The Harold D. Guither HSUS Archive

In the HumaneWatch Document Library you can already see two significant archives of documents originally collected by others. One is a set of papers from the late Amy Freeman Lee, a 30-year veteran of HSUS’s Board of Directors. The other is an extensive set of controversial, internal HSUS Board documents from former Board member Susan Pepperdine.

Today, through the courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives, we’re releasing a third such "special collection": The Harold D. Guither HSUS Archive.

Harold Guither was an agricultural economics professor at the University of Illinois until he retired in 1995. In his 1998 book, Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement, Guither profiled HSUS, PETA, the “Physicians Committee” for Responsible Medicine, and other liberate-the-lab-rats groups. (We reviewed that book last month.)

This archive largely includes items from the early 1990s, with a few from the 1980s. It includes gems like a speech from then-CEO John Hoyt to the California Farm Bureau Federation about HSUS and vegetarianism; HSUS catalogs full of endless tchotchkes; and some comparatively radical writings of former HSUS vice president Michael W. Fox.

Click here for a full list of these documents and direct links to download them all.