Davis, Allen Annis, Russell

Description

Interview with Allen Davis, former masters and doctoral student at UMass starting 1966; drawn here by Sid Kaplan, Jules Chametzky, and Morris Golden UMass during the late 1960s and early 1970s; became active politically and in educational reform focused on living/learning and integration of education and living in dorms like Orchard Hill; challenges of imposing the Oxford-Cambridge model on a large egalitarian state university led to tensions, but they and Project 10 in Southwest; interest in music went along with his other activities, bringing first jazz concert to UMass in 1970, later bring Eubie Blake, Sonny Stitt, and others along with Max Roach and others in the department, but with very little support from the University; class action lawsuit against UMass (with Arlene Avakian) for illegal hiring practices in starting new programs without wishing to support them in about 1976, then quit after winning; Dwight Allen as enemy of the progressives, the expectation at the time was for change; bringing in musicians to speak on campus; Max Roach and Archie Shepp; fiscal dynamics for music and state university; formation of the Dept. of Afro American Studies and cooperating with faculty (Chet Davis) on music.

Record Contributed By

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Record Harvested From

Digital Commonwealth