http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3489r8ph No online items Loren Miller Papers: Finding Aid Finding aid prepared by Brooke M. Black in 2008. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens Manuscripts Department The Huntington Library 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2191 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org © 2009 The Huntington Library. All rights reserved. Loren Miller Papers: Finding Aid mssMiller papers 1 Overview of the Collection Title: Loren Miller papers Dates: 1876-2003 Bulk Dates: 1932-1966 Collection number: mssMiller papers Creator: Miller, Loren Collection Size: 10,454 items. 72 boxes. Repository: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Manuscripts Department 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, California 91108 Phone: (626) 405-2191 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.huntington.org Abstract: This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of journalist, civil rights activist, attorney and judge Loren Miller (1903-1967). The collection focuses on events taking place in Los Angeles and all of California; New York City and Harlem; Chicago and Detroit, chiefly between the 1930s and 1960s. Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English and Russian Access Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services. Publication Rights The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher. Preferred Citation [Item], Loren Miller Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Acquisition Information Gift of Loren Miller, Jr., donated in memory of Juanita Ellsworth Miller and Loren Miller in December 2006. Biographical Note Loren Miller, journalist, civil rights activist, attorney and judge, was born in Pender, Nebraska, in 1903 to former slave, John Miller, and Nora Herbaugh, a white Midwesterner of Dutch ancestry. Miller attended Kansas University and received his law degree from Washburn Law School in Topeka, Kansas in 1928. In 1929, Miller came to Los Angeles where he first worked as editor of the California Eagle, the oldest African American newspaper in Los Angeles, which he purchased in 1951. He also worked for The Los Angeles Sentinel with his cousin Leon H. Washington, Jr. In 1932, Miller and writer Langston Hughes went to the Soviet Union along with other African Americans to make a film on Negro life in Communist Russia. The film never got made. In 1933 Loren married Juanita Ellsworth, a social worker; they had two sons: Loren, Jr. and Edward Ellsworth. Loren passed the bar exam in California in 1933. Miller spent most of his legal career fighting discrimination (he assisted Thurgood Marshall with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas), chiefly housing discrimination and real estate racial restrictive covenants. In 1945 he was the lawyer for African American actress Hattie McDaniel in the Los Angeles "Sugar Hill" housing case, which he won. In 1948 he successfully argued the US Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer; the Supreme Court found that although real estate restrictive covenants were not unconstitutional in and of themselves, any enforcement of a restrictive covenant by a court would be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. He was a member of the Bars in Kansas and California. Miller was a member of and held offices in dozens of organizations including: the NAACP and its national legal committee; American Civil Liberties Union; National Urban League; Los Angeles Urban League; United States Commission on Civil Rights; League of American Writers; National Bar Association; National Conference of Christians and Jews; National Negro Congress; National Lawyers Guild; and the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. In 1964, Miller was appointed to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court. In 1966, Loren wrote The Petitioners: The Story of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Negro. He died in Los Angeles in July 1967. Scope and Content of Collection General Note Loren Miller Papers: Finding Aid mssMiller papers 2 This collection consists of the personal and professional papers of journalist, civil rights activist, attorney and judge Loren Miller (1903-1967). The collection focuses on events taking place in Los Angeles and all of California; New York City and Harlem; Chicago and Detroit, chiefly between the 1930s and 1960s. The collection contains 10,454 semi-cataloged items and is housed in 72 boxes and 3 oversize folders. The collection contains the following types of material: correspondence, telegrams, postcards, manuscripts, speeches, newspaper and magazine clippings, publications including full magazines, research notes, briefs and other legal documents, brochures, meeting minutes, reports and photographs. The following people and organizations are participants in the collection: Sadie Tanner Alexander, American Bar Association, American Federation of Labor, Charlotta Bass, Fletcher Bowron, Tom Bradley, Edmund "Pat" Brown, California Eagle, California Municipal Court (LA County), California Supreme Court, Civil Rights Congress, Nathaniel Colley, Congress of Industrial Organizations, Congress of Racial Equality, Benjamin Davis, Lester Granger, Augustus F. Hawkins, Langston Hughes, Japanese American Citizens' League, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, League of Struggle for Negro Rights, Los Angeles Bar Association, Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Urban League, Thurgood Marshall, Meschrabpom Film Company, Henry Lee Moon, Stanley Mosk, NAACP and its Legal Defense and Education Fund, National Bar Association, National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, National Conference of Christians and Jews, National Lawyers Guild, National Urban League, Joel E. Spingarn and the following federal entities: United States Commission on Civil Rights, Fair Employment Practices Committee, Federal Housing Administration, Housing and Home Finance Agency, National Housing Agency, and the Supreme Court as well as Robert C. Weaver, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, Franklin Williams and Whitney Young. Subjects in the collection include: Africa, African Americans and other minorities in the United States; African American newspapers; civil rights and civil rights workers; communists and communism both in America and Russia; crime and race; discrimination in many areas including criminal justice administration, employment, housing, law enforcement and public accommodations; gangs; hate crimes; hate speech; inner cities; miscengenation; police brutality and misconduct; poverty; abuse of prisoners; race riots including Chicago, Detroit, Zoot Suit and Watts; racial profiling; slavery and reconstruction and African Americans in American history; real covenants; the Scottsboro case; social work; urban renewal; the United States Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution; James Baldwin; Sammy Davis; Frederick Douglass; Lena Horne, Martin Luther King, Jr.; Jackie Robinson; Thomas J. Mooney; Malcolm X; and African American authors Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, George Schuyler and Jean Toomer. Correspondence The correspondence series, which contains 4,607 items, is mainly made up of correspondence written by and to Loren Miller, both business and personal. It includes letters, telegrams, cards, and postcards (most of the letters by Loren are typed copies that he retained in his office). The series is arranged alphabetically by folder title and then chronologically. Most of the correspondence is business in nature and the folders will also contain manuscripts and documents that accompanied the original correspondence. There is one full box of letters and telegrams to Loren congratulating him on his judicial appointment in 1964, including letters by Johnnie Cochran and Judge Joseph Wapner, and two full boxes of sympathy letters, telegrams and cards to Juanita Miller after Loren's death in 1967 including one by Frank Mankiewicz (press assistant to Robert F. Kennedy). Personal Papers The personal papers series, which contains 562 items, is made up of material related to Loren Miller's personal life and the Miller, Ellsworth and Gee families. It contains photographs, correspondence, documents, family trees, financial papers, and certificates. The series is arranged alphabetically by folder title and then chronologically. The photographs include family photographs and pictures of Loren Miller as a child. Some of the photographs are of Loren Miller's funeral and contain pictures of Tom Bradley and Evelle J. Younger at the funeral. Other people in the photographs are: Lena Horne, Lorne Green and DeFrantz Williams. There are also three full boxes of material related to Loren Miller, Jr. including notes from his law classes at Loyola Law School and several papers by students in a law class he taught. Professional Papers The professional papers series, which contains 4,213 items, is made up of material related to Loren Miller's professional life including legal work (discrimination cases), civil rights work and his own writing. The series is arranged alphabetically by folder title and then chronologically. It contains correspondence, manuscripts,