archives

I wanted to add a couple more libraries and other resources regarding The Blast and other anarchist materials held in the Bay:

California State University (East Bay) and the University of California (Santa Cruz) also have original editions of The Blast.

I haven't been to the Longhaul Infoshop in Berkeley in a good while, but they should have materials on anarchist history in the Bay Area. It may not go as far back as the 1910's, but i know they have a sort of library in there.

Freedom Archives is an audio archive with materials on all kinds of social movements in the Bay Area and beyond. Doing a search for "anarchism" gives you a number of results on the anarchist inspired Food Not Bombs project. (Searching for "anarchy" or "anarchists" brings some stuff up, but it's not Bay Area stuffs.)

The Labor Archives at San Francisco State University has one entry of materials relating to anarchism:
* JEAN PAULINE: (b. 1921) Retired from Modern Times Bookstore Collective in 1996 after
twenty-five years; discusses youth in Brooklyn, 1920s-1930s, early interest in cooperatives and
anarchism, coming to California, 1944; helping establish Peace and Freedom Party in San Diego,
1967; and Modern Times Bookstore Collective in San Francisco, 1971; describes assisting
victims of AIDS crisis, San Francisco, 1980s.
Interview conducted by Harvey Schwartz

The San Francisco Public Library has an entry for a 1992 anarchist newsletter called The Web. It's not clear what their holdings are. You might want to contact the archives of the San Francisco Public Library to see what they have as well.

Adding to my RR colleagues here: on scholarships, and on the connection of Chicana/o studies to librarianship:

While not everyone who graduates with a BA in Chicana/o Studies is necessarily a person of color, I would like to point out the scholarship opportunities from the American Library Association directed to such folks. The Spectrum Scholarship has been around for a decade now and has helped a number of students-of-color with costs through library school. The American Library Association has a bunch of other scholarships that anyone interested in librarianship should seek out as well. I am a spectrum scholar and like to promote when i can!

As for the connection of Chicano Studies to librarianship:

I see that you're in Ventura, between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. In Los Angeles, if you have time to get out there (and you can just email or call these folks, as well), there is the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research (SoCalLib)which broadly has materials on social movements in LA, there's UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center Library & Archives, and the County of Los Angeles Public Library's Chicano Resource Center.

In Santa Barbara there is the University of California's California Ethnic & Multicultural Archive (CEMA) which is another institution to contact about the connections between your degree and librarianship.

I did a cursory search of Ventura County's libraries, and didn't find a specific repository of Chicana/o materials, but you should contact that system as well to see what they have.

Google gets 7 hits (not including this question!) for the search: 1913 Portland free speech fight "Mary Schwab", including Portland Radical History Tour. This site says: "This is for you to take to the library or the Historical Society or to the City Archives and spend hours finding details...". The links specifically to Mary Schwab (www.fresnoalliance.com/IWW/analysis.htm) and the 1913 Free Speech Fight (www.fresnoalliance.com/IWW/analysis.htm) are broken, but their names, places and dates can give you hints for more searches. IWW portland "free speech fight" site:edu gets 36; IWW portland "free speech fight" 1913 gets 240, etc.

Pursuing those "Historical Society" and "City Archives" leads, the Oregon Historical Society gets no hits for: mary schwab in its catalog, and their links to other sources such as Northwest Digital Archives also get no hits for Mary Schwab as a phrase. The Portland City Archives may be a bit of a project to access - see Using the City of Portland’s Archives (Historical Collection) for some not very detailed information.