Joseph A. Labadie Collection

The Joseph A. Labadie Collection is one of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind in the United States. Named for Detroit labor organizer and anarchist Jo Labadie (1850-1933), the scope of the collection includes anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, anti-war and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, labor and workers’ rights, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.

In addition to a photograph of Labadie and a speech card for one of his Detroit lectures, a letter from Labadie offering the collection to the University is on display. The letter describes Labadie’s and his supporters’ long-term campaign to house the collection at the University, in the state Labadie’s family inhabited and at the school his daughter attended. In a letter to John Rogers Commons, a labor historian at the University of Wisconsin who had expressed interest in the collection, Labadie wrote, “I made up my mind it should go where it was most needed—old moss-back Michigan.” The University accepted his donation in 1911, the year of this letter.