Bontecou, Eleanor Papers

Attorney, Civil Rights Section, Department of Justice, 1943-1946; Legal Adviser, War Crimes Branch, Civil Affairs Division, War Department, 1946-1947

The papers of Eleanor Bontecou consist of correspondence, legal briefs, memoranda, newspaper clippings, notes, press releases, reports, and other materials relating to Ms. Bontecou’s work and interest in legal questions surrounding various civil rights issues.

Size: 6 linear feet, 2 linear inches.
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donor gave to the U.S. government the copyrights in this material and in any other material received by the U.S. government and maintained in a depository administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Erwin J. Mueller (1974); Randy Sowell (2000); Tammy Williams (2023).

The Eleanor Bontecou Papers contain legal briefs, reports, memoranda, notes, manuals, and other materials related to Ms. Bontecou’s service with the Justice Department and the War Department. The collection contains information on several pivotal issues that arose during the Truman administration: civil rights, internal security, and war crimes. The collection is arranged into four series.

The first series, the General File, contains legal briefs, manuals, memoranda, notes, and reports on general legal topics related to Ms. Bontecou’s legal career in the federal government. Among the items in this series is a copy of the rules of criminal procedure, and the operations manual for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. This series also contains Ms. Bontecou’s personnel file material from her federal employment.

The second series is the Civil Rights File. This series contains correspondence, notes, memoranda, legal briefs, pamphlets, press releases, legislation, reports, journal articles, clippings, charts, and graphs relating to civil rights issues, including First Amendment issues such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Included are materials collected and used during Ms. Bontecou’s service with the federal government, as well as material that post-dates her federal employment and documents her continued interest in civil rights issues. Topics addressed in this series include the case of Screws v. U. S.; laws governing elections, such as the Hatch Act and the Federal Corrupt Practices Act; cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses; the National Labor Relations Act, the War Labor Disputes Act, and the federally secured right to strike; police brutality, especially perpetrated against Black soldiers and veterans; and voting rights.

The third series is the Internal Security File. This series contains correspondences, law review articles, manuscript drafts, memoranda, newspaper clippings, notes, press releases, regulations, and reports relating to rules governing and investigations of the loyalty of government employees at the federal, state, and local level. Topics featured in this series are the Scientists’ Committee on Loyalty Problems; the Scientists Committee on Loyalty and Security; J. Robert Oppenheimer; the loyalty case of Commerce Department employee William Remington; the security investigation at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; and drafts of two books that Ms. Bontecou wrote about government employee loyalty and security issues.

The fourth series is the World War II File. This series contains directives, law review articles, legal briefs and filings, manuals, memoranda, press releases, and reports relating to war crimes trials and civil rights in wartime. Included in this series is a copy of the War Department Basic Field Manual on the Rules of Land Warfare and a War Department Technical Manual on Treaties Governing Land Warfare. Many of the materials in this series relate to habeas corpus issues for war criminals and others.

Related collections regarding World War II and war crimes trials include the Truman Papers (President’s Secretary’s Files and Confidential File) and the papers of Samuel Rosenman and Katherine Fite Lincoln. Related collections regarding civil rights include the Truman Papers (Official File, President’s Personal File, President’s Secretary’s Files, and Philleo Nash Files); the papers of Clark Clifford, George Elsey, David Niles, and Philleo Nash; and Record Group 220: President’s Committee on Civil Rights. Related collections regarding internal security and loyalty issues include the Truman Papers (Official File, President’s Secretary’s Files, and Post-Presidential Papers); the papers of Stephen Spingarn, George Elsey, David Lloyd, Charles Murphy, and A. Devitt Vanech; and the Records of the President’s Commission on Internal Security and Civil Rights.