African American Museum and
Library at Oakland

At the African American Museum and Library
at Oakland (AAMLO), located in Oakland,
California, we have acquired and are currently
processing the Ronald V. Dellums (D-CA)
congressional papers. Dellums was elected to
represent the 9th Congressional District of
California, an area of Alameda County that
includes the cities of Berkeley and Oakland. He
was elected to office in 1970 and served from
1971 to 1999 (the 92nd to 105th Congresses,
respectively). While in office Dellums held
several significant committee memberships
and leadership positions, including the
Chairmanship of the House Armed Services
Committee and membership in the
Congressional Black Caucus, the latter of
which he co-founded. Throughout his career
Dellums was identified with his pacifist antiwar
values, socialist ideology, and his activist
stance on such issues as civil rights and the
abolishment of South African apartheid. As a
result of these and other related concerns,
Dellums was placed on the infamous “Nixon's
Enemies List.” This collection is a significant
addition to the AAMLO collections, and
strongly supports the mission of AAMLO,
which is "dedicated to discover, preserve,
interpret and share the historical and cultural
experiences of African Americans in California
and the West for present and future
generations." AAMLO is a "unique resource on
the history of African Americans in Northern
California and the [San Francisco] Bay Area"
(Oakland Public Library, 2007).
The collection is comprehensive and includes
various committee files, hearing and report
books; correspondence with constituents and
colleagues; legislation sponsored or cosponsored
by Dellums; personal files; staff
files; press files and other publications; and
subject reference files. Significant items in the
collection include the wide variety of
constituent issues as reflected in their
voluminous correspondence, invitations and
schedules for various political functions
including the Clinton inauguration, and
photographs. Also included are memorabilia
from Dellums' career and life, video recordings
of tributes upon his retirement from Congress

and extensive documentation of his work
involving budget authorizations for the
Department of Defense. Given how long he held
his office in the House of Representatives,
processing this collection has presented some
interesting challenges. The collection contains a
variety of non-paper record formats that require
a unique set of preservation considerations and
reflects the evolution of technology and its
incorporation in the Congressional office
environment. The presence of a set of electronic
records on computer tape brings to the forefront
one of the challenges in archival practice
presented by them: we do not have the hardware
or software to access what information is on
these tapes, how to document it in a humanreadable
manner, and determine whether or not
they are records at all.
As Dellums served in 14 Congresses spanning six
presidential administrations, these papers offer
unique insight into modern American political
history, especially during the latter years of the
Cold War and the fallout of the tumultuous
decade of the 1960s. The collection documents
Dellums' firm stand against apartheid in South
Africa and his role in the authoring and passage
of the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, a bill that had
such significant cross-party support that
Congress was able to override then-President
Reagan's veto. These papers are a valuable source
of evidence regarding Dellums' congressional
activity in support of the expansion of the civil
rights movement into support for women's
rights, abortion rights and federal support for the
war on AIDS. Perhaps most significant is the
documentation of Dellums' role as representative
of a district widely known for its virulent antiwar
demonstrations and marked political
activism.
As of June 2007, approximately 30 linear feet has
been processed and described. A collection guide
and inventory has been created and is updated as
record series are amended or completed. The
current version of the collection guide has been
encoded in EAD for distribution and viewing
over the World Wide Web via the Online Archive
of California (OAC). We anticipate posting this
collection guide to the OAC in late July 2007.

Lori A. Lindberg and Supriya V. Pidady-Wronkiewicz,
consulting archivists