Inventory of the Robert Coles Papers, 1954-1999

Collection Number 4333

Manuscripts Department, University Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Contact Information:

Manuscripts Department

CB#3926, Wilson Library

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890

Phone: 919/962-1345

Fax: 919/962-3594

Email: mss@email.unc.edu

URL: http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/

Descriptive Summary

Repository

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.

Creator

Coles, Robert.

Title

Robert Coles Papers, 1954-1999

Call Number

4333

Language of Materials

Materials in English

Extent

Items: About 14,000

Linear Feet: 38.0

Administrative Information

Restrictions to Access

This collection has restrictions to access. Please see details below or contact the Manuscripts Department for more information.

Usage Restrictions

RESTRICTED: Series 1, 4, 5, and 6 and additions may be used only with the permission of Robert Coles.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Robert Coles, Cambridge, Mass., in October 1982, October 1987, May 1989, and July 1991, with numerous additions after 1992; and from Chris Sims in June 1999.

Processing Information

Processed by: SHC Staff, 1980s-1990s, and Margaret Dickson, June 2007

Encoded by: Margaret Dickson, June 2007

Additions have not been incorporated into the original arrangement.

Additional Descriptive Resources

A finding aid compiled between 1982 and 1996 is available upon request at the repository.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Robert Coles Papers #4333, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Online Catalog Headings

These and related materials may be found under the following headings in online catalogs.

American literature--20th century.

Berrigan, Daniel.

Campbell, Will D.

Child psychiatry--United States--History--20th century.

Coles, Robert.

College teachers--Massachusetts--History--20th century.

Harvard University--Faculty--History--20th century.

Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926-

McCarthy, Corman, 1933-

Mondale, Walter F., 1928-

Psychiatrists--Massachusetts--History--20th century.

Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-

Woodward, C. Vann (Comer Vann), 1908-

Related Collections

Southern Oral History Program Papers (#4007), Interview with Robert Coles (B-2).

Biographical Note

Time magazine has called Robert Coles "the most influential living psychiatrist in the U.S." Though best known for his work on children, he is also a leading authority on poverty and racial discrimination in the country. He first won recognition for his studies of black children in the South. From these, he has gone on to observe and write about children of other minorities (Native Americans, Inuit, and Chicanos) and in other stressful or disadvantaged situations (migrant camps, ghettos, Appalachia, and Northern Ireland.) Through his writings and testimony before congressional committees, he has sought reform in the areas of race relations, mining conditions, pesticides, health services, and, particularly, hunger and malnutrition. Coles has also written widely on contemporary literature, religion, psychology, and other dimensions of American culture.

Coles was born October 12, 1929, in Boston. He earned his B.A. from Harvard in 1950 and his M.D. from Columbia in 1954, after which he decided to become a child psychiatrist and continued his training through into the Air Force and served as chief of neuropsychiatric services at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.

At the end of his tour of duty in 1960, Coles became a member of the Psychiatric Staff of Harvard's Medical School (1960-1962) and Health Services (1963-). He and his wife, however, lived in Vining, Georgia, near Atlanta, for the first half of the 1960s, where he studied black children and how they were affected by school desegregation and the civil rights movement. He himself was actively involved in civil rights work during those years, particularly through the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which he served as psychiatric counselor. In 1966, he returned to Harvard as a lecturer in general education. In 1978, he became professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at the Harvard Medical School.

A year after his return to Harvard, Coles published his first book, Children of Crisis: A Study in Courage and Fear, based on his work in the South. This was the first of a five-volume series, volumes two and three of which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Coles has written over thirty-five books (as of 1983) and over 500 articles, which have been published in more than sixty magazines, journals, and newspapers. He is a regular contributor to Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, Boston Globe, and several psychiatric journals. Since 1966, he has been a contributing editor to the New Republic, and has served on the editorial boards of American Scholar and several other journals.

In 1960, Coles married Jane Hallowell of Boston. They co-authored the two-volume Women of Crisis and several other works. They live in Concord, Mass., and are the parents of three sons.

Collection Overview

The collection consists primarily of child psychiatrist, social activist, and author Robert Coles's correspondence and writings from the mid-1960s onwards, with a few articles from earlier years. Correspondence is with psychiatric and journalistic colleagues, students, editors and publishers, readers, friends, and others, including Daniel Berrigan, Robert Jay Lifton, Will Campbell, Robert Penn Warren, C. Vann Woodward, Cormac McCarthy, and Walter Mondale. Writings include drafts of most of Coles's books, and drafts and published versions of most of his articles. Other writings include speeches, interviews, and congressional testimony by Coles, writings by others about Coles, and miscellaneous subject files relating to Coles's teaching and public appearances. The collection also includes drawings by children that were included in an exhibit titled "Their Eyes Meeting the World: The Drawings and Painting of Children," as well as other exhibit materials.

Additions to the collection have not been incorporated into the original arrangement.

Arrangement of Collection

1. Correspondence
2. Works by Coles
3. Works about Coles
4. Subject Files
5. Engagement Files
6. Teaching Files
Additions

Items Separated

Oversize paper folders (OP-4333/1-11)

Detailed Description of the Collection