By Andrew Salinas
Title: Stanley Moreland Douglas papers, 1909-1977
Creator: Douglas, Stanley M. (1898-1977)
Extent: 1.4 Linear Feet
Date Acquired: 04/01/1985
The papers of former Assistant New York State Attorney General Stanley Moreland Douglas contain correspondence, clippings, photographs, elections materials, and other collected materials largely pertaining to Douglas' career and active civic and political life.
Correspondence includes several letters of congratulations regarding Douglas' appointment to Assistant Attorney General; a 1944 letter to Gov. Thomas E. Dewey reporting as Dewey's representative at a conference on better incorporating African Americans in education, government, labor, and in post-war America more generally; a 1945 letter to Dewey as state representative at the Interstate Post-War Planning Commission Conference at Lincoln University, praising New York's newly-formed Fair Employment Practices Commission as the center of discussion and the impetus for legislation elsewhere; and a 1945 letter from Major League Baseball executive Branch Rickey inviting Douglas to contribute to a YMCA-sponsored Dodgers-Giants baseball game welcoming all returning prisoners of war from Brooklyn, Long Island, and Queens. A smaller amount of personal correspondence is included, and this regards class reunions, family matters, pets, and other topics. Notable correspondents include A. Philip Randolph, Mordecai Johnson, Perry W. Howard, Thomas E. Dewey, Jacob Javits, Louis Lefkowitz, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Walter Francis White, Carter G. Woodson, Fiorello LaGuardia, and William E. Jenner.
A photograph album consists primarily of photographs of Howard University student life in the late 1910s and early 1920s and classmates at Somerville High School (New Jersey). Photographs depict football, baseball, and college social life at Howard; members of Delta Sigma Theta at the home of Frederick Douglass; "favorite haunts" around Washington, D.C.; and pictures of Howard graduates from 1920 and 1921. Noteworthy photographs include the mid-1910s football and baseball teams at Somerville High School, in which Paul Robeson and Stanley Douglas were teammates. Some of the earliest issues of The Oracle, where Douglas served as its first editor, have been removed to the Center's library holdings.
Stanley Moreland Douglas was born in Danville, Virginia, in 1898, and graduated from Somerville (NJ) High School, where he was a classmate and football and baseball teammate of Paul Robeson. Douglas attended Howard University, where he graduated in 1920, and Fordham University Law School, where he graduated in 1923. As a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, Douglas was the first editor of its official organ, The Oracle. Douglas also served on the board of directors of the Carlton Avenue Branch YMCA, the Brooklyn and Queens YMCA, and the YMCA of Greater New York, and he was president of the Brooklyn Branch of the NAACP from 1929 to 1931. In 1944, he served as vice chairman of the New York War Fund. Douglas was also an active member of the Republican Party and served on a special committee to integrate Major League Baseball. In 1944, Douglas was appointed as an Assistant Attorney General of the State of New York, where he served until his retirement in 1971. Douglas died in Brooklyn in 1977.
Acquisition Source: Vivian Edwards Douglas
