Aaron Bernd papers

The collection contains the papers of Aaron Bernd from 1919-1937. The papers consist of correspondence, writings, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, printed material, photographs, legal documents, and financial records. Also included are digitized audio of conversations between Gus Kaufman, Jr., Jordan Massee, and Carey Pickard, III.

Correspondence primarily documents Bernd's professional activities as a literary editor and writer for The Macon Telegraph as well as his freelance literary endeavors. A large collection of personal letters from scholar and educator John Donald Wade concern faculty tenure negotiations at the University of Georgia in the 1920s. The correspondence also includes letters to and from Walter F. White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1924-1934 concerning racial prejudice in the South, lynching, and contemporary literature. Additional correspondents include Clark Foreman, Julia and Julian Harris, James Weldon Johnson, H.L. Mencken, Howard W. Odum, Arthur B. Spingarn, Laurence Stallings, Hank Fuller of the International Labor Defense, and Will W. Alexander and Robert B. Eleazer of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. The writings in the Bernd papers include drafts of Bernd's columns and reviews; an unpublished book draft co-authored by Susan Myrick entitled "We Get Along: A Primer for Yankees About Relations of Whites and Blacks in the South; and a genealogical work, This is the Saga of the Bernd, Block, and Blum Families in the United States of America. Scrapbooks primarily contain columns and articles by Bernd for The Macon Telegraph and additional correspondence. Other materials of interest in this collection include Bernd's will, photographs from the Signal Corps USA, and printed material from the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the NAACP.