MacDonald Collection

Film Collection | Accession Number: 2016.568

Collection Summary: J. Fred MacDonald, a longtime professor of history at Northeastern Illinois University until his retirement, amassed one of the world’s largest personal collections of films: 40,000 reels of film, as well as 40,000 hours of recordings of radio broadcasts. This collection, with its huge diversity, reflected the scope of MacDonald's interests and imagination. The Library of Congress purchased the collection in 2010 and is gradually processing it. The collection is famous for its variety and has been characterized as “a bottomless well of oddities." MacDonald published six books, including "Blacks and White TV: African Americans in Television Since 1948"; "Television and the Red Menace: The Video Road to Vietnam"; and "Don’t Touch That Dial! Radio Programming in American Life from 1920 to 1960." He made much of his work freely available in online reproductions. Fred MacDonald died on 9 April 2015. He was 74.

Special Collection: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive
Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Film Source: Library of Congress - Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS)
Date: Event: October 1945 to March 1946
Date: Event: 1945
Date: Event: 1933-1938
Date: Event: 1937-1938
Date: Event: 1938-1939
: Record last modified: 2022-07-28 18:30:55
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn560706

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