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Contributing Institution:
California Historical Society
Title: Mike Miller papers
Creator:
Miller, Mike, 1937-
Identifier/Call Number: MS 4139
Physical Description:
147 linear feet
(133 record storage cartons)
Date (inclusive): circa 1958-2012
Abstract: The Mike Miller papers document
Miller's six decades as a community organizer, comprising institutional records, writings,
and extensive subject files of the donor's research into the history and practice of
organizing. Topics are wide-ranging and include the civil rights movements of the 1960s; the
anti-urban renewal struggles of the 1960s and '70s; labor and left-wing movements from the
1970s to the present; the religious left; and community organizing as a grassroots model for
civic engagement. The collection includes correspondence, research and position papers,
outreach and training materials, drafts of Miller's work, public documents, and
books.
Language of Material: Materials primarily in English,
with a limited amount in Spanish and Portuguese.
CHS is not taking appointments for research at this time. Please check the Library's website updates:
https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/collections/north-baker-research-library/
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased from Mike Miller, 2011.
The collection is divided into five series, roughly following Mike Miller's original filing
scheme: 1) Organizational records; 2) Subject files; 3) Manuscripts and personal papers; 4)
Audiovisual materials; and 5) Publications and ephemera.
The Organizational records series is broken down into a number of subseries containing
materials from various organizations with which Miller has worked. The Subject files series
is likewise separated into many subseries, most of them reflecting Miller's own arrangement
and labeling of his voluminous subject files. The Manuscripts series is broken down into
four subseries, comprising Mike Miller's college papers, his manuscripts and articles, the
materials he used as a university instructor, and his correspondence. Materials in the
Audiovisual materials and Publications and ephemera series are unarranged.
Mike Miller was born in 1937 and first became involved in activism as a student at the
University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in political science and sociology and
acted as a founding member of the leftist student government faction SLATE.
After 1962, Miller worked full-time for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
registering voters in Mississippi, among other accomplishments. In 1966, he accepted a job
working for Saul Alinsky at the Industrial Areas Foundation, and in 1972 he returned to the
Bay Area to begin the neighborhood organization and training work that has constituted the
bulk of his career. With the Mission Coalition Organization (MCO), he worked to avert
so-called urban renewal efforts, which in practice tended to break down neighborhoods that
had historically been home to marginalized people. At the same time, the MCO participated in
a Lyndon Johnson program called Model Cities, which was intended to fund and strengthen
local, grassroots political power. As founder of the ORGANIZE! Training Center, Miller also
began to train residents and union members in the organization techniques he had learned
both from experience and from his work with Alinsky, going on to a sixty-year organizing
career.
Materials were compiled by Mike Miller and stored in his home until they were purchased in
2011 by the California Historical Society.
[Identification of item, date]; Mike Miller papers, MS 4139; [box number, folder number];
California Historical Society.
Materials were left in their original folders when those folders were in good condition;
folders that had deteriorated were replaced. Most folders were left undated, and their dates
in the finding aid represent the broad circa dates of the entire collection; in a few cases,
folders whose original date ranges were on their original labels have been assigned these
narrower dates.
A few subseries, all in the Organizational records series, were processed at a higher level
due to their likely interest to researchers: Mission Coalition Organization, La Guardia
Tenants' Association and other housing organizations, All Peoples' Coalition, and San
Francisco Organizing Project. These subseries have been precisely dated and refoldered in
legal-sized folders.
Although this series contains a subseries on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), the materials in it are limited and largely consist of photocopies. The bulk of
Miller's records from his time with SNCC were donated to the
University of Southern Mississippi .
The Mike Miller papers document Miller's six decades as a community organizer, comprising
institutional records, writings, and extensive subject files of the donor's research into
the history and practice of organizing. Topics are wide-ranging and include the civil rights
movements of the 1960s; the anti-urban renewal struggles of the 1960s and '70s; labor and
left-wing movements from the 1970s to the present; the religious left; and community
organizing as a grassroots model for civic engagement. The collection includes
correspondence, research and position papers, outreach and training materials, drafts of
Miller's work, public documents, and books.
The content of Miller's papers reflects his early involvement with the student civil rights
organizations SLATE and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); his work as the
principal organizer for the Mission Coalition Organization (MCO), a grassroots coalition of
approximately twenty-five community organizations that resisted top-down urban renewal
efforts in San Francisco's predominantly Latino Mission District in the late '60s and early
'70s; and his decades-long community organizing work as director of the San Francisco
nonprofit ORGANIZE! Training Center (OTC), which he founded in 1972. The collection spans
the years circa 1958 to 2012.
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by Mike
Miller were transferred to the California Historical Society (CHS) in 2011 by donor.
Reproduction or publication of materials in this collection beyond that allowed by fair use
requires the written permission of CHS. Please contact rights@calhist.org.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Community organization -- United States
Labor movement -- United States
Urban renewal -- California -- San Francisco
Civil rights movements -- United States
Landlord and tenant -- United States
Religion and politics -- United States
Miller, Mike, 1937-
Mission Coalition Organization (San Francisco, Calif.)
Organize Training Center
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)