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Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections LibraryP.O. Box 400110
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
URL: https://small.library.virginia.edu/
Ellen Welch
Administrative Information
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research.
Preferred Citation
Immediate Source of Acquisition
This collection was a gift from the Federal Bureau of Prisons Library to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 18 December 2018.
Biographical / Historical
Homer Stille Cummings (April 30, 1870 – September 10, 1956) was an American lawyer and politician who was the United States attorney general from 1933 to 1939. He also was elected mayor of Stamford, Connecticut, three times before founding the legal firm of Cummings & Lockwood in 1909. He served as chairman of Democratic National Committee between 1919 and 1920.
Content Description
Bound book titled "The Federal Prison System," dated December 1938, and embossed with the owner's name and title, "The Honorable Homer Cummings / Attorney General of the U.S." Includes letters from various wings of the Department of Justice paired with photographs of penitentiaries, reformatories, and medical centers.
Related Material
Earlier additions of this collection can be found through searching the public VIRGO catalog for MSS 9973.They (over 332 boxes) contain both personal and political papers of Cummings correspondence and including financial and legal papers, particularly estate settlement papers, of Cummings and his mother Audie Schuyler Stillé Cummings, his son Dickinson Schuyler Cummings, and his wives Helen W. Smith Cummings, Marguerite T. Owings Cummings, May Cecelia Waterbury Cummings, and Julia N. Alter Cummings.
In the general political papers, 1899-1933, is material generated by his service as vice chairman and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Topics include women's suffrage, prohibition and Democratic Party management and strategy. In this group is correspondence with Woodrow Wilson concerning paraty politics, politicians and national affairs, as well as a speech by Wilson and Cumming' memos on him.
Other papers from this period deal with Connecticut politics and state affairs particularly his 1930 investigation of the State Prison at Wethersfield and his successful defense in a murder trial. There are a few pieces from his term as mayor of Stamford, Conn.
Papers of Cummings as Attorney-General consist of correspondence, case files, circulars and press releases, and deal with Justice Department policy, crime prevention and the criminal justice system, national politics, New Deal legislation, international affairs, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, war preparedness, cases argued before the Supreme Court, and especially judicial reorganization or court-packing. Correspondence with Franklin D. Roosevelt discusses most of these subjects and there are also speeches and articles pertaining to them.
Of great interest in the collection are Cummings' diaries, 1919-1956, recording his daily activities and containing comments on personalities, politics and government in the Roosevelt administration.