Dr. Rawick donated his papers to the University Archives on October 5, 1989.

Dr. Rawick was an author, teacher and political activist.He was best known for his research on slavery which resulted in his book From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community. The book, published in 1972, has been translated into more than 12 other languages. Dr. Rawick also compiled the slave narratives done by the W.P.A. in the late thirties into The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Rawick taught History and Sociology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis for the last 11 years of a teaching career which spanned 35 years. He also taught at Washington University, Wayne State University, State University of New York, University of Chicago and others. Dr. Rawick was involved in leftist politics from his earliest days at Oberlin College where he received his bachelor's degree.

The Rawick papers include corespondence, publications, the writings of Dr. Rawick, and many of his contemporaries and students. The collection also contains a large part of the papers of Terrence Powderly, an official with the Knights of Labor. The Powderly papers cover a period from 1864 to 1937. Also included in the collection are the transcripts of many of the slave narratives collected by the Writers Project of the W.P.A. in 1936 and 1937. Several of Dr. Rawicks's lectures, as well as an oral interview with him, are on audio tapes in the collection, as well as a small number of family photographs (most unidentified).

Digitized History via the Libraries of the University of Missouri-St. Louis
©UM-St. Louis 1995