Rockefeller Archive Center

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports are created by recipients of research travel stipends and by many others who have conducted research at the RAC. The reports demonstrate the breadth of the RAC's archival holdings, particularly in the study of philanthropy and its effects. Read more about the history of philanthropy at resource.rockarch.org. Also, see the RAC Bibliography of Scholarship, a comprehensive online database of publications citing RAC archival collections.

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A New Dealized Grand Old Party: Labor, Civil Rights, and the Remaking of American Liberalism, 1935-1973

July 21, 2020

Drawing on the wealth of material from the Nelson A. Rockefeller papers held at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), my dissertation project examines the rise and fall of the "liberal" wing of the mid-twentieth century Republican Party. Big city Republicans from industrial states faced social movements that made mass democracy a vibrant force. Liberal Republicans emerged among the typically wellto-do men and women of older and established neighborhoods in New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. While no less an elite class than other Republican partisans, urban Republicans witnessed the upheavals and political transformation of the city firsthand. Unlike the rural and suburban right, big city Republicans simply could not imagine mounting a frontal assault against the vaunted New Deal coalition. In this setting, the reactionary bent of the party's base actually looked more like an electoral liability. Liberal Republicans insisted that winning statewide (or national) office required votes from major cities home to a diverse and organized working class that otherwise voted for Democrats. But securing any significant segment of that vote required a series of accommodations that most Republicans simply could not tolerate.

Nelson A. Rockefeller Papers; Rockefeller Family; Urban and Suburban

The Potentials of Performance: the Role of the Rockefeller Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the Development of Regional Professional Theater

January 1, 2010

My dissertation examines live theatrical performance in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on the development of a new era of cultural professionalism and its impact on the urban community of the region. In conducting research at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) I was therefore most interested in the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) in Minnesota, and their support of the regional theater movement there. While the material at the RAC did provide insight into activities in the Twin Cities area, especially in connection to the University of Minnesota, the collection also illuminated the role of the RF and the RBF more generally in developing arts organizations, the work of individual artists, and the infrastructure of nonprofit art across the United States.

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