This series pertains to the activities of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence Chairman, Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, Commission members and staff, as well as the research undertaken and the information collected for the preparation of the reports issued by the Commission and its task forces.
The subject files of Executive Director Lloyd N. Cutler and Co-Directors of Research James F. Short and Marvin E. Wolfgang include correspondence and memorandums pertaining to commissioners’ and senior staff members’ activities. The task force files consist of other administrative records, including correspondence, notes, memorandums, reports, work plans and outlines, and contracts.
Records of the Commission’s public activities include correspondence, statements, press releases and clippings about the work of the Commission and its task forces. Records about the hearings the Commission held and the conferences it sponsored (Conference of Academicians, July 9-10, 1968; Conference on Youth and Violence, November 6 and December 3, 1968; Seminar on Urban Design and Violent Crime, November 16, 1968; and Mass Media Conference, December 14-15, 1968) include transcripts, agendas, witness statements, correspondence, memorandums, and reports. There are also draft and final versions of the Commission’s and task forces’ reports published by the Government Printing Office (GPO).
Records of the Commission’s and task forces’ research files include correspondence with and memorandums to and from consultants and other task force members; reports by consultants, law enforcement agencies, universities, and firearms dealers; news clippings, articles and abstracts about matters under study; published works of Federal agencies and private groups; subpoenas issued to print and broadcast media companies and to firearms manufacturers and dealers; state and local statutes pertaining to firearms; index card files of published information sources and of persons; questionnaires regarding assassinations, the mass media, and gun ownership; bibliographies on subjects studied by the task forces; microfilmed dissertations on political violence; photographs taken by Commission staff or consultants in the course of their research; sound recordings of a Commission meeting, of media broadcasts, and of interviews conducted by Commission staff or consultants; and machine-readable data files and printed output.
Broad subjects studied by the Commission and its task forces with respect to violence include: assassination, riots, group and individual acts of violence, law and law enforcement, the mass media, firearms, American history and national character, youth, and urban design. One task force investigated specific instances of violence in 1968-69 in Cleveland, Ohio (police ambush), San Francisco, California (disturbance at San Francisco State College), Chicago, Illinois (Democratic National Convention), Miami, Florida (Republican National Convention), and Washington, DC (Presidential Inauguration).
