Scope and Contents

Although correspondence may be found throughout much of the collection—see, for instance, Dumpson's personal letters from Pakistan (1953) in Series VI (box 8, folder 6)—the present series gathers only those letters that were specifically filed as such. That Series II spans seventy-eight years (1930–2008) in just nine folders gives some idea of the spottiness of the correspondence. Of historical interest are the letters Dumpson received in January 1965 during his tenure as New York City's Commissioner of Welfare, when social workers of his department staged a month-long strike for better pay and more manageable caseloads (see box 3, folder 15).