1930's, a lawyer than people think. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> a literature professor looks at the history of the terms america first and the american dream. this is in her book, behold america. sunday night on c-span's q&a. lawrence kansas, where we are learning about history. we take you inside the wilcox collection of political movements, the largest assembly of political literature in the country. the collection is a celebration of free speech. it is one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. both left and right wing collections on the political spectrum.

the wilcox collection was acquired by the university of kansas library in 1965. we just celebrated our 50th anniversary. it was established by laird wilcox, who was at the time a slightly older than usual student here at the university. in the leftterested and right wing materials when he was very young. his grandparents, aunts and goals were all politically intense. they would have long discussions at the dinner table. some of them are right wingers or somewhere on the left. unbeknownst to his parents, he set up a po box and began writing to these organizations asking them for materials, and they sent them to him. when he arrived at the university of kansas, he had for

filing cabinets full of material , and he was politically active on campus. he was a member of the stevens for democratic society, but decided he was interested in selling his collection and the university library purchased it. asked to describe the collection, i stress that we collect both the left and right wing and so we tried to present both sides of the issues, and that is actually one of the strengths of the wilcox collection. someone can come here and do research and actually look at materials from both sides. this is a selection of books whose authors used the wilcox collection for their research.

we have researchers from all over the world come to use the wilcox collection. this book, american extremists, is a book that laird wrote himself. mid-1990's,in the just before the oklahoma city bombing, and after that terrible event occurred, his publishers wanted him to republish the book , and there is a photo from the bombing site. the other materials i have laid out on the table are materials from the collection itself. this first grouping represents inpanics and their interest american farm workers. that has served as the voice of the mexican-americans. this book is a cookbook.

you can see the play on caesar salad. this came out and support of the american farm workers strikes in the 1970's. at that time, let us was being boycotted. this cookbook on salads does not include lettuce. cesar chavez wrote some himself for the book. ais next grouping represents collection made up of materials that are usually thrown away. they are flyers or mailings that you might pick up on the street. that is one of the values of these collections is that they represent things that are often times not kept. a lot of that work was done by laird himself. you can see that on some of these items here and there is the wilcox collection stamp with the date.

this was received in july of 1986. laird acquired this probably through writing to the organization and requesting their materials. because the wilcox collection has been around for 50 years, it really can -- does document a long span of time. the whole of the latter part of the 20th century. some of thethat issues like gun control and immigration control are still issues that are being debated aroundbut they have been for sometimes 20 and 30 years. these are all materials that represents the things that were found to be blamed on communism, even the weather -- disastrous weather was blamed on communism by william mcburney.

these other books are more .nti-communist materials what was behind lee harvey oswald after he assassinated president kennedy, and even -- floridation in the water became associated with communism. this grouping represents the environmental movement. this is rachel carson's groundbreaking book, silent spring. her research on the effects of chemicals on the earth helped to launch the environmental movement. these bumper stickers and buttons are part of the

collection, and they are actually parts that i really enjoy working with. i love the fact that with just a few words, you can get a message across that really says it all, let this little, tiny sticker rush, from the flushal organization -- rush, from the national organization of women talking about rush limbaugh. we have a very large gathering from the black panthers, where mission, about their with the issues were, what they were trying to create, and we also have other materials relating to civil rights. this small pamphlet here that

was produced by the student nonviolent coordinating committee. 1960's, and the black panthers are from the 1960's as well and they go to the early 1970's. this is a manuscript collection that we acquired from a woman named phyllis johnson. she was a very conservative person who lived in california. the minuteember of women of the united states. they call themselves a nonpartisan organization. they united to combat communism, socialism, fascism, or collectivism in america. this is one of the newer parts of the wilcox collection that we have acquired. do-it-yourself

publications that people creates around an issue or a part of their lives. they might even talk about their feelings about different issues like bullying or things like that. the advantages are that you can just byone yourself cutting and pasting images and then xeroxing the sheets, stapling them together. you can do 10 or 20 and pass them around among your friends. we have probably about 1500. sometimes we face criticism for collecting the materials that we do -- the more extreme materials, because people feel we are given these -- giving these organizations a platform. you have to keep in mind that this is a collection that is

based on free speech, and a university campus is really the ideal space to be gathering materials that represents a lot and documentideas historically just what is happening in the world. if you don't have materials that represent both sides, then you really can't get a clear impression of what the issues are. >> our tour staff recently traveled to lawrence, kansas. learn more about it at and.org/cities tour. tour.c-span.org/cities

>> when the new congress takes office in january, it will have the youngest, most diverse freshman class in recent history. new congress, new leaders, watch it live on c-span starting january 3. >> each week, american artifacts takes viewers into archives and historic sites around the country. next, we visit the smithsonian national portrait gallery in washington, d.c. to tour their one-room exhibit examining the pivotal events and personalities of 1968. our guide through the collection of 30 images is portrait gallery historian james barber. james: welcome to the national portrait gallery. my name is james barber. i am a curator and historian at the gallery. today, we are going to look at the year 1968, 50 years back. we call it a one year exhibition about the year 1968. we are going to ben