Collection is open to the public. Collection must be used in Special Collections and University Archives Reading Room. Collection or parts of collection may be stored offsite. Please contact Special Collections and University Archives in advance of your visit to allow for transportation time. Glass plate negatives and lantern slides are restricted due to the fragility of the format. All decisions regarding use will be at the discretion of the curator for visual materials.
Paper finding aid with additional information is available in Special Collections and University Archives.
Jerome Davis (1891-1979) was born in Kyoto, Japan to Jerome Dean Davis and Frances Hooper Davis, both missionaries. Davis married Mildred Rood in 1920 and had three children. Davis attended Oberlin College, Columbia University, and the Union Theological Seminary.
Davis worked on the world's committee of the YMCA in Russia from 1916-1918. He worked again for the YMCA in Canada where he was the director of POW camps, 1940-1943. He was also a visiting professor and lecturer at Japanese universities.
Davis became an international activist for peace and social reform, labor organizer, and sociologist, teaching at Dartmouth and Yale Divinity School. He was denied tenure in a controversial case related to his Socialism and relationships with Bolshevik leaders.
The papers include manuscripts of and correspondence relating to 17 books, manuscripts of articles and reviews, speeches, diaries for 1915 and 1942, and correspondence concerning lectures and course notes.
The collection is organized into the following series: Correspondence, Manuscripts, Lectures, Critical Correspondence, Miscellaneous.
The manuscripts series is divided into book, articles, newspaper articles (1943-1944), speeches (1919-1955), prayer and sermon sections. The book-length manuscript section is organized alphabetically by title of work and each entry may include notes, correspondence, research, drafts, reviews and publicity files. The articles are also filed alphabetically by title.
The lectures series includes correspondence and debate, symposia and conference documents, 1918-1954.
The miscellaneous series includes biographical material, course and lecture notes, Russian posters, publications, diaries (1915; 1942) and an address book.
The photographs included in the collection concern personal and professional subjects including images of Gandhi during his vigil for his wife, the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain, cooperative shops in Scandinavia, and an extensive series of lantern slides that were used to illustrate a lecture on Russia.
The correspondence series is organized alphabetically by person or organization and the critical correspondence series covers the years 1918-1937.
Major correspondents are: American Federation of Teachers, American Friends Service Committee, American Sociological Society, Connecticut Federation of Churches, Maurice N. Eisendrath, Farrar & Rinehart (publishers), William Grenfell, Julius Hecker, Reinhold Niebuhr, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt.
There are also files of correspondence and documents relating to the Brightwater cooperative project, Bath, Maine (1925-1932); the Connecticut Legislative Commission on jails (1916-1938); Davis vs. Curtis Publishing Company (1939-1950); the Langrock Clothing Company arbitration case, New Haven, Conneticut (1933-1934); Promoting Enduring Peace, Inc. (19471959); the Sacco-Vanzetti case (1927); the Toledo, Ohio, vice investigation (1933-1934); Yale University (1922-1936); the Y.M.C.A. International Committee for Work with Prisoners of War (1916- 1918) ; the Y.M.C.A. World's Committee on Prisoners of War (1941-1944).