Labadie Collection

With the help of his devoted wife, Sophie, Labadie collected and carefully preserved a vast amount of literature on social movements from the 1870s to his death in 1933, including his own writings and publications.

[3] In addition to materials created on Labadie's printing press and his vast correspondence, there were books, pamphlets, by-laws, newspapers, newsletters, announcements, membership cards, photographs, broadsides, and badges reflecting his activities in various labor and protest movements.

This might have remained the fate of the materials had it not been for wealthy Detroit activist, Agnes Inglis, who began doing research in the Labadie Collection in the early 1920s.

Despite the promise of Dr. Warner Rice, the new head Librarian, that the library would continue to add to the Labadie Collection, Inglis was not replaced for several years.

In 1960, Edward Weber, who had been working as a reference librarian in the Social Sciences section of the Library, was assigned full-time to the Labadie Collection.

Because there was still no acquisitions budget, Weber relied on donations and sympathetic library workers, who “adjusted” the accounts somehow and funneled subversive literature into the Collection.

Weber was an outspoken critic of censorship and ignorance, as well as a prolific letter writer, and the extensive correspondence he generated throughout his 40-year tenure kept the Collection growing.

His ingenuity and connections both within and outside the library helped bring in materials not many other institutions were collecting at that time: pamphlets and posters from the student, gay, civil rights, anti-war and Black, Chicano, and women's liberation movements, as well as underground newspapers, leaflets, political buttons, and other ephemera.

After his arrest, Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, officially designated the University of Michigan as the recipient of his writings, letters, and other papers for the Collection.