Guide to the Passing Though: A Yankee Radical Journey (with the FBI Tailing Along) , ca. 1992

Historical Note

Clive D. Knowles was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on February 15, 1910. He graduated with honors from Bates College in 1933. He earned a master's degree in social ethics from the University of Chicago in 1934, and an S.T.B. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1936. For a year he taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of Benjamin E. Mays (Bates Class of 1920), then dean of the Howard School of Religion. Ordained in the First Unitarian Church of Gardner, Massachusetts, he served that church for a year then became executive director of the Massachusetts Labor Non-Partisan Political League.

A combat veteran of World War II, Clive Knowles then began a lifetime career serving organized labor. He worked with the AFL-CIO in California, was an organizer with United Farmworkers alongside Cezar Chavez, and was also director of the Council of Carpenters. He devoted his life to help win equal pay and working conditions for minority groups in the workplace. After retirement, he was a ski instructor for five years with the Apache Mescalero Tribe of New Mexico. He spent the summers in Franklin, Maine, establishing the Molasses Pond Writer's Workshop, and with his daughter worked on production of the revival of Old Jed Prouty that played in coastal summer theaters. Author of the unpublished Passing Through A Yankee Radical's Journey, he also wrote a memoir, No Man Can Live Without Hope (1994). He died in Sarasota, Florida on February 27, 1996.

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Scope and Content Note

A typescript of Knowles' unpublished autobiography which provides a genealogical sketch of his family and traces his life from his boyhood in Massachusetts, through his service in World War II, and to his later work with organized labor.

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Organization and Arrangement

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Use Restrictions

The collection is the physical property of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Bates College holds literary rights only for material created by College personnel working on official behalf of the College, or for material which was given to the College with such rights specifically assigned. For all other material, literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. Researchers are responsible for obtaining permission from rights holders for publication or other purposes that exceed fair use.

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Related Material

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Index Terms

These records are indexed under the following headings in the Bates College Library catalog. Researchers wishing to find related materials should search the catalog under these index terms.

Topical Subjects:

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Administrative Information

Acquisition and Custody Information

No provenance information available. Accession No.: xx-062.

Preferred Citation

Passing Though: A Yankee Radical Journey (with the FBI Tailing Along), Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College.

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