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The extensive collection documents the life and work of Richmond-born photographer and educator Louis Draper (1935–2002). Manuscript and photographic materials document Draper's experience and work as an African American photographer, including his recognition of his photography as a form of "engaged resistance" that not only bore witness to leaders of the civil rights movement, but also offered a richer and more diverse perspective of African American life than provided by the mainstream media. In 1963, he was a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of African American photographers, and the collection includes significant materials from the early years of the Kamoinge Workshop and document his perspective on the professional challenges that he and the collective confronted in the process of finding publications that would publish photographs of African Americans made by African Americans. His photographs of significant 20th-century artists, writers, musicians, and performers reflect the wide array of personal connections that Draper made after moving to New York from Richmond, Virginia in 1957. Printed photographs and contact sheets in Draper's archive show a broad view of city life and the everyday interactions between people and also offer a unique vision of African American neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Furious Flower Poetry Center Records, consisting of 17.6 cubic feet (43 boxes, 1 rolled storage container), document the departmental activities of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.

Letter and account books, clipping scrapbooks, and miscellaneous family papers of a pioneer, Ohio Valley, general merchandise firm founded by Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., at Marietta, Ohio, and operating under various names for a period of more than sixty years. The collection also includes the account books of Daniel, Richard, and John Greene, 1808-1844; account books of F.B. Loomis, 1842-1844; a medicinal formulary book; the estate records of John Brody; records of a pension and bounty land claims agency operated by George M. Woodbridge, 1861-1864; and justice of the peace accounts, 1832-1863. Subjects include the development of river markets, transportation, and the livestock industry in the early Ohio Valley; fur trade and commerce with England and Europe; the Marietta and Susquehanna Trading Company; Kanawha and Sciota salt works; Ohio Company lands; Woodbridge-Harman Blennerhassett partnership; ginseng trade; Wheeling Cotton Manufacturing Company; ropewalk and shipbuilding in Marietta; military land warrants; estate of George Morgan; career of William Woodbridge, United States senator and governor of Michigan; pioneer education; Meadville Seminary; Ohio University; Miami University; Marietta Collegiate Institute; Belpre, Ohio; American Catholic missions; early history of Marietta; the American Colonization Society; Washington County Colonization Society; churches; Washington County Tract Society; recruiting in Marietta during the Civil War; impact of the War of 1812 on westward migration and labor; and Woodbridge family affairs. Letters are addressed to merchants in London, France, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston (West Virginia), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, and Baltimore. Correspondents include Lewis Cass, Philip Doddridge, and Benjamin Reeder.