Schwendemann Manuscripts and Research Collection

The Schwendemann Manuscripts and Research Collection (1944-2009; undated) contains material related to research conducted by Glen Schwendemann, a historian and former Torrance Unified School District teacher. A majority of the collection is located in Series I and consists of primary source accounts of mob violence in the United States from 1840 to 1906. “Lynching” is understood as an event in which a person alleged to have committed a crime or offense is arrested and murdered (typically, hanged) by a mob; when the person is not arrested, but hanged or executed in some other manner by a mob, it is considered “murder.” Mob violence of the latter sort is often associated with the western part of the United States in the post-Civil War period. The events of mob violence documented largely took place in the mid-West and the South, and to less degree, in the West and Southwest. The material is divided into two main categories of persons (primarily men) lynched or murdered: “Blacks” and “Whites.” Latino, Native American, and Asian men are included in the sections on Whites lynched or murdered. There are also several accounts of the lynching of women in the two main categories. Notes indicate that two sections on mob violence – titled “Lynching of Black People” and “Murder of Black People” - were meant to be part of the material; these are not included in the collection, although an index of names titled “Blacks not Arrested but Killed by Mobs” is. The bulk of the material therefore is centered on “lynching” and “murder” of “Whites.”

This collection also contains material related to Schwendemann’s research on Nicodemus, an all Black colony that was founded in Kansas in 1877; and Black migration and Exodusters- African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas. This includes reproductions of archival material such as letters, photographs, petitions, and photographs collected from the Kansas State Historical Society; as well as published copies of Schwendemann’s articles on Nicodemus and Exodusters, and his thesis entitled “Negro Exodus to Kansas: First Phase, March-July 1879”. Other material in this collection includes copies of unpublished manuscripts by Schwendemann on ancient and medieval times; and personal papers such as diplomas, transcripts, resumes, documents related to Schwendemann family history, photographs, lists of books belonging to Schwendemann that were a part of his personal collection, material related to Schwenemann’s bookbinding hobby, and a copy of an Olympiad yearbook from Torrance High School.