern: ending the war in Indo-China and resisting the draft. The Panthers were intimately involved in the planning of the 1971 White House Conference on Aging, although ironically this stimulated them to encourage that a separate conference dedicated to minority aging issues occur (because they knew that the larger one had failed to incorporate them).

By 1972 their ranks were doubled and it was obvious that a new structure was needed to accommodate the growing numbers. A National Steering Committee was elected as a decision-making and policy making body. Desiring to persist as an informal networking of like-minded individuals, however, they continued to embrace as Panthers, anyone who was willing to work toward their goals. Their mailing list went from 1000 in March of 1973 to 6000 by July of 1974.

At the Center of the American Consciousness, 1972

1972 also saw the adoption of the name Gray Panthers. The name itself was proposed off the cuff by the Rev. Reuben Gums in a cab on the way to the 14 Sept. 1970 taping of the WPIX radio show "Council of Churches Present." In May 1972, Maggie Kuhn, about whom more later, the convener, shining light and eminence guise behind the Panthers, was woken out of bed after a very late night of committee work, to fill in at a press conference at the 181st General Assembly (GA) of the United Presbyterian Church, where she was focused on status of women and ministry to the old.

The press conference was taped and local radio spots were quickly broadcast. The local Denver station, KOA-TV, featured Maggie on the 5 and 10 p.m. newscasts. Invited to lunch by national newswomen at the press conference, the newswomen filed stories that were eventually picked up coast to coast as an Associated Press newswire release. This lead to invitations to television (the "Today Show" and the "Mike Douglas Show"), to mention only a few of the original directions the media went to put Maggie Kuhn and the Gray Panthers in the center of the American consciousness. The name was debated within the Gray Panthers and eventually adopted.

In June of 1973, the New York City Gray Panthers organized an alternative conference to the American Medical Association (AMA) conference and then trumped that with an even more extensive conference, "Health Care as a Human Right: What Does it Mean?" in January, 1974. Attended by over 100 people, 10 follow-up workshops saw participation by over 500.

Ralph Nader's Retired Professional Action Group (RPAG) merged with the Gray Panthers in (December) 1973, at the same time that RPAG released Paying Through the Ear: a report on hearing health care problems . This documented unscrupulous sales practices in the hearing aid industry and the way old people had been systematically victimized. The Gray Panthers administered the sales of this publication and disseminated it far and wide.

The Panthers staged guerrilla theater outside the Palmer House at the 123rd annual AMA conference in Chicago in 1974. An orderly picket of 200 old and young, nuns in habits, disabled in wheel chairs and with crutches, leafletted the noonday crowds, and carried signs imploring the AMA to 'have a heart.' TV cameras and press photographers added to the excitement. As the marching proceeded, a white van cum ambulance drove to the main entrance. Four Panthers dressed as 'medics' rushed out to make a "house call" on the sick AMA. They assisted another Panther, impersonating the 'sick AMA,' from the hotel to the ambulance. On the sidewalk they tried to resuscitate him and use a stethoscope to try to detect a heart beat. As they probed the chest, they pulled out wads and wads of dollar bills. Finally they were able to find his heart and save him.

Deciding they needed to incorporate as the Gray Panthers Project Fund for the purpose of receiving funds and contributions, they secured non-profit status in December of 1974.

The first national convention took place in October of 1975 with many to follow, including state-wide and regional Gray Panther conventions.

Nursing Homes: a citizens' action guide , published in 1977 was the first book of its kind to deal comprehensively and concretely with what the average citizen can do about problems. Originally published in 1974 as an 80 p. summary of major nursing home issues and a project (called Long Term Care Action Project) of the Women's Program of the United Presbyterian Church, Elma Griesel and Linda Horn were Panthers making significant contributions. Documenting both the often unnecessary institutionalization of people and the all-to-frequent abuse of nursing home residents, the Gray Panthers aimed (and continue to aim) to expose and correct these (and other) ills.

Preceded by Paying Through the Ear , these were just the first of numerous significant publications authored by the Gray Panthers both individually and collectively, including the organizing manual, resource packets on many issues, and position papers.

A 1970s radical movement with "legs," leaving footprints as it marches on

Ongoing participation in numerous coalitions has ensured Gray Panthers a broad based perspective and impact. In addition to being instrumental in the establishment of the National Caucus of the Black Aged, Gray Panthers were primary players in the formation of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform. Additional groups in coalition with the Panthers include: Coalition for a National Health Service, Progressive Alliance, National Senior Citizens Law Center, National Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy and the Older Women's League (OWL).

The watchful eye of Gray Panthers searches out inequities and is quick to bring them to public attention. They monitor educational institutions, government and social agencies as well as social systems.

In their quest for careful treatment of people, the Gray Panthers have remained attuned to the ways in which demeaning attitudes and stereotypes can be promoted through the media. In testimony in the mid-1970s Maggie pointed out that while the % of the old is ever increasing (and forecasted it would approach one-third in 2000), only 3% of major characters shown at that time on prime time were old. Old white women accounted for less than 1% of the major characters and old black women were only depicted as victims or corpses.

In 1975, the Gray Panthers successfully persuaded the National Association of Broadcasters to amend the Television Code of Ethics to include "age" along with race and sex as an area where the media needs to be more sensitive. Wishing to foster realistic and accurate representations in media, they developed guidelines specifically for television and film monitoring.

Housing is another area in which the Gray Panthers have exerted an influence and left an imprint. Advocating affordable adequate housing for everyone, they support rent control and oppose indiscriminate condominium conversion. They promote house-sharing and intergenerational living and oppose age-segregated housing or age-segregated communities.

Founded in 1981 by Maggie Kuhn, the Shared-Housing Resource Center (SHRC), as a community based alternative to the housing crisis, sought to integrate the lives and concerns of the old with those of the young, by facilitating shared living arrangements. Matching young and old in match or group residences, the organization exploded regionally and then nationally. See separate background notes for Shared Housing Research Center.

The Gray Panthers early fight against mandatory retirement has expanded to include innovative ideas for change in the current concepts of work. Since the Gray Panther victory which raised the mandatory retirement age to 70, they have searched for new ways to use human resources for productive work and steeped themselves in social research, enabling them to critique the status quo and advance useful alternatives. Projects designed specifically on work have included looking at forced retirement of older women, at the disappearance of good work (viz.: a livable wage, work that has meaning, etc.) and how to address that, and at restructuring work and the workplace. They have consistently welcomed discussion and action aimed at creating 'good work' as a matter of course.

The Gray Panthers implement their goals with varied and distinctive techniques, such as massive education programs, petition drives, consciousness-raising groups, demonstrations, rallies, legislative letter writing, and telephone campaigns. In addition they frequently testify before Congress as well as before state and local governing bodies. They initiate law suits in the public interest and they organize conferences and public forums.

While the Gray Panthers had always been a Philadelphia product, operating initially out of the Tabernacle Church in West Philadelphia, and even out of her house on Greene St. in Germantown for a time, the national office was moved to Washington, DC in 1990 and remains there.

The Network is the Gray Panthers national newspaper (now a newsletter). Cited by the New York Times in 1980 as "one of the best periodicals in America not found on the newsstand," the Network draws attention to news of interest. Although reduced in scope recently, in the past it carried critical analyses of the news and well researched in-depth articles. Functioning as a conduit for activist techniques utilized and developed by the Gray Panthers, it also documents this grassroots movement of people making life better for everyone by eliminating injustices and encouraging us all to put our best efforts forward.
As of this writing there are 40,000 members and 50 active local networks. The Gray Panther history is nothing is not a movement of people (as well as action). See Maggie Kuhn Biographical Notes, for a suggestion of names of individuals in various arenas.

SHARED HOUSING RESOURCE CENTER BACKGROUND


 The Shared Housing Resource Center (SHRC) was founded in 1981 by the founder and head of the Gray Panthers, Maggie Kuhn. Founded as a community based alternative to the housing crisis in the U. S., the goal of the SHRC was to provide safe, affordable, housing for persons of all races, genders, and ages. Consistent with the values of the Gray Panthers, SHRC sought to integrate the lives and concerns of the elderly with those of the younger generation, these living arrangements paired the young and old in “match" or “group" residences. Initially headed by Dennis Day-Lower (whose Boston Shared Living Project was the model for SHRC) the organization began as a local concern and later expanded into regional and national organizations with chapters in several cities and states.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
MAGGIE ELIZA KUHN


In 1970 after almost 40 years of social education and action, Maggie Kuhn faced a dual challenge: how to resist forced retirement and how to participate actively with young people in the struggle against the Vietnam War. The nexus of these two concerns propelled her into leadership, for a quarter century, of an imaginative, passionate movement called the Gray Panthers, which has focused national attention on ageism and alternative social policy responses. Maggie, as she was known almost universally, spawned the Gray Panthers and the Gray Panthers in turn made Maggie Kuhn, in the 1970s and 1980s, a household name.

Who was this diminutive (sub five feet and under 100 pounds) dynamo who proudly asserted her age? Margaret Eliza Kuhn was born 3 August 1905 in her grandmother's house in Buffalo, NY, she learned her activism young. Conceived in Memphis, TN where her father managed the Memphis office of the Bradstreet Co. (before it merged with Dun), her mother travelled home for the birth, expressly so that her child would not be born in the segregated South. Maggie obtained her formal schooling in Cleveland, culminating in a bachelor's from Flora Stone Mather College of Case Western Reserve University in 1926.

Her first job with the YWCA in Cleveland, soon segued into an offer from the Germantown branch of the YWCA in Philadelphia, where her family had moved. She worked with "young business and professional women," low-paid secretaries, department store clerks, bookkeepers, and elementary school teachers. In charge of programs, she started a class on marriage and sexuality, revived the practice of Sunday night discussion groups to discuss the issues of the day and started little theater, or "play shop." Her work with the Y in Philadelphia lasted from 1930-1941. Her attachment to the Y, started from her introduction to it in Cleveland, was its belief in the ability of groups to empower the individual and change society. The idea was that individuals find purpose and meaning through group association.

Through the war years, still with the YWCA but in tandem with the USO, she focused on the needs of women war workers, including working and living conditions. There were tensions between residents and the transient war workers, for one thing, and for another, many had to live miles from town. The war created huge problems for women and the Y, not without some resistance, was there to do something about them. "My concern," she said "was with the thousand of smaller dramas at home, and in particular the huge toll the war took on women." Headquartered in New York City (NYC), Maggie traveled extensively throughout the country.

For two years she worked for the General Alliance for Unitarian and Other Christian Women in Boston. Her father joked to his Presbyterian friends that she was doing missionary work among the Unitarians.

By 1948, however, she was ready to return to Philadelphia and be closer to her parents as they aged and who had become rather frail. Her father then alerted her to a position as Associate Secretary for the Presbyterian Church's Social Education and Action Department, which she interviewed for and was offered. In this capacity, she conducted an extensive leadership development program and concentrated on issues of poverty, urban life, and health-care. She also edited the journal, Social Progress , which in the 1960s became Church and Society . At the time of her retirement she was Coordinator of Programs in the Division of Church and Race.
In addition to the paid jobs, she worked in a voluntary capacity on many committees including the status of women in the church (Task Force on Women), church governance and ministry to older adults. She could be very out-spoken, garnering controversy, for example, for her writings and speaking on sexuality and the single woman.

1970 rolled around and Maggie's energetic resistance to mandatory retirement, fueled out of a desire to sustain the enjoyments derived from meaningful work, saw her at the helm of an organization that was to transform our notions of aging and to marshall the considerable talents and energies of vast numbers of people toward a more just and equitable society.

Started over lunch (April 17, 1970) with five other female friends similarly situated (also forced into retirement), the Gray Panthers was born as the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults, continuing to meet primarily in Philadelphia but also up and down the East Coast (New York City, Washington DC, Yorktown NY, Hightstown, NJ, Gwynedd, PA, etc.).

Early interests of the group in addition to mandatory retirement included the war in Viet Nam, nursing home abuses, banking reform, transportation, patient's rights and health care delivery. From the beginning they articulated a desire to work on the larger public issues: "racial justice, poverty, war and peace, 1972 elections, national priorities."

There was a synergism at work, with Maggie's broad interests sparking ever entwining contacts: Finding herself, for example at a gerontology conference in Michigan with a black Presbyterian from Philadelphia whom she didn't know, Hobart Jackson, the two met and were later to work together on the development of the National Caucus on the Black Aged.

Leslie Sussan, a student at Bryn Mawr, and someone who had attended Consultation meetings in the spring of 1971, found herself in the fall involved in a project organizing an Elders Council in Kensington, a black section of Philadelphia. Their first chosen issue was dealing with an abandoned church, and finding out that it was Presbyterian, Susan remembered the Presbyterians she had met at the Consultation. Long story short, the Presbyterians demolished the decrepit church at the behest of the community group, and Susan's ties to the Consultation were forged.

About this same time, several older Philadelphia Consultation members became volunteers in a nursing home patient organizing project. Amy Boss, from the Office of Economic Opportunity funded University of Pennsylvania Health Law Project, had begun individual counseling with residents of the Sarah Allen nursing home in West Philadelphia in May 1971. Discovering first hand accounts of abuses, Amy was barred for a time from access. Suits ensued and the nursing home eventually relented, allowing the organizing of a patients' rights committee. Though that in itself was difficult at first, both the committee and the Project persisted. By the fall of 1971, the Project (and Amy) began training sessions to equip volunteers to organize in other Philadelphia nursing homes. Enter the Committee of 65, one of the action groups of which Maggie was at the center.

In each realm of activity that Maggie engaged herself, and they were legion, legion also were the individuals with whom she allied:

Members from the beginning when it was still the Consultation included: Margaret Hummel, G. Shubert Frye, Abraham Egnal, Amy Boss, Stanley Earley, Leslie Susan, Polly Cuthbertson. Some members of the first Board of Directors of the Gray Panthers Project Fund in 1975 included: Revs. Al Wilson, Carol Hyde, E. G. Hawkins, Cameron Hall and S. Ritenour, as well as Amelia (Amy) Boss (see above), and Elma Griesel. Ties with the Presbyterian Church naturally brought in name after name, including the Revs. Hawkins and Hall listed above as well as staffers like Kris Ronnow who did a survey of 55 Presbyterian nursing homes.

Be it Senate aging committees chairs or chiefs of staff, political scientists, heads of national policy organizations or Native American activists, all had significant contact with Maggie, at various times, and all can be said to have shaped Gray Panther discussion and in many cases direction via their interaction with Maggie. She had the contacts but she also was a good listener and synthesizer. Her formidable speaking talents then brought it all full circle, where she would just begin again, ever refining the issues and bringing in yet more people to the debate, the process and the action.

Early local network organizers included: Sylvia Wexler of New York City, Joe Davis and Lee Pikser of Washington, DC, Alice Adler of Chicago, Cecelia Raske of Kansas City and Billie Heller of Los Angeles. It should be noted too that in addition to students who were young, many Gray Panthers were themselves relatively young. The aforementioned Billie Heller was in her forties, when she organized the local networks in Los Angeles.

The December 1973 merging of the Panthers with the Retired Professional Action Group (RPAG) had been preceded by very productive interactions of the two groups, bringing in individuals who would make profound contributions to the Gray Panthers: Elma Griesel, who had come on board in connection with the writing of Paying Through the Ear , conducted a weekend organizing workshop with Maggie in Los Angeles in 1972. This one workshop turned up the aforementioned Billie Heller, who not only organized several networks in the Los Angeles area, but was instrumental in Maggie's appearance on the "Tonight Show," but also another ally, Paul Nathanson, director of the National Senior Citizen Law Center. Lydia Bragger who had attended the August 1972 National Steering Committee (of what was to become the Gray Panthers) was also conducting a NYC RPAG project. Lydia would go on to lead the Gray Panthers project called Media Watch, that transformed the way the old are portrayed in the media. RPAG itself was headed by Ralph Nader.

Health issues took the forefront in 1972 (and remain central to the organization), with the New York City network as advance guard. While the 1960s had seen considerable thinking about health policy by the progressive community, it all seemed to come together around the network, which mounted an alternative to the American Medical Association (AMA) conference in the spring of 1973. When talking about health, one needs to mention Glen Gersmehl, Jane Wholey, Lillian Roberts, and Sharon Curtin along with the scores of others who spoke or participated, and continued to make important contributions.

In classic Maggie fashion, three of the New York participants were then called upon to testify before the subcommittee on health of the Senate Committee on Aging. The Panthers high health profile (from the AMA actions and conferences and workshops) was in its own turn followed up by Rep. Ron Dellums proposal, Congressional Record , Oct. 17, 1974, for a national health service.

This in turn segued into the Long Term Care Project, which produced, among other things, the aforementioned Citizen's Action Guide (see background), authored by (the repetively noted) Elma Griesel and Linda Horn.

By the 1980s the Gray Panthers continue to advance and refine their call for a national health service. They produce resource packets designed to enable citizens to call for responsible changes. "How To Organize a Medicare Assignment Campaign," published and revised several times in the early 1980s brought together numerous allies including: Abe Boxerman, Dave Danielson, Jim Davis, Frances Klafter, Art Mazer and Mildred Sklar, several of whom remain active with the health issue into the mid 1990s. Naturally Maggie has enlisted the aid of scores of health policy analysts like J. Warren Salmon.

And so on and so forth. Scores of names could be added in dozens of venues: Robert Bothwell, of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and corporate responsibility in social welfare, Sylvia Kleinman, the Gray Panthers U.N. (NGO) representative, and Prof. John C. Raines and the Project on Work. Environment, energy, economic justice, peace, workplace reform, etc.

Maggie Kuhn altered our vision of what is possible in old age and emboldened scores of individuals to take on the toughest social issues including housing, economic justice, and social responsibility. She also left a legacy of reforms and writings. Legislative measures to achieve health care access, nursing home reform and to end forced retirement, hearing aid fraud, as well as new organizations to overcome age-segregated housing and to foster the shared-housing concept, and to empower older women, for example.

Through the power of her convictions and fearlessness, Maggie Kuhn challenged the status quo where reforms cried out. Her relationship with the AMA is a case in point: she demanded mandatory geriatric courses in medical schools (after the Gray Panthers studied this situation and determined that in 1978 only 15 out of 20,000 faculty members at medical schools specialized in geriatrics), consumer representation in the association's (AMA) House of Delegates, and improved home care, and cooperation in lifting Medicare restrictions. And this was only for starters: Reagan's social welfare cuts and Bush's Gulf War were only two in a score of her other targets.

Maggie's ability to articulate her outrage about the injustices of society made her a popular speaker on talk shows. She was on the "Donohue" show at least twice and admonished Johnny Carson for his Aunt Blabby caricature, although as charmingly as possible. She made it to "Saturday Night Live," and further appeared on the small screen via several documentaries including one aired in October 1972 and produced for the ABC show "Directions," and the Studs Terkel interview, "Maggie Kuhn: Wrinkled Radical," aired in 1975.

She effectively mentored dozens of scholars and activists from the 70s to the present, many of whom have and continue to make major contributions to redressing contemporary problems. To wit: Dr. Robert Butler, first Director of the National Institute on Aging; Mt. Sinai Medical Center, chair only dept. nationally of Geriatrics; Dr. Fernando Torres-Gil, former Assistant Secretary for Aging, U.S.Dept. of Health and Human Services; Dr. Ira Hirschfeld, Pres. Haas Foundation, Dr. Paul Kerschner (former head of the Gerontological Society of America); Dr. Steve McConnell, Senior VP and Director of Public Policy for the Alzheimer's Association; Mrs. Elma (Griesel) Holder, Founder of the National Citizen's Coalition for Nursing Home Reform; Dr. Paul Nathanson, Director, Institute of Public Law at University of New Mexico; and Dr. Carroll Estes, Director of the University of California Institute for Health and Aging.

She received honorary doctorates from Antioch, Albright, Swarthmore, Moravian, Simmons, Marycrest and Grinnell Colleges as well as from the University of Pennsylvania and the State University of New York. Other awards include: the Humanist of the Year from the American Humanist Association, the National Freedom Award of Roosevelt University in Chicago, the National Award of the Speech and Hearing Society, the Unitarian Women's Annual Award for Ministries to Women, the 1977 Annual Peaceseeker Award of the United Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, the Gimbel Award in May 1982, the Presidential Citation of the American Public Health Association in November, 1982, and the Arthur Flemming Award in 1994. In addition she holds the keys to sixteen American cities.

Author of several books, her autobiography, No Stone Unturned: The Life and Times of Maggie Kuhn was published by Ballantine Books in 1991. The other titles include: You Can't Be Human Alone , Let's Get Out There and Do Something About Injustice and Maggie Kuhn on Aging .

Maggie died at her home April 22, 1995 just shy of her 90th birthday. This was less than a month following a spectacular 25th anniversary (of the Gray Panthers) tribute made in March.

Employment

1928-30 YWCA of Cleveland
1930-1941 YWCA of Germantown, Philadelphia
1941-46 National Staff of YWCA in NYC
1946-48 Unitarian Women's Organization, The General Alliance for Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women
1948-1970 United Presbyterian Church, Office of Church and Society, Department of Social Education and Action
1964-67 Renewal and Extension of Ministry
1967-70 Department of Church and Race
1955-65 Editor, Social Progress

The following are some of the boards of directors on which Maggie served:

ACCESS (American Coordinating Committee for Equality in Sport and Society)
Committee for a National Health Service
Displaced Homemakers Center, Inc.
Federal Judiciary Nominating Committee of Pennsylvania
International Work group in Death, Dying and bereavement
National Hospice Board
National Citizens Communications Lobby
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
National Council for Alternative Work Patterns, Inc.
National Institute for the Seriously Ill and Dying
Presidential Commission on Mental Health Task Panel on the Elderly
Memorial Society of Greater Philadelphia Philadelphia Hearing society
Senior Services Law Center
People’s Fund
Over Easy
United Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association

Most of these organizations can be found within the Organizations series, although material is scattered throughout the collection.


SCOPE AND CONTENTS


This material documents the activities of the Gray Panther organization from its inception to the early to mid 1990s. This reflects the closing of the Philadelphia office (1990) and the opening of the national office in Washington, D.C.

Although the Washington office opened in 1990, the materials in the collection continue into the 90s, even to 1994-96, as they reflect the continuing involvement of the founder and national convener, Maggie Kuhn.

In addition to Gray Panther specific material, there is material generated by Maggie Kuhn and her employment, in the 50s through the 70s.

This is a large collection with over 240 boxes.

I. Administrative: 28 boxes: Board (2 boxes), 1972-1995, minutes, reports, attachments, notes and corr.; Documents (1 box), 1973-1990, articles of agreement, Project Fund descriptions and annual reports; Chronological (2 boxes), 1973-1992, reports, drafts, corr., lists; Office Files (4 boxes), late 1980s-early to mid-1990s, notes, drafts, memos, lists, pubs., organized chronologically; Funding (3 boxes, 1 ms. box), 1971-1994, proposals, corr., notes, memos, organized chronologically; Finance (1 box), 1975-1992, financial statements, weekly cash reports, minutes of budget and finance committee, budget comparisons, audits, direct mail income reports; Correspondence (1 box), 1974-1996 and undated; organized chronologically. History (.75 box), 1970-1978, minutes, agenda, reports, corr., notes, research papers on the Gray Panthers; Archives (.25 box), 1980s, corr., lists; Personnel (.75 box), 1980s, some 1990s, very little 1970s, forms, corr., memos, reports, job descriptions, resumes; International Contacts (.25 box), early to mid-1990s, corr., faxes, pubs.; Datebooks/calendars (.5 box), 1971-1995; Ephemera (.5 box), undated, business cards, personal directories, misc.; Phone logs (1 ms. box, 1 reg. box) 1974-75; 1983-1994, spiral notebooks; Mailings (2 boxes), 1974-1985, 1991, notices, corr., position papers, lists, wide range of materials; Rolodexes/card files (1 box), undated; Volunteer Work Applications (3 boxes), 1972-1973, corr., legal-size (8 1/2x 14) applications, attachments (resumes, pubs.). II. Correspondence: 32 ms. boxes and 3 reg. boxes: chronological arrangement of letters, 1970-1990s, followed by 3 boxes of cards; letters, carbons, mailgrams, attachments; 3 boxes at end, by individual, organized alphabetically. Beyond ms. boxes, 3 additional regular-size boxes of cards. Cards unorganized. III. Reference Files: 7 boxes: 1984-1990, pubs., lists, notes, corr.; arranged alphabetically. IV. Subjects: 20 boxes: 1970s-1990s, pubs., position papers, corr., notes, organized alphabetically. V. Kuhn, Maggie: 5 boxes, 1930s-1990s, corr., financial, pubs.; Personal, Professional, Desk 5/95. VI. Meetings: 8 boxes, 1970-1990s, programs, notes, corr.: Conferences, Conventions, Meetings. VII. Trips: 1 reg. box, one ms. box, 1970s-80s, loose chrono arrangement by country/trip, pubs., corr. VIII. Speaking Engagements: 2 ms. boxes, 22 reg. boxes, 1970-1995, corr., programs, notes, forms, drafts, pubs., primary files organized chronologically. Administrative, primary files and Speeches. IX. Local Networks: 16 reg. boxes, 1 ms. box, 1970s-80s, surveys, questionnaires; corr., lists, pubs., organized alphabetically by state. Administrative, Alphabetical by state. X. Testimonies: 1 box, 1970s-80s, testimony, loose chronological arrangement. XI. Organizations: 11 regular boxes, 1 ms. box, 1970s-1990s, corr., minutes, pubs., notes, memos, organized alphabetically by organization. XII. Projects: 4 boxes, 1970s-90s, memos, corr., notes, proposals, drafts, clippings, press releases, organized chronologically. XIII. Shared Housing Resource Center (SHRC): (21 boxes), Administration: (11 boxes), client lists and files (1984, 87-90), general information (1984-92 96), organizational history (1981-84, 86-89, 91), housing sites (1983-91), inquiry and response (1987-88), meetings (1981-92), personnel records (1983-91), programs (1983-91), reports (1980-93), client files [RESTRICTED] and match cards [RESTRICTED] (no dates). Financial: (4 boxes), general financial records (1981, 84, 86, 88-91), accrued benefits (1989-90), bank statements (1986-87) , cafeteria plan analysis (no dates), clearinghouse project (1989-90), contributions (1981, 90-91), dues (1977-78, 82-85), employee benefits (1989-90), expenditures (1982-83, 85-90), fringe benefits (1987), funding requests (1988), fundraising (1981), invoices (1957, 80, 85-89), ledgers (1981-82, 85-86), local network budget (1983), housing (1989), Philadelphia match (1987), proposals (1981 & 87), administrations (1982), foundations (1983-91) and shared housing, letter from auditor, housing alternatives, Maggie Tree, AARP film, financial resources guide (all no dates). Correspondence: (3 boxes), 1981-90, 92); Meetings; annual (1986), board (1980, 83-86, 88-90), board of directors (1990-91), conferences (1982-85, 87-89, 91), planning committee (1985), DCA (1987), Delaware Valley (1989), delegate council (1989), general meetings (1981, 83, 86-87, 90-92), executive committee (1986), presentation (1984-85), training (1984-87, 89-90), workshops (1981-85, 87-89, 91) and neighborhood reinvestment, quarterly meetings, regional training workshop seminar on implementing alternative living arrangements, staff meetings, United Way, Urban Resource Development Corporation, Women’s Resource Center (all no dates). Maggie Kuhn: (1 box), notes/correspondence, Other Branches and Photographs: (partial box) (no dates). Publications: (1 box), articles/clippings, “Working Papers" (1973-82), “Mature Outlook" (1986), “MAPP" (1986-87), “Shared Housing Quarterly" (1982-91), Chester County Planning Bulletin (1983), Community Affairs Consulting Report (1987), National SHRC publications (1985-89) and Consumer Guide to Home sharing Housing Counselor Training Manual, Housing Gap Analysis (no dates). Audiovisuals: (partial box), 5/8 floppy disk, cassette tape, and slides. Miscellaneous: (partial box), posters, calenders, business cards, certificates, and audio/visual catalog. Oversized Materials: (1 box), administration: history (1984), Chinatown Houses (1988), and Reports (1989-91). XIV. Publications: 34 boxes, 1970s-1990s, books, articles, interviews, journals, notes, drafts, corr., monographs, newsletters, resource packets, position papers, brochures, calendars; Material generated by Maggie: books, articles, interviews, prefaces; Material generated by the Gray Panthers: monographs, newsletters, packets, position papers, brochures; Material about Maggie or the Gray Panthers: articles, notices, tributes, calendars (5 boxes of the preceding); Books (8 boxes); Network (5 boxes); Publications (9 reg. boxes, 1 lg. ms. box); Clippings (5 reg. boxes, 1 lg. ms. box). XV. Photographs: 2 boxes, 1970s-90s. XVI. Audio-Visual: 7 boxes: audio tapes (1), video tapes (1), mixed (2), slides (1 reg. box, 2 ms. boxes), 1970s, 1990s. XVII. Plaques, Certificates, Awards: 12 total boxes, 5 various ms. boxes, 4 record boxes: nominations, correspondence, plaques, awards, 1970s-1990s, as above, plus corr., pubs. XVIII. Memorabilia: 6 boxes, buttons, keys, robes, cane, hats, 1970s-1990s. XIX. Miscellaneous: holographic notes and notebooks, research papers, ephemera.

ORGANIZATION

The collection is arranged into nineteen series: I. Administrative
The Administrative series has been divided into seventeen sub-series: Board (2 boxes); Documents (1 box); Chronological (2 boxes); Office files (4 boxes); Funding (3 boxes, 1 ms. box); Finance (1 box); Correspondence (1 box); History (1 box); Archives; Personnel (.75 box); International Contacts (.25 box); Datebooks/calendars (.5 box); Ephemera (.5 box); Phone Logs (1 ms. box, 1 box); Rolodex/card files (1 box); Mailings (2 boxes); and Volunteer Work Applications (3 boxes).

The sub-series Board is a fairly comprehensive collection of communications to board members from the 1970s to the 1990s. It should be noted that in addition to minutes and agenda, these materials routinely include reports from various committees, including for example those of the Budget and Finance Committee. Although the corollary sub-series Finance has some of these reports, more can be found within the Board sub-series. 1970s Board material is also replicated within the sub-series History. The Board sub-series is extended in the Chronological sub-series, with more reports and more task force and committee related material.

The Documents sub-series separates out fundamental Gray Panther documents, including the Articles of Agreement (by-laws), Project Fund descriptions and Annual Reports.

The Chronological and Office Files sub-series are spin-offs of the Board sub-series. Both support the work of the administration and include drafts, memos, attachments, etc. Several task force related materials can also be found here (viz. minority, poverty and youth).

The Office Files reflect the growing staff and relate a bit more to the actual workings of the national office. These two sub-series (chronological and office files) are complemented by a sub-series within the Kuhn series, called Desk File 5/95, which documents many of the materials in or on Maggie's desk at the time of her death in April 1995.

Funding, Finance and Personnel have also been desegregated, to reflect these activities. Funding material is split between the 1970s and 1980s, with only a few folders from the 1990s. It should be noted that Maggie served as co-chair of the Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, an organization dedicated to shaking up the philanthropic world. This activity is minutely documented within the Organizations series, and complements the activity documented within the funding sub-series proper. The Reference files series and the Correspondence series, in addition to other administrative sub-series should also be consulted for funding related info.

Finance differentiates itself from funding with specific record keeping documents, although there is definitely overlap. Again, Personnel is primarily from the 1980s and reflects the growth in the staff and the need to formulate policies, job descriptions, etc.

History is an interesting aggregation of materials, primarily in two-parts, 1970-74 and 1975-78, with additional materials following. While much of what constitutes history appears to have been grouped together by Maggie and in the main is made up of minutes, agenda and correspondence., these files along with the rest of what is in the history sub-series (files, "xf" and papers), which add articles about their activities, together appear to be a series of increasingly cumbersome (valiant, albeit ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to compile a history of the Gray Panthers.

Volunteer Work Applications date from 1972 and 1973 and were originally addressed to the Retired Professional Action Group (RPAG) which merged with the Gray Panthers in 1973. This consists of applications, correspondence and attachments, of retired individuals interested in lending their expertise to making changes in society. The legal-size (8 1/2 x 14) applications ask numerous questions, both personal and professional, in an effort to ascertain the breadth and depth of this potential cadre of individuals. Some restrictions may apply.


II. Correspondence
There are letters and cards within this series. The bulk of this series is letters which are filed in gray Hollinger or manuscript boxes (as opposed to brown Record boxes) and organized chronologically. The cards are filed in the last three boxes, which are regular sized brown Record Boxes. The cards are unorganized.

Notable correspondence includes that with active Gray Panther members (Margaret Hummel, Schubert Frye, Jack Zucker, Lillian Rabinowitz, Billie Heller, Grace Gaines Jacobs, Sylvia Kleinman and Dave Brown, among others), with politicians (Frank Church, Edward Kennedy, Patricia Schroeder, William Gray, John Heinz, and Harris Wofford), gerontologists and academics (Robert Butler, Carroll Estes, Warren Salmon), other activists and thinkers (Ralph Nader, Robert Bothwell). There are former housemates (Anne Hayes Egan, for one), friends, and even home-made cards from the very impressed fourth grade class of Bache-Martin School, Philadelphia (Jan. 1993). The bulk of this material (everything except that filed "by individual" at the end), can be found by date, with folders frequently labeled by year and month.

Much of the correspondence comes in the form of carbon copy responses to letters received and/or original letters from correspondents. More than occasionally carbons are accompanied by penned drafts in Maggie's hand. A goodly number of attachments (viz. publications, resumes, photos (removed to Photos series, but photocopied here), have been retained with the letters. Letters received span the range of by hand, typewriter and computer produced.

There are mailgrams and mailgram confirmations. Letters have been placed in chronological order and range 1970-1995. Three boxes at the end of the chronological grouping, arranged alphabetically, separate out specific individuals (viz. Janet Neuman) or entities (White House).

It should be noted that much correspondence remains scattered throughout the collection.


III. Reference Files
This series complements and extends contents of two other series, Subjects and Organizations, with materials here ranging from 1984-1990. This series houses a mix of materials by topic (churches, Central America), organization (City Council, Committee on Philadelphia's Future) or format (clippings, articles about Maggie). 'Legislative info,' for example, includes a list generated by Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, this one on the Economic Equity Act of 1985, specifying different issues and pending legislation.

This series also includes publications (articles, newsletters, journals), lists, correspondence, notes. The arrangement is alphabetical.


IV. Subjects
The Subjects series consists of 20 boxes, with materials ranging in date from the 1970s to 1990s. This series has been organized primarily as an issues forum, capturing the various issues addressed by the Gray Panthers, harnessing of materials, framing of issues and steps taken by the Panthers. The types of materials cover the spectrum: publications, correspondence, position papers, notes, even petitions (ref. health below). The arrangement is alphabetical.

Given this issues focus, the following subjects are noteworthy: Health (c. 115 folders), Housing (c. 60 folders) and Housing America (another 30 folders), Church and Aging, Long Term Care Reform (primarily relating to nursing home reform), Media and Women.

So, for example, in the health files for 1974, relating to the American Medical Association (AMA) conference in Chicago, one can find not only the remarks of the president of the AMA, but a copy of the "Open Letter to the House of Delegates" criticizing the then current state of health care and delivery, as well as a lists of physicians supporting the letter, among other items. Additionally, holograph notes for the performance piece (or the street theater), designed by the Gray Panthers, using an "ambulance" driven up to the conference hotel (Palmer House) and an ailing doctor (symbolizing ailing health care in the U.S.) whose heart is found to be stuffed with dollar bills, not to mention a script and clippings related to the event, elsewhere in the collection.

The extensive amount of materials, especially within health and housing solely within the Subjects series, is reflective of Gray Panthers long time concentration in these areas and serves to document this activity. These files are incredibly rich and no amount of written detail would do justice to them.

Within Media, as well, for example, photocopies of letters sent in response to the airing of the film "Gray Panthers" on ABC television in November 1972, as well as several files relating to Maggie's first appearance on the Donohue show in 1973, not to mention materials relating to an appearance on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show."

Given the large amounts of material per topic, it should be noted that efforts have been extended to organize all material within each topic or issue in a loose chronological arrangement, starting with oldest materials first.

Related files include the series Organizations, Reference Files, and Projects.


V. Kuhn
The Kuhn series houses materials relating to Maggie Kuhn which are specifically personal (relate to her family, her house, etc.) or to her professional career pre-dating the Gray Panthers (i.e. before 1970). There is also a sub-series, Desk 5/95, which gives a glimpse into her immediate files ("on her desk") at the time of death.

In addition to correspondence and financial materials, there are three special groupings of material relating to her pre-Gray Panther career. Under topically oriented material one will find such areas as: change theory, American Institute of Planners, power structure/community analysis and housing. The materials under church related include extensive material relating to the Council on Church and Race within the Presbyterian Church. The remaining material within the professional sub-series relates primarily to the General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church, or overall church governance.

The professional material serves to document her interests in a healthy range of social justice areas well before her founding of the Gray Panthers and help explain some of the directions taken by the organization.


VI. Meetings
This series consists of 8 boxes divided into three sub-series: conferences, conventions and meetings. Conventions covers only Gray Panther conventions. All material has been placed in chronological order within each sub-series.

While much of the material in conferences is simply material gathered while attending various conferences, not all conferences are "equal" (viz. Ghost Ranch, especially in the early 1970s, and the conference dubbed the "Black House" and which predated the White House Conference in 1971, and by some was considered much more successful than the latter). The Ghost Ranch conferences served as think tanks for the organization. The "Black House" conference, which the Gray Panthers helped organize, addressed minority aging issues, which it was known would not be addressed in the larger gathering, the White House Conference.

At least two world assemblies are represented: the first organized by the NGO's (non-governmental orgs.) on Aging of the U.N. and taking place in Vienna in 1982 (cf. World Assembly in the inventory) and the second, specifically for world peace, taking place in Prague in 1983 (cf. Prague in the inventory). Maggie attended both, and these materials document that.

The Meetings sub-series (within the larger Meetings series) houses some of the folders created by Gray Panthers primarily for Maggie and the countless meetings she attended.


VII. Trips
Maggie was able to travel to several places including China, Canada and Russia. These materials have been placed in chronological order, by country visited.

The Canadian trip was spurred by a particular interest to look into the Canadian health care system and this is reflected in the documentation. The China trip, although also interested in health care, was more focused on aging.

Additional material relating to trips can be found within the series Meetings-Conferences (to Hawaii, Vienna and Prague, for example).


VIII. Speaking Engagements
Complete in 24 boxes, Speaking Engagements tracks Maggie's speaking engagements around the country and beyond, throughout the period covered by the bulk of this collection, i.e. 1970-1990s. As is testified by the extent of this material, speaking was a significant activity for Maggie, taking up considerable time and enabling her to make incredibly wide-ranging contact. This series documents both the speeches and the speech making.

The core of this series is a chronological arrangement of these engagements, with files including correspondence, forms, programs, some financial material (statements), and occasionally notes, drafts or other copies of speeches. The aforementioned programs frequently list panels, speakers and speeches. There are numerous "On the Road with Maggie" lists, which cover her imminent itinerary, scattered throughout the files.

In addition to the main chronological material, there is an administrative sub-series (with some office and agent materials), at the beginning. At the end, after the chronological files, is the "speeches" sub-series which relates more directly to actual speeches, including copies and drafts, source material and sermons.


IX. Local Networks
The core of this series is an alphabetical arrangement of files generated by or relating to the local networks of the Gray Panthers within the United States. The over-arching order is alphabetic by state. The greatest representations are naturally from New York and California, although significant networks dotted the country and scores of networks can be found here.

Each network was encouraged to take on issues that made sense for their particular constituency and resident talent. Early on New York tackled, for example, health care issues, with conferences in 1973 and 1974. Los Angeles sponsored a training workshop in organizing for grass-roots issues a year or two later. Chicago, among other things, produced theater and radio programs, not to mention a film series. Many groups monitored public utilities, recommended legislation and/or took on specific problems (i.e. to find out if lights at crosswalks were indeed long enough to allow adequate time to cross).

The bulk of material is correspondence, memos and notes relating to activity within the networks. Membership lists are quite common. Many files also contain newsletters, although the greatest concentration of newsletters produced by Gray Panther networks and task forces can be found within the Publications series.

Within the administrative sub-series filed at the beginning of the Local Networks series are groups of national surveys conducted by the Gray Panthers over the years, some of them general and some issue-specific, filed chronologically.

Complete in 17 boxes, the materials here are essentially confined to the mid-to-late 1970s to mid-1980s, although there are occasional outcroppings to 1990 (cf. issues of Chicago area newsletters from 1990).


X. Testimonies
This series houses a concentration of testimonies given by Maggie as well as other Gray Panther members, to Congress as well as more local venues, i.e. state legislatures, city councils, public hearings, etc. Testimonies were an effective means of putting the Gray Panthers "on the map," although this naturally was a by-product and their intended work, to alert, primarily lawmakers, about the need for changes.

Testimonies showcased Gray Panthers-specific as well as Maggie-specific talents: willingness to research and be knowledgeable about issues, to frame them and to speak about them (to educate and motivate others). Early testimonies, for example on fragmentation of health care delivery particularly to the aging, set the tone for legislative activity for years in these fields.

As another case in point, in the Background for this finding aid, the paragraph about the portrayal of the old in the media (roughly 3% in 1976 of major characters on prime time tv...) was excerpted from testimony in 1977 to the House Select Committee on Aging, "Hearing on the TV Industry." She also asserts that not only are images of the old (when there are any at all) incredibly negative and stereotyped, frequently with ill-fitting clothing, querulous or high-pitched voices, stubborn, rigid, inflexible, forgetful and confused, but that old people on average consume four to seven hours more than young people.

It should be noted that testimonies can still be found scattered throughout the collection.


XI. Organizations
This series houses materials generated by organizations which interacted with the Gray Panthers or Maggie Kuhn. Materials include correspondence, publications., notes, memos, minutes and agenda, and have been arranged alphabetically by name of organization.

Substantive materials are available for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, an organization Maggie helped to found and for which she served as co-chair or board member from 1976 to the early 1990s.

Given the Gray Panthers rather aggressive attitude about the utility of coalitions, a separate sub-series within this usual alphabetical arrangement, has been created to house coalitions, including, for example, the notable National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform (NCCNHR).

Other significant affiliations include Committee for National Health Service, National Senior Citizen's Law Center, National Caucus on the Black Aged, the United Nations, the White House, United Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare (UPHEWA) and assorted women's groups. Although in the main contentious, Gray Panther interactions with AMA (American Medical Association), are also documented here.


XII. Projects
The series Projects includes files generated by the following projects: Media Watch, Work (Project)s, Year of Wellness and the Mahler Committee.

Media Watch, lead by Lydia Bragger, was key in sensitizing the media about ageist stereotypes. Both Carol Burnett and Johnny Carson of television fame, were called to task, for example, the former for her Aunt Blabby caricature and the latter for tasteless jokes about old people and sex, betraying his own fears about getting older. The executive board of the National Association of Broadcasters voted in June 1975 to amend the NAB code to include the word "age" to its sensitivity guidelines pertaining to sex, race, and color, also in the wake of Media Watch prompting.

There are several groups of files labeled "work" or "work project" and they in fact refer to different projects. One, directed by K. Perkins, was actually a research project on the impact of early involuntary retirement on older women. Another, more or less dubbed the work project, also mid-80s, was a think tank arrangement soliciting input from all relevant sources on the question of good work, or why good work appeared to have disappeared and to seek to identify the "public policy innovations needed for a just society." This group sought to fill the vacuum created by the lack of response to societal crisis and human suffering. [It should also be noted that the Gray Panthers had also seized upon the notion of work restructuring, wherein different views of what work should look like were entertained, recommendations made. This is touched on within these files, but is dealt with more extensively in the series Subjects under "workplace reform."]

The Year of Wellness focused on North Philadelphia and a wide range of factors involved in creating healthy environments (in this case specific neighborhoods). This was built, in part, on a concept advanced earlier by the Gray Panthers, called Healthy Blocks, and documented within the Subjects series under Housing.

The Mahler Committee makes awards to scholars 70 years and older and began giving out awards in 1989. These files contain proposals and correspondence.


XIII. Shared Housing Resource Center
The Shared Housing Resource Center(SHRC) makes up a large portion of this collection. This series is large and therefore was organized as a “collection within a collection." It has been divided into the following sub-series: Administration, Client Files, Match Cards, financial (which contains some restricted materials), Correspondence, Meetings, Maggie Kuhn, Other Branches, Photographs (which have been removed and filed with the photograph collection), Publications, Audio-Visual, and Miscellaneous. This series has 21 boxes and covers the time period 1977-1996. Mention of the SHRC activities, efforts, and work can be found scattered throughout the Gray Panthers collection. Following is a brief history of SHRC.

The Shared Housing Resource Center (SHRC) was founded in 1981 by the founder and head of the Gray Panthers, Maggie Kuhn. Founded as a community based alternative to the housing crisis in the U.S., the goals of the SHRC was to provide safe, affordable housing for persons of all races, genders, and ages. Consistent with the goals of the Gray Panthers, SHRC sought to integrate the lives and concerns of the elderly with those of the younger generation, these living arrangements paired the young and old in “match" or “group" residences. Initially headed by Dennis Day-Lower (whose Boston Shared Living Project was the model for SHRC), the organization began as a local concern and later expanded into regional and national organizations with chapters in several cities and states.


XIV. Publications

The first five boxes of this series contain files relating to publications by or about Maggie or the Gray Panthers. The publications noted here include: books, articles, prefaces et al., magazines, journals, newsletters and newspapers. The files, though, also contain correspondence, notes and memos.
This has been organized along a hierarchy of materials generated by either Maggie or the Gray Panthers, followed by materials generated about them.

This includes material related to the production of her autobiography, No Stone Unturned , including correspondence, drafts, and some financial and business related material. Additional material that Maggie generated includes articles, interviews, prefaces, forwards and introductions.

Material generated by the Gray Panthers includes monographic publications (e.g. several editions of their Organizing Manual), newsletters, position papers, resource kits and ephemera. Material relating to the production of their newsletter, the Network , is also available here, while issues of said newsletter, from the 1970s to the 1990s, are housed in five separate boxes, just after the books.

The publications series also contains many separate boxes of books, publications and press clippings. Many of the books are inscribed to Maggie. The books are listed by title and author. While many "publications" have been retained in situ, the 10 additional boxes here include journals, magazines, newsletters, brochures, and government documents (U.S. and international). Publications are not separately listed nor organized.


XV. Photographs
There are two boxes of photographs which have been removed and filed with the photograph collection.


XVI. Audio-Visual There are seven boxes of various audio-visual materials.


XVII. Plaques, Certificates and Awards
Housed in a total of 12 boxes, the majority of the boxes contain plaques and or framed certificates. Also included however, are (1) files relating to various awards and nominations for awards, and (2) boxes containing crafted objects like crystal and plates, and unframed rolled certificates.

Three of the above mentioned boxes are oversized and one contains display calendars and datepads, along with miscellaneous large items. Keys to cities are filed with Memorabilia.


XVIII. Memorabilia
Housed in 3 record boxes and three significantly over-sized boxes, this series includes: regalia, a cane, hats, many buttons, keys to many cities, paper weights, etc.

One of the large boxes also contains protest posters and the like.


XIX. Miscellaneous
Housed in two boxes, noteworthy here are many folders of notes and notebooks in Maggie's handwriting. There are also several research papers, one or two on the Gray Panthers, another an unpublished memoir (of a Gray Panther, not Maggie), etc. The rest of the material is primarily miscellaneous ephemera.

This Document Was Last Modified On: January 22, 2002