John Howard Griffin papers, 1920-2004

After clicking 'Submit Request', users will login with their UNI and password (Columbia affiliates) or their special collections account (external users). Appointments are required and will be arranged according to each individual repository's policy.


Series VII: General Correspondence, 1949-1980



Box 5 Folder 179-192 Griffin, John Howard To the Gillespie sisters--Sallie, Hannah, and Mary--of Taos, New Mexico. Mansfield, TX,, 1949-1964, 276 letters in , 14 folders

[Often, his salutations simply read "Dear Girls". Griffin includes messages for many of their mutual friends in Taos during those years--the painter Andrew Dasberg and his wife, Helen; the painter Robert Ellis and his wife, Rosa, and daughter, Erendira; as well as other neighbors and friends, many of them also artists and writers. These letters are full of personal disclosures (about his publishers, famous artists, civil rights activists, mutual friends, and family); there is a lot of behind-the-scenes information about Griffin's Published books and working manuscripts, as well as remarks about photography and music. Only about 25 letters from the various Gillespie sisters survive, and these are included in the Series. All three Gillespie sisters have passed away.


Box 5 Folder 193 - 197 Sussman, Cornelia and Irving To John Howard Griffin, CA, 1963 - 1980, 240 letters in , 5 folders

[The Sussmans are both writers. Cornelia has four novels to her credit and Irving has two books of literary criticism. As a team, they published their most important books:How To Read A Dirty Book, which discusses both the censorship trials ofThe Devil Rides OutsideandBlack Like Me;Profiles in Hope, which has a chapter on Griffin; and their biography of Thomas Merton, published by MacMillan, featuring a Griffin photographic portrait of the monk as its cover. . Griffin considered the Sussmans part of his adopted literary family because they were contemporaries who were conversant with his own spiritual influences: Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Thomas Merton, Robert and Gaby Casadesus, as well as the great saints (in particular, St Thomas Aquinas). He wrote them as freely and openly as he wrote anyone and, during the 1970s, they were his most intimate friends



Box 6 Folder 198-200 Griffin, John Howard To Cornelia and Irving Sussman, et al., [v.p.], 14 October 1962 - 14 February 1980, 3 volumes

[These bound volumes were given to Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi as a gift from the Sussmans.. There is a photograph of Griffin by Irving Sussman in volume 1 and original photographs throughout