Central Toledo Action Committee records

The records of the Central Toledo Action Committee date generally from October 1971 to November 1973, with some pertinent material dating several years prior to and following the existence of the Committee; together they document the history of a diverse group of inner-city residents bound together by the need to improve living conditions. The efforts of the external pressure group are predominantly preserved in meeting agendas, correspondence, subject records, printed materials, newsclippings and photographs, which together provide several avenues of research.

Taken as a whole, the records of the Central Toledo Action Committee provide an excellent overview of the organization's functioning within the city of Toledo in general, and with the contemporary city administration. The meeting agendas, correspondence, subject/issue records, and printed materials clearly document the activities and concerns of the group. These also demonstrate the relationships CTAC had with city officials.

While CTAC was a coalition of a handful of geographically-specific action groups, the collection is primarily representative of the activities of the Old West End Action Committee, along with those of the coalition, CTAC. This is primarily due to the source of the materials, Diane Pribor, who was both a board member of CTAC, and Chairman of the Old West End Action Committee. A shortcoming of the collection, therefore, is the absence of the records of the other action groups; most of these committees only are mentioned on several occasions within the collection.

While the agendas for meetings, both within the group and with outside individuals, particularly city officials, are numerous, and indicate the general business attended to, actual minutes are few and scattered. For this matter, the correspondence provides a better indication of the actual action taken by the group. These, together with the numerous printed materials in the forms of press releases and general circulars, present for the researcher both the obstacles CTAC worked to overcome and its statements of intent. In-depth knowledge of issues can be obtained from subject records, which include such topics as schools, urban renewal, traffic patterns, open spaces, real estate and banking practices, and a court case brought by CTAC against the city of Toledo. Numerous reports by CTAC regarding housing conditions and firetrap status, give important scope to the most pressing and yet most controversial issues of relevance to the group.

A grasp for the larger, social and even political issues can be obtained in other subject records, which add considerably to the historical context for the Committee's existence. These include topics on maintaining the integrity of integrated neighborhoods, national and local organizations promoting the same, Model Cities Program studies, and a 1970 Census and Description of Toledo Housing Patterns. Reports in the form of Toledo City School Budgets, and subject records containing numerous Health and Building Codes, both municipal and state, provide a means to assess policies in force at the time of CTAC's activities.

Particularly useful to following the overall chronology of CTAC's actions, and to discovering general perceptions of the group, is the rich collection of newspaper and periodical clippings. As a body of information the clippings are for the most part accessible in the collection independently of other materials. In maintaining the original order of the collection, however, clippings having relevance to specific issues, filed in specific subject records, have been kept with that subject. For this matter, with some few exceptions, those newsclippings are not duplicated in the chronologically arranged newsclipping folders. Similarly, correspondence pertaining to specific subject records have stayed with the subject, while the majority of correspondence has been arranged chronologically on its own.

While there exists in the collection information on the funding of CTAC; there are no financial records available, with the exception of two banking deposit slips; these are of limited use to the researcher interested in this aspect of the agency's history.

Of supplemental value to the researcher is the inclusion of three hours of audio recording, an oral interview with Diane Pribor conducted in November 1989. The interview is indexed, allowing accessibility by topic, and includes an interview history to aid the researcher in placing the value of the interview into perspective. While some relationships are made more clear by the interview, the interview's chief value may lie in its contribution to understanding the philosophy of the organizational methods of the group, particularly the commitment to empowering the people.

Following the interview, additional materials were presented to the interviewer to be added to the CTAC Collection. These materials were of the same format as the original collection. Of particular importance was the addition of newspaper clippings for a period lacking in the original donation. This supplemented the existing media record by nearly twenty-five percent. These, together with additional correspondence, serve to clarify some matters otherwise taken up in the oral interview.